Amazon.co.uk
Written by the knowledgeable Preston Gralla and superbly illustrated, this book is an excellent and technically versed introduction to the technology behind the Internet.
How the Internet Works takes some complicated concepts, like the workings of TCP/IP (the protocol which drives the Internet) and the principles of mark-up languages such as HTML, and removes much of mystique sometimes associated with this global exchange of bits and bytes. At times, the book does skirt over some of the more daunting and indigestible issues, and due to space constraints doesn't always provide the detail and comprehensive coverage to satiate the inquisitive reader. For example, it talks about server-side imagemaps, without even mentioning that many are implemented with client-side scripting.
The choice of content is excellent and covers the tip of the technological iceberg, with discussions of Real Audio, VRML (Virtual Reality), Java and Pointcast. This isn't a practical guide for Internet beginners, but for those who've read the dummies guide and want to know not just how to work it, but how it works, this is a fascinating read. --Josh Smith
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Amazon.com
The Internet does many wondrous things, but an alarming number of them remain "black boxes" whose interior workings are a mystery. In
How the Internet Works, Preston Gralla shows how information gets from here to there on the world's biggest computer network. With assistance from illustrators Sarah Ishidi, Mina Reimer, and Stephen Adams, Gralla presents a series of full-color spreads, each of which picks apart some aspect of Internet technology. You'll find explanations of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), Web browsers, electronic mail, Web search engines, multimedia, and more. There's a spread that shows how bulk e-mailers (known as spammers) extract addresses from newsgroups and send advertisements to them. There's also an excellent graphical depiction of how the infamous Melissa trojan horse wreaked havoc among Microsoft Outlook users in early 1999.
Some of the explanations are weaker than others. While Gralla gives a lot of details about how Internet telephony works, his explanation of PointCast consists of, to paraphrase, "You install the special client software, which communicates with the special server software and presents news to you." It's more of a definition than an explanation. The book is split about evenly between simple definition entries and detailed, commendable how-it-works entries. There's no glossary per se, but the index is good. --David Wall
Topics covered: Internet architecture, addressing, domain names, routers, connectivity, e-mail, newsgroups, Web browsers, push technologies, and Internet safety and security.
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