Introduction

Increasingly, what people do when they use their computers is use the Internet. It's become an absolutely integral part of the way that people compute and the way that they live.

That means it's vital that people get more out of their use of the Internet, improving their productivity and making their computing lives easier and more pleasant. So this chapter includes a variety of recipes for doing that and more.

You'll find recipes here for speeding up Internet access, troubleshooting DNS problems, getting more out of hosting a web site using Internet Information Services (IIS), customizing Internet Explorer, and many safety tips, such as protecting yourself from spyware and spam, using firewalls, and much more.

Using a Command-Line Interface

You'll use several command-line tools in this chapter, including ipconfig for checking your Internet and network configuration, ping for troubleshooting DNS problems, and the tlntadmn Telnet administrator command for managing Telnet.

Using Downloadable Software

You'll use a wide variety of downloadable software in this chapter, including EMS Free Surfer mk II (Recipe 13.8) to protect you against pop-up ads; Cookie Pal (Recipe 13.9) for managing cookies; Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy, Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware, and Webroot Spy Sweeper (Recipe 13.10) for protecting you against spyware; and the ZoneAlarm firewall (Recipes Recipe 13.10 and Recipe 13.14) for Internet protection, among others.