Section 9.1. Introduction

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9.1. Introduction

A network is an interconnected system of cooperating computers. Through a network, you can share resources with other users via an ever-increasing number of network applications, such as web browsers and electronic mail messaging systems.

There has been a huge explosion of network use since 1990. For example, the client-server paradigm described in Chapter 1, "What Is Linux?," has been adopted by many of the major computer corporations, and relies heavily on the operating system's network capabilities to distribute the workload between the server and its clients.

In order to prepare yourself for the advent of widespread networking, it's important to know the following items:

• common network terminology

• how networks are built

• how to talk to other people on the network

• how to use other computeras on the network

This chapter covers all of these issues and more. All of the utilities covered in this chapter can be found in most distributions, but might not have been selected at install time. Check your distribution media or your distribution's application installation tool to find missing applications. For more detailed information about Linux networking, I highly recommend [Stevens, 1998], [Anderson, 1995], and the networking section of [Nemeth, 2002].