Chapter 22. Principles of TCPIP Networking
Chapter 22. Principles of TCP/IP NetworkingIN THIS CHAPTER
Operating systems used to be designed either for networking or for single-user desktop settingstwo styles of computing that were worlds apart. That has all changed. In the present day, the consumer-level, single-user, nonnetworked PC platform is giving way to operating systems whose robustness and networkability put to shame many of the mainframe-class systems of the old days. Mac OS X (with its FreeBSD architecture and Mach kernel) and Windows 2000/XP are both examples of platforms that were built around networking as a fundamental tenet, and they are intended to replace older systems that had had networking tacked onto them only as an afterthought. TCP/IP (the de facto transport protocol suite of the Internet) is woven as tightly into the cores of these modern systems as it was in the mainframes, and as it is in FreeBSD. FreeBSD is a system designed from the ground up to be a network-aware platform. Whether you're using it as a workstation or as a server, chances are you've chosen it at least in part for its networking strengths, and a FreeBSD machine without access to a network is frankly not a lot of use. It's certainly a great deal less fun. In this chapter, you'll learn the basic principles of networking as it applies to FreeBSD and its role in the Internet, principles which underpin the remainder of the topics discussed in this book. |
