Web hosting - Chapter 16: Connecting to the Internet Overview This
Chapter 16: Connecting to the Internet Overview This chapter demonstrates how to connect Red Hat Linux to any TCP/IP-based network, such as the Internet, a private intranet, or a company extranet. The differences in how you connect have more to do with the network medium you use (that is, telephone lines, LAN router, and so on) than they do with whether you are connecting to the public Internet or a company s private network. Connections to the Internet described in this chapter include a simple dial-up connection from your own Red Hat Linux system. The most popular protocols for making dial-up connections to the Internet are Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP). This chapter focuses on PPP (it is more widely used than SLIP). It also builds on the procedures in Chapter 15 for creating your own Local Area Network (LAN) by teaching you how to connect your LAN to the Internet. This chapter first provides an overview of the structure of the Internet, including descriptions of domains, routing, and proxy service. It then discusses how to connect your Red Hat Linux system to the Internet using PPP dial-up connections. For those who want to connect a LAN to the Internet, it describes how to use Red Hat Linux as a router and set it up to do IP masquerading (to protect your private LAN addresses). Finally, it describes how to configure Red Hat Linux as a proxy server, including how to configure client proxy applications such as Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Understanding How the Internet Is Structured In order to operate, the Internet relies on maintaining a unique set of names and numbers. The names are domain names and hostnames, which enable the computers connected to the Internet to be identified in a hierarchy. The numbers are Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and port numbers, which enable computers to be grouped together into interconnected sets of subnetworks, yet remain uniquely addressable by the Internet. An Internet Service Provider (ISP) will give you the information you need to set up a connection to the Internet. You plug that information into the programs used to create that connection, such as scripts to create a Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection over telephone lines. See the section later in this chapter on outgoing dial-up connections for descriptions of the information needed from your ISP and the procedures for configuring PPP to connect to the Internet. The following list describes basic Internet structure in more detail: IP addresses These are the numbers that uniquely define each computer known to the Internet. Internet authorities assign pools of IP addresses (along with network masks, or netmasks) so that network administrators can assign addresses to each individual computer that they control. An alternative to assigned addresses is to use a reserved set of private IP addresses. Cross-Reference See Chapter 15 for a description of IP addresses. Port numbers Port numbers provide access points to particular services. A server computer will listen on the network for packets that are addressed to its IP address, along with one or more port numbers. For example, a Web server listens to port 80 to respond to requests for HTTP content.
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