Introduction UTC’s network provides connectivity within the campus and to the Internet. As computers become move prevalent on campus, the importance of the network grows. This document is a brief overview of its structure and cannot possibly cover all of the complexities of UTC’s network.

Internet – The Internet is a large collection of computers and computing devices linked together via networks. Originally created/funded by the Department of Defense, the Internet has grown to include the educational and commercial sectors of the world. An organization’s Intranet is usually its "local" branch of the Internet protected by a firewall. A firewall is hardware and/or software enforcing privacy and preventing outside attacks from the Internet. UTC’s network can be thought of as an Intranet.

Construction – UTC’s network consists of fiber optics, copper cabling (also known as category 5 wiring), hubs (also known as repeaters), routers (sometimes erroneously referred to as gateways) and Ethernet cards (which connect the PC to the copper cabling. The fiber optics provide a backbone (fast connection) between buildings and the copper cabling is used within buildings to provide connections between the individual PCs and the Hubs.. Hubs provide connection between the copper cabling and the fiber optics. The routers provide directions for the flow of traffic on the network. Finally, Ethernet cards connect individual machines to the network.

Ethernet – Ethernet is a description of the physical construction of networking hardware and rules for its use. Hubs, routers, and Ethernet cards all have Ethernet ports (i.e. you can connect a Ethernet card to an Ethernet port on a hub or router.) Ethernet currently comes in three speeds: (how fast data can be transferred) 10 megabits (the most common), 100 megabits (fast, mainly for backbone use) and 1 gigabit (the fastest, very rare). 10BaseT is a common type of Ethernet hardware consisting of copper wire and a physical connector (much like a large phone connector) running at a speed of 10 megabits. Information sent using Ethernet is broken up into packets, or small chunks of data. The traffic on a network is measured in packets.

Protocols – Protocols are sets of rules for communication that can be compared to human languages. Entities on the network must be able to understand each other in order to communicate and so they must use the same protocol. Some entities can use more than one protocol. TCP/IP (used by the Internet), IPX (used by Novell Servers), and AppleTalk (used by Macintosh) are the most common protocols on UTC’s network. TCP/IP continues to be the most important and most widely used.

TCP/IP – Every entity that is going to access the Internet must have a IP number. This number usually is similar in form to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (where x is an integer < 10) and is assigned to that entity. UTC has a specific range of IP numbers assigned to it. IP number is sometimes referred to as just an IP.

DNS (Domain Name Service) – DNS serves to translate domain names (like cecasun.utc.edu) to the corresponding IP number (as computers only like numbers and domain names are for humans.) A DNS server has tables containing domain names and their equivalent IP numbers. If a domain name is not found in these tables, the server then asks another DNS server about it. This continues until the name is found somewhere on the Internet or the DNS server exhausts its search (in which case a domain name not found error is reported.) DNS servers have responsibility for keeping track of names/numbers in their domain. Cecasun.utc.edu has responsibility for UTC’s domain.

Telnet – Terminal emulation for connection to Unix machines. Several programs (Ewan, NT/95’s built in telnet) allow you to have a virtual terminal connection to the machine by establishing a telnet connection using TCP/IP. Telnet connections require that you have a user id and password for logon.

Email – Most email at UTC is handled by a Unix machine or a Novell server. These devices serve as the electronic post office, housing mail boxes and handling the forwarding of mail. The most common email client here is Eudora, which is known as a POP client. POP (Post Office Protocol) clients use TCP/IP to retrieve mail messages from a mail server and then store them on a local users hard drive. On Unix machines (such as cecasun) users can telnet to the Unix machine and read their email using Pine. Pine is a text based email reader that runs on Unix machines. Forwarding of email is done using SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) and POP clients need to know the domain name of their SMTP server.

IPX – is a protocol used to connect a machine to one (or more) Novell server(s). Novell servers provide file and print services and some act as POP servers for email (Yes, most of UTC’s Novell servers also speak TCP/IP protocol.)

AppleTalk – This protocol is used exclusively by Macintosh computers and their servers (Novell servers can also speak AppleTalk.) Like IPX it provides file sharing and print services to Apple computers. AppleTalk zones are logical divisions of the AppleTalk network.

Internet Traffic – UTC experiences periodic "slowdowns" in its Internet access (especially around noon) due to an increase in overall Internet traffic. UTC has a T1 (large backbone) connection to UTK which in turn has several T1s to the Internet. The more people access the Internet, the more it becomes congested.

Routers - The IP number of a router can be found by using .1 address of the current IP number. If a PC has an IP number of 199.76.195.255 than its router's IP number is 199.76.195.1

DNS Numbers -Use these IP numbers for your DNS requests in this order.

192.239.44.6 - Cecasun, UTC's main DNS server

192.239.44.7 - Moccasun, UTC's main secondary DNS server

199.76.195.221 - Slug, CECA's DNS Server

199.76.195.203 - Spoon, CECA's secondary DNS server

Subnet Mask – for division of a IP number range

255.255.255.0 - is almost always the correct number at UTC.

SMTP - Email forwarding

192.239.44.6 - Cecasun

199.76.195.221 - Slug