Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet by Ed Krol (best books to read for students txt) 📕

The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) Server implements the Internet name server for UNIX systems. The name server is a distributed data base system that allows clients to name resources and to share that information with other net- work hosts. BIND is integrated with 4.3BSD and is used to lookup and store host names, addresses, mail agents, host information, and more. It replaces the "/etc/hosts" file for host name lookup. BIND is still an evolving program. To keep up with reports on operational problems, future design decisions, etc, join the BIND mailing list by sending a request to "[email protected]". BIND can also be obtained via anonymous FTP from ucbarpa.berkley.edu.

There are several advantages in using BIND. One of the most important is that it frees a host from relying on "/etc/hosts" being up to date and complete. Within the .uiuc.edu domain, only a few hosts are included in the host table distributed by SRI. The remainder are listed locally within the BIND tables on uxc.cso.uiuc.edu (the server machine for most of the .uiuc.edu domain). All are equally reachable from any other Internet host running BIND.

BIND can also provide mail forwarding information for inte- rior hosts not directly reachable from the Internet. These hosts can either be on non-advertised networks, or not con- nected to a network at all, as in the case of UUCP-reachable hosts. More information on BIND is available in the "Name Server Operations Guide for BIND" in "UNIX System Manager's Manual", 4.3BSD release.

 There are a few special domains on the network, like SRI-
 NIC.ARPA. The 'arpa' domain is historical, referring to
 hosts registered in the old hosts database at the NIC.
 There are others of the form NNSC.NSF.NET. These special
 domains are used sparingly and require ample justification.
 They refer to servers under the administrative control of

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the network rather than any single organization. This allows for the actual server to be moved around the net while the user interface to that machine remains constant. That is, should BBN relinquish control of the NNSC, the new provider would be pointed to by that name.

In actuality, the domain system is a much more general and complex system than has been described. Resolvers and some servers cache information to allow steps in the resolution to be skipped. Information provided by the servers can be arbitrary, not merely IP addresses. This allows the system to be used both by non-IP networks and for mail, where it may be necessary to give information on intermediate mail bridges.

What's wrong with Berkeley Unix

University of California at Berkeley has been funded by DARPA to modify the Unix system in a number of ways. Included in these modifications is support for the Internet protocols. In earlier versions (e.g. BSD 4.2) there was good support for the basic Internet protocols (TCP, IP, SMTP, ARP) which allowed it to perform nicely on IP ether- nets and smaller Internets. There were deficiencies, how- ever, when it was connected to complicated networks. Most of these problems have been resolved under the newest release (BSD 4.3). Since it is the springboard from which many vendors have launched Unix implementations (either by porting the existing code or by using it as a model), many implementations (e.g. Ultrix) are still based on BSD 4.2. Therefore, many implementations still exist with the BSD 4.2 problems. As time goes on, when BSD 4.3 trickles through vendors as new release, many of the problems will be resolved. Following is a list of some problem scenarios and their handling under each of these releases.

ICMP redirects

Under the Internet model, all a system needs to know to get anywhere in the Internet is its own address, the address of where it wants to go, and how to reach a gateway which knows about the Internet. It doesn't have to be the best gateway. If the system is on a network with multiple gateways, and a host sends a packet for delivery to a gateway which feels another directly connected gateway is more appropriate, the gateway sends the sender a message. This message is an ICMP redirect, which politely says "I'll deliver this message for you, but you really ought to use that gate- way over there to reach this host". BSD 4.2 ignores these messages. This creates more stress on the gate- ways and the local network, since for every packet

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sent, the gateway sends a packet to the originator. BSD 4.3 uses the redirect to update its routing tables, will use the route until it times out, then revert to the use of the route it thinks is should use. The whole process then repeats, but it is far better than one per packet.

Trailers

An application (like FTP) sends a string of octets to TCP which breaks it into chunks, and adds a TCP header. TCP then sends blocks of data to IP which adds its own headers and ships the packets over the network. All this prepending of the data with headers causes memory moves in both the sending and the receiving machines. Someone got the bright idea that if packets were long and they stuck the headers on the end (they became trailers), the receiving machine could put the packet on the beginning of a page boundary and if the trailer was OK merely delete it and transfer control of the page with no memory moves involved. The problem is that trailers were never standardized and most gateways don't know to look for the routing information at the end of the block. When trailers are used, the machine typically works fine on the local network (no gateways involved) and for short blocks through gateways (on which trailers aren't used). So TELNET and FTP's of very short files work just fine and FTP's of long files seem to hang. On BSD 4.2 trailers are a boot option and one should make sure they are off when using the Internet. BSD 4.3 negotiates trailers, so it uses them on its local net and doesn't use them when going across the network.

Retransmissions

TCP fires off blocks to its partner at the far end of the connection. If it doesn't receive an acknowledge- ment in a reasonable amount of time it retransmits the blocks. The determination of what is reasonable is done by TCP's retransmission algorithm. There is no correct algorithm but some are better than others, where better is measured by the number of retransmis- sions done unnecessarily. BSD 4.2 had a retransmission algorithm which retransmitted quickly and often. This is exactly what you would want if you had a bunch of machines on an ethernet (a low delay network of large bandwidth). If you have a network of relatively longer delay and scarce bandwidth (e.g. 56kb lines), it tends to retransmit too aggressively. Therefore, it makes the networks and gateways pass more traffic than is really necessary for a given conversation. Retransmis- sion algorithms do adapt to the delay of the network

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after a few packets, but 4.2's adapts slowly in delay situations. BSD 4.3 does a lot better and tries to do the best for both worlds. It fires off a few retransmissions really quickly assuming it is on a low delay network, and then backs off very quickly. It also allows the delay to be about 4 minutes before it gives up and declares the connection broken.

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                            Appendix A
                References to Remedial Information

      Quaterman and Hoskins, "Notable Computer Networks",
      Communications of the ACM, Vol 29, #10, pp. 932-971
      (October, 1986).

      Tannenbaum, Andrew S., Computer Networks, Prentice
      Hall, 1981.

      Hedrick, Chuck, Introduction to the Internet Protocols,
      Anonymous FTP from topaz.rutgers.edu, directory
      pub/tcp-ip-docs, file tcp-ip-intro.doc.

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                            Appendix B
                        List of Major RFCs

RFC-768 User Datagram Protocol (UDP)
RFC-791 Internet Protocol (IP)
RFC-792 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)
RFC-793 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
RFC-821 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
RFC-822 Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages
RFC-854 Telnet Protocol
RFC-917 * Internet Subnets
RFC-919 * Broadcasting Internet Datagrams
RFC-922 * Broadcasting Internet Datagrams in the Presence of Subnets
RFC-940 * Toward an Internet Standard Scheme for Subnetting
RFC-947 * Multi-network Broadcasting within the Internet
RFC-950 *