Workshop

Hour 12
UNIX Networking Basics
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The most aggravating thing about UNIX is that it has a million flavors. On the other hand, the best thing
about UNIX is that it has a million flavors. Lots and lots of network innovations have come out of the
UNIX melting pot—the Internet itself probably owes its existence to UNIX-based network inventions.
Of course, TCP/IP itself grew up on UNIX computers; therefore, many TCP/IP concepts and commands
from UNIX are extremely applicable to other operating systems, notably Windows NT. Even if you have
no UNIX in your environment, you still might want to skim this chapter, because you probably have
TCP/IP. This hour does not attempt to teach UNIX to the completely uninitiated; however, if you’re
already familiar with how to log in to the system, you’ll learn how to explore the networking components
of it.
It’s not important to know all the major UNIX vendors; the important thing to know is that a lot of
different types of UNIX exist. Although some of the ways they handle hard drives and terminals are very
different, many of the TCP/IP commands are very much the same.
Overview
Let’s take a 20,000-foot view of how most UNIX servers are configured. Yes, they have the capability to
do “file and print” the way Windows networks do, and you can connect your Windows 95 drive letters or
LPT ports to a UNIX box (if your Windows 95 PC has an appropriate network client loaded). However,
more than this, UNIX servers are typically client/server oriented.
By the way, you’ll find very little difference between a UNIX workstation and a UNIX server, other than
the speed and redundancy of the hardware.
Client/Server
I’ll get into client/server a bit more in Hour 18, “Lots of Different People in Your Neighborhood.” For
now, it’s enough to know that client/server is basically a fancy way of saying, “If I ask somebody for a
price of a widget, they give me an answer.” (This is unlike file and print, where you would get the entire
catalog.) Think of client/server as being question/answer oriented. For example, DNS name services are