INews Newsletter - Feb 11, 2000
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
* * * I N e w s * * *
A publication of Internet Nebraska, composed and distributed by
* * * manager@inebraska.com * * *
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume 3, Number 3 February 11, 2000
Welcome to another issue of INews, Internet Nebraska's customer
newsletter. This biweekly newsletter communicates service bulletins,
announcements and other useful information to our customers. Please let
us know what you think of it. Archives of INews are located at
http://www.inebraska.com/inews
In this issue: Employment at IN
Change Your Password
So, What Is This DNS Business?
Mr. Internet
*** Help Wanted ***
Interested in an exciting, fast-paced position in a rapidly growing
Internet company? Internet Nebraska is looking for you. We provide a
fun, friendly, challenging work environment with benefits. We have
openings in the following positions:
User Support Specialist
Support specialists provide first-level customer support via telephone
and e-mail. Verbal and written communication skills are a must for
this position. Experience with Windows and Macintosh computers is
required, and experience with UNIX, basic networking, and modem
technology is preferred. Full and part-time positions available, with
flexible scheduling of days, evenings and weekends.
Web Site Designer
This is a full time position with virtually unlimited room for
advancement for the right applicant. Applicants must have experience
with graphic design and HTML, and experience with CGI programming
using PERL and/or C, Java, and Javascript is preferred. Applicants
must be willing to perform sales functions and customer consultations
as well as Web page design.
Please e-mail resumes to sweaver@inebraska.com, fax resumes to (402)
436-2660, or send via US Mail to Steve Weaver, 1719 N Cotner, Ste B,
Lincoln, NE 68505.
*** Schaefer's TV & Appliance Center - Advertisement ***
Schaefer's is an independently owned and
operated television, appliance, and home
theater retailer in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Born out of a small corner drugstore four
decades ago, Schaefer's TV & Appliance is a
22,000 square-foot "superstore" today,
specializing in commercial/professional-grade
appliances, whole house sound systems, home
theater and central vacuum systems. The
success of Schaefer's is key to repeat
business. If a customer happens to have a
problem with a product, Schaefer's will bend
over backwards to get it solved. Our service
center is the largest in the city, and has been
voted Lincoln's #1 servicer for 10 years in a
row! A knowledgeable sales staff, express
delivery, easy financing, and our customer
service representatives are just a few of the
ways in which we at Schaefer's distinguish
ourselves from the rest. Stop by our showroom
at 48th and R in Lincoln, or call us at
402-464-8888, and see for yourself.
-- http://www.schaeferstv.com/index2.htm
*** Just to Be Safe ***
Old, unchanged passwords are about as secure as a open door, and we highly
recommend you change yours periodically. Perhaps a friend or family
member gets hold of yours and carelessly leaves it lying around for others
to see, maybe someone sees you type yours, or maybe they just get lucky
and guess it -- any of these things might lead to an intruder reading your
mail or misbehaving on the Net as though they were you.
Please visit http://www.inebraska.com/customer/change_passwd.html and
change yours with our handy utility. This will change the password we
expect your dial-up and mail software to send, but you will still need to
change the password within your programs to complete the process. You
should choose something with a mixture of upper- and lower-case
letters, as well as some numbers and punctuation marks.
You really can't be too safe. Feel free to call our helpdesk with any
questions about password changing, or drop us a line at
support@inebraska.com. We're here to help!
*** The Capital Soccer Association - Advertisement ***
Capital Soccer Association specializes in
teaching soccer. However we recognize that
soccer, or any other youth sport is merely
one tool in the development of a young
child. Teamwork and sportsmanship through
knowledge and proficiency of the game are
our main goals.
-- http://www.capitalsoccer.com/
*** How DNS Works ***
When customers call our helpdesk, we frequently have them enter several
numbers in their connection properties for the primary and secondary
nameservers. In case you were wondering, this is why we do that.
The Domain Name Service (DNS) provides an alias for an Internet Protocol
(IP) address. Computers on the Internet locate one another based on their
IP addresses. While numbers are fine for computers, people can remember
names better than numbers. They are more likely to remember the hostname
www.inebraska.com than the IP address 199.184.119.187. So, DNS provides a
name alias for a computer's IP address.
A computer's name is composed of two parts, the name and the domain. The
name is usually the portion to the far left up to the first period (.),
and the domain is the rest. So, the host www.inebraska.com has a name of
www and a domain of inebraska.com.
Computers on the Internet have a program called a "resolver". It is
usually part of the Operating System, and its job is to look up IP
addresses when a user puts in a hostname. The resolver knows your
Internet domain's name server, which in turn knows all the names and IP
addresses for your domain. For example, as an Internet Nebraska
subscriber, your resolver is configured to ask dns.inebraska.com for IP
addresses.
If your local name server doesn't know the IP address, it contacts the
root servers. There are 12 root servers on the Internet. They don't know
IP addresses, but they know who does. For every top-level domain (such as
.COM, .GOV, .US), the root servers know who the responsible name servers
are. Those name servers in turn know who is responsible for the next
level of domains.
Let's walk through an example. Our local system is an Internet Nebraska
dial-up and we are looking for www.yahoo.com. We type www.yahoo.com into
our web browser. The resolver checks our local system to see if we know
the IP. Since don't, the resolver checks with our local name server
(dns.inebraska.com) to see if it knows the address. It does not. So, our
resolver reads the root server IPs from dns.inebraska.com and contacts one
of them (e.g. c.root-servers.net) which knows the name servers for
yahoo.com. Our resolver then contacts one of those name servers, and it
has the IP for www.yahoo.com. Now, armed with the IP address, we can
establish a connection to the site we wanted to visit. Voila!
*** Mr. Internet ***
Q: I keep hearing about these "denial-of-service" attacks in the news
lately. What in the heck are they?
A: DoS attacks are craven efforts to bring a network to its knees by
flooding it with useless traffic. They usually involve rapid and
repeated pinging of a machine (specifically, a port on a machine), and are
always initiated by maladjusted little creeps whose futures include some
flavor of work-release groundskeeping or dishwashing. If Mr. Internet
could just get his hands on one of them, why, he'd tear them. . . .
*ahem* Anyway, if you bother a machine with a constant series of
unwarranted requests for information, it will get too busy to do anything
it was really meant to do.
Mr. Internet is a regular feature of the INews, and he welcomes questions
of any kind. Just mail them to mrinternet@inebraska.com, and he'll answer
one or two each issue. Those he doesn't use will not necessarily be
answered, and you should still use 'manager' and 'accounts' for regular
business.
*** Advertise on Our Home Pages ***
What better way to advertise your business than on a Web page that is seen
tens of thousands of time every month? None, if you're paying as little
as we charge for it!
We are now offering banner advertising that rotates on all our pages, and
which is priced based on the number of impressions (viewings) per month.
Your banner can reach thousands of Nebraska residents, and this is a
unique way to advertise your Nebraska business to residents in the area.
Prices for banner advertisement can be found at:
http://www.inebraska.com/ad.html
We will also be selling links from our main page. Please contact
manager@inebraska.com, or give us a give us a call at our office,
402-434-8680, and ask how you can reserve banner spots on some of the
hottest URL's in the state. The advertisers in this issue did, and we
recommend them highly.