last week Paul and I came up with what I think is a good set of topics for
upcoming meetings.
Most of our presentations cover how to use a particular application or
set of apps. We don't cover the actual protocols those apps use, though
PLUG-devel has had a couple of good presentations on different APIs.
One of the answers in the thread from a couple of weeks ago about how to
determine what web server a machine is using mentioned using a text web
browser to make a head request. Great info I didn't know. I'd always gotten
that info by just telnetting to port 80 and making a request, but that's a
pain in a script.
Understanding how the proto works allows you to debug problems at a lower
level and gives you another method of checking to make sure everything's
working.
The basic idea is to cover specific protos. For instance, I will be covering
DNS this Thu for the East Valley meeting.
The talk won't be really in depth, but will cover the basics of what DNS
does and how it works, e.g. UDP vs. TCP connections and why one or the other
is used. I will cover some basic debugging via host and dig. I will cover
different record types, e.g. NS, MX, A, CNAME and PTR. If I have time I will
cover some basics of bind.
Other protos I think should be covered are: SMTP, HTTP, IMAP/POP, SSH,
DHCP/bootp, PPPoE and SMB.
Other protos that might be good to cover: SNMP, NTP, NNTP, sunrpc, telnet,
bgp ( and other 'router' protos ), irc/aim/etc., LDAP, SNPP, SMS, db protos,
rsync, ppp and things apple and m$ use.
The slashed entries are things I think could and probably should be covered
together.
There are also things like amanda's various protos. Maybe I should just add
those to my amanda presentation.
Examples of info that could be in these presentations:
what the 5xx, 4xx, etc. return codes mean for SMTP and HTTP
how to telnet to a web server and make a request
how to telnet to a POP server, login, check out the account, etc.
how DHCP and bootp are doing networking without having IP addies
how to send mail by telnetting to an SMTP server
What do you think? Any volunteers to cover a specific proto?
Any suggestions or questions for my DNS presentation on Thu?
ciao,
der.hans
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