Web&Wire

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What does your Web address mean?

Have you ever looked at a Web or e-mail address and wondered what it meant? The system that controls the addresses of e-mail, Web pages and FTP servers is fairly simple, but like many things related to computers, full of jargon. LetÕs dissect the following address: Working from the left, we know that we are using the HyperText Transfer Protocol Ñ . This means we are looking for information in the form of a Web page that we will read with a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator (note that Internet addresses are not sensitive to capital letters). The two forward slashes indicate that what follows is the address of a specific computer on the Internet. The name of this computer is , and each item separated by periods is called a domain. is a top level domain or suffix. Originally, there were six top level domains or suffixes: .com, .net, .org, .edu, .mil and .gov. But the Internet exploded in size and ran out of specific names to give out, so country codes such as .us, .uk or .se were created as new top-level domains. As the Internet developed quickly in the United States, many sites were created before the .us domain was invented. Therefore, you can now register a domain in America with either .us as the top-level domain or with one of the former six top-level domains. When you register a domain name, what you are really registering is the middle-level domain, in this case , along with its associated top-level domain. Once registered, no other computer on the Internet can use that middle-level domain.

 

Constructing Your Hardware Environment

You or your company have finally decided to replace an older Power Macintosh with a Power Mac G4. But, before making that purchase, there are a few things that should be considered. How much RAM should be installed or if you should get an internal Zip drive are a couple of the things you need to think about. Possibly the biggest problem to solve is what to do with the SCSI peripherals like the flatbed scanner, the external hard drive, the Jaz and the CD-RW drive that were connected to the old machine. The Power Mac G4 computer doesnÕt come with SCSI. Instead it comes with two USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports and two or three FireWire ports. FireWire is faster and provides significant advantages over the SCSI technology it replaces. ThatÕs great, but what about all your SCSI peripherals? The best option is to have your computer come with SCSI support included. Apple offers an Ultra SCSI PCI card that can be added to a G4 (a $49.00 option). It lets you connect external SCSI devices including Fast and Ultra SCSI peripherals. Another solution includes USB-SCSI adapters. These are available from Adaptec (www.adaptec.com), Entrega (www.entrega.com), Newer Technology (www.newertech.com) and other companies. But beware: There are tradeoffs and limitations with both these solutions. Users have reported compatibility problems with peripherals (this includes software security dongles). The adapters offer only a fraction (one-fourth) of the throughput traditional SCSI offered. With the card, the chain is limited to the speed of the slowest device connected.

Winter 2000 CONTENTS