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The Internet



In addition to the U.S. ARPANET, other countries also developed their own computer networks which quickly linked up to ARPANET, such as the UK's JANET (1983 onwards), and Australia's ACSnet (mid-1970s until replaced). Connecting these together would help develop a global internetwork.







Domain names






  • DJBDNS (Dan J Bernstein's DNS implementation)
  • MaraDNS
  • NSD (Name Server Daemon)
  • PowerDNS







  • A records resolve names into an IP addresses
  • PTR records resolve IP addresses to names
  • NS records define the authoritative nameservers for the domain.






> set q=MX




See also: cybersquatting, dynamic DNS, ICANN, DNSSEC

External links

Web hosting

Web Hosting: An Introduction

What is Web Hosting?


What does Web Hosting do?




How and Where can I get hosting?

Web hosting is available in two forms — paid and free.





Reseller vs. Shared


Types of hosting control panels


The most popular hosting control panels










[1] Source of information:

Further reading

Comparison of Web hosting control panels at Wikipedia

More information is available on the Wikipedia article about Web Hosting.


A route is the path that data takes when travelling through a network from one host to another. Routing is the process by which the path, or some subset of it, is determined. One of the characteristic features of the Internet, as compared to other network architectures, is that each node that receives a packet will typically determine for itself what the next step in the path should be.

IP routing decisions are generally made based on the destination of network traffic. When an IP packet is sent from a node on the network, it will consult its routing table to determine the next hop device that the traffic should be sent to, in order for it to reach its final destination. The routing table on a typical home machine may look something like this (except formatted properly :):

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
default         x.y.z          UG    0      0        0 ppp0

So, for example, when it receives a packet on interface eth0 which has a destination of, it will consult the table and see that it should send it through the default interface, the host x.y.z, which is on interface ppp0.

The routing table is constructed from a combination of statically defined routes and those learned from dynamic routing protocols.

Statically defined routes may be declared at system boot time, or via a command line interface. They will generally include the following parameters:

  • Destination - this may be either a single host, or a network (in which case a network mask is also required).
  • Gateway - the device to which traffic with the defined destination should be sent.

Static routes may also include the following parameters:

  • Interface - the interface through which the traffic to a destination must be sent. (Most OSs can determine this automatically)
  • Metric - the number of 'hops' away that the gateway is from this host. For a gateway that resides on a directly connected network, the metric is '1'.

The default route is a special case of a statically defined route. It is the route of last resort. All traffic that does not match another destination in the routing table is forwarded to the default gateway.

Dynamic routing protocols allow network attached devices to learn about the structure of the network dynamically from peer devices. This reduces the administrative effort required to implement and change routing throughout a network. Some examples of dynamic routing protocols are:

  • RIP (Routing Information Protocol)
  • OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)
  • ISIS (Intermediate system to intermediate system)
  • BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)
  • IGRP (Interior Gateway Routing Protocol)

ISIS and OSPF are link-state protocols, meaning each node part of the same zone, will know the state of all the link in the mesh. Due to the exponential number of link in a mesh, thoses protocols are for small mesh such as an ISP national backbone.

RIP is usually used to easily announce customer's routes in a backbone.

BGP is used as an external routing protocol to exchange routes with other entities. ISP use BGP extensivly to "trade" their routes. It can also be used to carry customers routes accross a network, in a MPLS backbone for example.



Different protocols often describe different aspects of a single communication; taken together, these form a protocol stack. The terms "protocol" and "protocol stack" also refer to the software that implements a protocol.

Most recent protocols are assigned by the IETF for internet communications, and the IEEE, or the ISO organizations for other types. The ITU-T handles telecommunications protocols and formats.

Index page for network protocols and protocol layers, categorised by the nearest matching layers of the OSI seven layer model.

Systems engineering principles have been applied to design network protocols.

Common Internet protocols

Common Internet protocols include TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), UDP/IP (User Datagram Protocol/Internet Protocol), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

TCP/IP is a stream protocol. This means that a connection is negiotated between a client and a server. Any data transmitted between these two endpoints is guaranteed to arrive, thus it is a so-called lossless protocol. Since the TCP protocol (as it is also refered to in short form) can only connect two endpoints, it is also called a peer-to-peer protocol.
HTTP is the protocol used to transmit all data present on the World Wide Web. This includes text, multimedia and graphics. It is the protocol used to transmit HTML, the language that makes all the fancy decorations in your browser. It works upon TCP/IP.
FTP is the protocol used to transmit files between computers connected to each other by a TCP/IP network, such as the Internet.

See also

History and evolution

The Internet began life as a research project sponsored by ARPA. Previously US defense computers were connected to each other in a one way fashion such that each computer was connected to the others in series. In case of one computer being destroyed all others would lose communication. To avoid this the government decided to connect the computers in a web with each computer connected to all others. The motivation was to connect the few then existing proprietary computer networks to one interconnected network. The first version of the Internet was called ARPANET and was implemented in 1969. It then consisted of 4 Nodes in UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Lab, and the University of Utah. It was to be the predecessor of what is today called the Internet.

The Web

The World Wide Web (the "Web" or "WWW" for short) is a hypertext system that operates over the Internet. To view the information, you use a software program called a web browser to retrieve pieces of information (called "documents" or "web pages") from web servers (or "web sites") and view them on your screen. You can then follow hyperlinks on the page to other documents or even send information back to the server to interact with it. The act of following hyperlinks is often called "surfing" the web.

Looking further at web browsers, a web browser is an application program that accesses the World Wide Web, which then searches for wanted information on the Internet. The first web browser named Mosaic was developed in the early 1990s. The ease of information access provided by web browsers greatly added to the popularity of the Internet. Companies and individual users alike can use a browser to access untold amounts of information, and its as easy to find as clicking a mouse. The three most popular web browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Netscape. Tight competition has caused for continual improvement in the programs and associated technologies. Web browsers are loaded with ease-of-use features and are customizable to an individual user’s preference.


The core functionality of the Web is based on three standards: the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which specifies how each page of information is given a unique "address" at which it can be found; Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which specifies how the browser and server send the information to each other; and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), a method of encoding the information so it can be displayed on a variety of devices.


Beyond text



Java and Javascript


The similarly named, but actually quite different, JavaScript is a scripting language developed for Web pages. In conjunction with the Document Object Model (DOM), JavaScript has become a much more powerful language than its creators originally envisaged.

Sociological Implications





Publishing web pages









History of the Web

The Web grew out of a project at CERN, beginning around 1989, where Tim Berners Lee and Robert Cailliau built the prototype system that became the core of what is now the World Wide Web. The original intent of the system was to make it easier to share research papers among colleagues. The original name of the first prototype was Enquire Within Upon Everything, after a famous 19th century reference work of how-tos. Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the "World Wide Web" onto the Internet on August 6, 1991.

Works Cited



HTML is the language of the web.





For further reading

Embedded technologies

Embedded technologies


To do:

Embedded Technologies in the context of the internet are stand-alone programs and plugins that extend the normal functionality of a web page. Java, Shockwave Flashtm, audio and video players are all examples of embedded technologies that can assist creating a web site.

See also

Proxy servers





Search engine









Work Cited


Did You Know?


Web advertising

Web Advertising uses static images, animated GIFs, and Flash Animation to display a product or service. Advertising on the Web displays in many different ways such as banners or buttons, Pop-up and Pop-under, and intro pages to websites.

A banner or a button can be an image, animated gif, flash video or plain text

A Pop-up or Pop-under causes a new browser window to open and displays a webpage that can contain text, images and flash.

Intro Pages to websites usually have a flash or gif animation to introduce a company, their services or Products.

Internet advertising is delivered by ad servers. The most common type of ad server in use today is the Central ad server.

Standard Sizes for Banner Style Advertisements are as follows:

Rectangles -


Banners -


Skyscrapers -


Online shopping

Online shopping is just like going to the store and shopping around and looking for things you want except in form of the internet. Tim Berners-Lee started the World Wide Web in 1990. Shortly there after, online shopping started and has expanded exponentially ever since. It provides such a convenience for consumers to keep from having to leave the house or use gas to get to all the different stores, where online shopping you can get anything you want from as many different stores as you want all at one time. Online shopping mainly takes place from people using search engines and typing in exactly what they want. Then the search engine will bring up the most popular sites for the items you look for. Once you find what you are looking for online, most sites will let you put the item in a shopping cart just like a brick and mortar store, so you can keep searching around for anything else that you may need.

Shopping online makes life so much easier because you can just type in a debit card number, wire money, deliver money, electronic money, etc. and be done with it within seconds or minutes. It makes life easy, but you just have to be careful what sites you order from because of all the scams that go on everyday. It is so easy for hackers today to steal people's identity, so being smart is definitely a key when shopping online.

It makes it easy for companies to use online catalogs or stores to do business not only because people will use it but because there is so much more of a selection that they can put online and not even have in the actual store due to space constraints.

Online Auctions

Online auctions have become increasing popular with the rise of online shopping. These auctions allow buyers and sellers to obtain and sell products and services quickly and efficiently. Auctions allow for individuals and businesses to extend their products and services to a much larger customer base.

In 1995, the current powerhouse, Ebay, was started from founder Pierre Omidyar's house. While bidding and searching through auctions is free, sellers are charged certain fees:

- A nonrefundable Insertion Fee is charged which can cost a seller anywhere from 30 cents up to $3.30, depending on the seller's starting bid on the item. - If a seller wishes to further promote their listings, the seller can highlight a listing for an additional fee. - A Final Sale fee is charged at the end of the seller's auction. This fee generally ranges from 1.25% to 5% of the final sale price.

At the end of the auction, both the seller and the buyer are notified by Ebay. The seller usually has a minimum price they will accept for the bid item. If the buyer's bid exceeds the seller's lowest price, the transaction is completed between the two parties or independently of eBay. The above rules apply to Ebay itself, but all auction-based websites charge fees for providing customers with a specific place for e-commerce.

Although Ebay is a widely recognized name in the Internet world, there are several other popular auctions sites such as,, Popularity and use of auction sites has become more common, however, there are some downsides to these websites. Once an auction has ended, the binding contract of the auction is between the winning bidder and the seller only. Meaning the actual website has limited to no liability for a bad transaction. Auction sites do provide their customers with several options to retrieve money from a dishonest buyer or seller. If these options fail to achieve results, the buyer or seller is essentially on their own.

There are many benefits from online auctions. Individuals and businesses sell and purchase products that are sometimes hard-to-find and hard to sell. Usually, these products come at cheaper prices, and can be found right in the comfort of your own home.

Works Cited


Since the beginning of time, our innate nature creates a desire for convenience and a desire to find new ways to create convenience. The business world is especially guilty of this characteristic as efficient operations are necessary in order to provide a profitable book of business. Over the past few decades the internet has made a grand entrance and a lasting impression on the business world. Since then, it seems, that the internet, and furthermore email, has made an even larger impression on the way business is conducted. While, seemingly enough all effects are positive, there are reasons that a company should "second-guess" its decision to utilize email in such heavy and reliant ways.

While email is convenient and efficient to send a message, whether it be to someone in your clientele base, a sister company across the nation or to someone in the cubicle next to you, email can also create communication barriers that could have an everlasting effect on your business, especially concerning customer service. Email creates a way to send bills, eliminate phone calls and provide services to your customers without ever having contact with that customer. Eliminating your "one-on-one" contact with everyone involved in your business creates hazards such as dishonesty, miscommunication in unerstanding company policies, etc. Below are a few more adverse effects that email could have on a business as reported by Paul McFredrie, (

    Creates an impersonal environment
    Excessive involvement (can require more attention than you can give)
    Lax in security
    "Text-only" (can create massive and detrimental misunderstandings)

As duly noted, email has its obvious positive effects on our business world and definitely plays a large role in its success. However, we should always be aware of the problems that can be caused as well.

History of email

Email began as an experiment by the military to be able to send to and from the battlefield. Thus was born email or electronic-mail

The first email was sent in 1972 using two machines by an engineer named Ray Tomlinsin. Later he wrote a mail program for Tenex, the BBN-grown operating system that, by now, was running on most of the ARPANET's PDP-10 machines. (Heliomedia) The mail program was written in two parts (1)to send messages, you would use a program called SNDMSG; (2)to receive mail, you would use the other part called READMAIL.(Heliomedia)

In 1972, the commands MAIL and MLFL were added to the FTP program and provided standard network transport capabilities for email transmission. FTP sent a separate copy of each email to each recipient, and provided the standard ARPANET email functionality until the early 1980's when the more efficient SMTP protocol was developed. Among other improvements, SMTP enabled sending a single message to a domain with more than one addressee, after which the local server would locally copy the message to each recipient. (Livinginternet)

Over the years the email has evolved with many different programs put with it and many people working to improve the email systems.

In 1993, the large network service providers America Online and Delphi started to connect their proprietary email systems to the Internet, beginning the large scale adoption of Internet email as a global standard. (Livinginternet)


(Category: Net History)

Ian, Peter;

E-mail predates the Internet; existing e-mail systems were a crucial tool in creating the Internet. 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility were SDC's Q32 and MIT's CTSS. E-mail was quickly extended to become network e-mail, allowing users to pass messages between different computers. The early history of network e-mail is also murky; the AUTODIN system may have been the first allowing electronic text messages to be transferred between users on different computers in 1966, but it is possible the SAGE system had something similar some time before. The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the evolution of e-mail. There is one report [1] which indicates experimental inter-system e-mail transfers on it shortly after its creation, in 1969. Ray Tomlinson initiated the use of the @ sign to separate the names of the user and their machine in 1971 [2]. The common report that he "invented" e-mail is an exaggeration, although his early e-mail programs SNDMSG and READMAIL were very important. The first message sent by Ray Tomlinson is not preserved; it was "a message announcing the availability of network email"[3]. The ARPANET significantly increased the popularity of e-mail, and it became the killer app of the ARPANET.

((Origins of E-mail)

BBN was the first company to send an e-mail. BBN stands for Bolt Beranek and Newman. BBN was hired by the US Defense Department and created what is known as the ARPANET. The ARPANET helped to evolved into what is known today as the internet. The first e-mail was sent three years later in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. Ray Tomlinson eventually was the first to use the @ symbol in his emails to show which message was sent at which computer to show that it wasnt a local host.








Routing email


username @ domain

(For example:










Email spam

Email spam (or just "Spam") is unsolicited email, similar to conventional "junk mail", but often on a larger scale.

Spam is estimated to have cost U.S. organizations over $10 billion (in lost productivity) in 2003.

Various software products are available to block or filter spam. Even lawmakers are stepping up to fight spam- in the United States the Can-Spam Act of 2003 was passed into law.

"Spammers" - people or organizations responsible for sending out email spam - use large lists of email addresses that are collected in a number of ways. One of these means is by using computer programs that search websites for email addresses. An email address that appears on a website is therefore more likely to get spammed, other things being equal. There are various ways of preventing your email being harvested in this way. One is to include it as an image rather than a link. This is not ideal, though, because it means firstly that people will have to type the address themselves, and secondly, it makes the address inaccessible to blind people, or people who browse without images. An alternative, better method, is to use a small piece of 'JavaScript' to insert the email address into the page when it is displayed, keeping it out of the html which an email-collecting spam program might look at. One final method is to create a contact form to display on your website. The website user would fill out the form which when submitted forwards the message to you without displaying your email address. This final method has one drawback in that it circumvents the user's email system and does not provide the user with a record of the email that they sent.

I have also seen many people try the format of or whatever. The person who has a genuine interest in emailing you will remove the REMOVETHIS part of the eddress before sending, but programmes that gather email addresses en-masse will use it as-is - thus, you do not receive spam. One must be fairly inventive to make this effective; the instance given would be algorithmically handled by most site-scraping email bots.

In addition, there is a new anti-spam feature now availible. Named the "Challenge/Response System", this either sends a link, or a word-verification page to a user, the first time they e-mail you. The user must either click the link or enter the word to verify they are not a spamming program. After this, you get the e-mail and they're added to your allow list.

A study, by Brockmann & Company IT consultants showed that challenge-response proved to be superior to appliances, hosted spam filters and commercial filters.Brockmann surveyed more than 500 businesses, with 40% of the respondents having IT responsibilities. The independently funded study resulted in the creation of a spam index to measure how satisfied workers were with their spam technologies.

Despite being less sophisticated than filtering technology sold by antispam and antivirus vendors, the challenge-response method was twice as effective as hosted services for spam prevention. According to the survey, 67% of challenge-response users specified that they are very satisfied with their email experience as compared to next highest technology, hosted services, in which 42% reported that they were very satisfied. Commercial software filters, such as those produced by McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro, scored the lowest satisfying only 22% of respondents.(, Robert Westervelt Jul. 2007) currently offers a public beta of this software.

Spam is a very common thing and at one point or another it is something that we have all had. Spam is not only an annoying email, it is a tactics for marketing. However many times you have received this type of email, it is becoming more and more dangerous. It can be generated by businesses as well as individuals. It is used to promote products and is also brought about by things like forwarding ( things like jokes, images or chain letters) spam can be used to gather information from your computer if opened as well as used to send out viruses. It is becoming an increasing threat. Spam has become such an issue, that people now have to have an entire email address just as a "throw away account" an email address specifically catered toward junk mail because if we were to let it, it would take up about 90% of our inbox's, not only is this an issue for our email account but it is also being directed towards our phone, and needs to be handled with caution Email-spam-sample.png‎ Spam is a very common thing and at one point or another it is something that we have all had. Spam is not only an annoying email, it is a tactics for marketing. However many times you have received this type of email, it is becoming more and more dangerous. It can be generated by businesses as well as individuals. It is used to promote products and is also brought about by things like forwarding ( things like jokes, images or chain letters) spam can be used to gather information from your computer if opened as well as used to send out viruses. It is becoming an increasing threat. Spam has become such an issue, that people now have to have an entire email address just as a "throw away account" an email address specifically catered toward junk mail because if we were to let it, it would take up about 90% of our inbox's, not only is this an issue for our email account but it is also being directed towards our phone, and needs to be handled with caution  

External Links

Email security

Over time, e-mail has been one of the most used components to send messages around the world or to people around oneself. Also, e-mail has a lot of harm that can happen while in the process. There are different types of components that may occur while sending an innocent message to others. Email threats can be divided into several distinct categories: Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses, Phishing, and also Spam. According to "IT Security," Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses are delivered as email attachments, destructive code can devastate a host system's data, turn computers into remote control slaves known as bootnets and cause recipients to lose serious money. Trojan horse keyloggers, for example, can surreptitiously record system activities, giving unauthorized external parties access to corporate bank accounts, internal business Web sites and other private resources. Phishing attacks utilize social engineering to steal consumers' personal and financial data. Spam Although not an overt threat like a virus-infected attachment, junk email can quickly overwhelm an inbox, making it difficult or even impossible for its owner to view legitimate messages. The spam problem has gotten so bad that it is commonplace for users to abandon email accounts that are overrun with spam rather than try to fight the problem. Spam is also the delivery medium of choice for both phishers and virus attackers. As we can see, emails might be one of the top used networks, but many consequences can come from the technology.




External Links

History of Usenet

Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis developed Usenet as graduate students in 1979. They thought that the software could be replacement software for Duke University to post announcements. Steve Bellovin became interested in the software and wrote the first UNIX-based “news” software for the system. (Interview with Tom Truscott April 18, 2007)

At the time the current announcement software that was used by the university was made obsolete because of a hardware upgrade. Usenet was a side project of Truscott and Ellis that they worked on in their spare time. Bellovin wrote the script, and soon after “netnews” was created; linking Duke University and the University of North Carolina. Soon after the program was made available to the public and “A News” was created which was the first Usenet package. (Usenet History)

Usenet is bulletin board software where users with the correct software can read and post messages. It is still running today, URL’s that begin with news refer to Usenet groups. The NNTP or Network News Transport Protocol is the transportation system that sends out the Usenet messages. (Siegel 2006)

•Giganews, "Tom Truscott", Interview April 18, 2007,

•Giganews, "Usenet History"

•Siegel F Carolyn, "Internet Marketing" Foundations and Applications 2E. Chapter 2 Internet Fundamentals, P-31


Internet Relay Chat, commonly abbreviated IRC, is a chat protocol, a way how to enable several people to talk to each other by entering text messages, each participant seeing everything that the other participants write, as if they were in a telephone conference.

Technology of IRC

Formally, IRC is a real-time text-based multi-user communication protocol specification and implementation, which relays messages between users on the network. According to, IRC was born sometime in 1988. According to, the official specification for IRC was written in 1993 in the RFC format. The specification "RFC 1459: Internet Relay Chat Protocol" is a really excellent source for both an introduction to and detailed information about the IRC protocol. Today IRC has a very wide range of users and anyone can find a place to participate in chat.





While IRC is by definition not a P2P protocol, IRC does have some extensions that support text and file transmission directly from client to client without any relay at all. These extensions are known as DCC (Direct Client Connect) and CTCP (Client To Client Protocol). For CTCP, clients like mIRC implement commands such as "ctcp nickname version" or "ctcp nickname ping" to get some interesting infos about other users.

Using Internet Relay Chat

To use Internet Relay Chat, you need to do the following:

  1. Choose and install an IRC client.
  2. Find the channel discussing the topic of your interest (similar to a room in other chat environments).
  3. Find the server at which the channel is located. You can be directed to both the server and the channel by the website of a project, such as Wikibooks.
  4. Connect to the server using the client, using a nickname of your choice.
  5. Connect to the channel (a room).

To do:
Provide more information on how to choose nicknames and their use and restrictions of registering them.

Registering your nickname

Some IRC networks offer to register your nickname through a service bot. This provides sometimes access to channels that are blocked to unregistered users and in most cases reserves your nickname so no one else can use it (it will at least mark you as the logged in user and anyone else who uses it as not logged in).

The service bots providing this is mostly named "NickServ", sometimes also "AuthServ" or on a big network just "Q". When you found out which one of those bots exists, you can gather more information by typing:

/msg [BOTNAME] help

This should get you detailed instructions on how to use the service.

Example HowTo for a network

The process is fairly simple, once you have chosen a nickname you would like to register (assuming it's not owned by anyone else) and chosen a password, follow these steps:

  • If you have not done so already, change your nickname to the one you would like to register
/nick [NICKNAME]

For example:

/nick JohnDoe
  • Send a private message to the network's nickserv service with the password you chose and your email address with
/msg nickserv register [PASSWORD] [EMAIL]

For example:

/msg nickserv register 1234abcd
  • After messaging the nickserv you should shortly receive a reply back stating that the it received your registration request and sent an email to the address you provided.
An email containing nickname activation instructions has been sent to
  • To complete the registration process, you will need to message the nickserv with the registration code emailed to your address.
/msg NickServ VERIFY REGISTER JohnDoe p4huc5gqunnc
  • Once you have correctly entered the registration code, the nickserv should message you back stating the nick registration process was completed successfully.
JohnDoe has now been verified.

You should now be "logged in" under your nick. If you disconnect from the server, to relogin under your nick you will need to message the nickserv with your password:

/msg nickserv identify [PASSWORD]

For example:

/msg nickserv identify 1234abcd

Once doing so, it should reply back saying you successfully logged in.

You are now identified for JohnDoe

Private conversations and chats

By default, the conversations using IRC are public, visible to all users in the channel.

To have a private conversation with a user in the channel, type "/query nickname".

To have a private chat, join an non-existent channel, and then allow joining only by invitation using the command "/mode +i". Chunked into steps:

  1. /join #mynewchannel
  2. /mode +i
  3. /invite someotherguy

IRC clients

To use IRC, you'll need an IRC client--a program that lets you connect to an IRC server, and enter an IRC channel. There is a variety of IRC clients:

Some IRC clients
IRC Client Description OS Restrictions Note
ChatZilla An add-in for Firefox.
IRSSI Has a text-only user interface.
mIRC Windows Good for beginners.
XChat (XChat-WDK for Windows)
Smuxi A user-friendly client for GNOME. Linux and Windows
Colloquy For Mac OS X only.
Pidgin A multi-protocol client. Has more chat protocols than IRC.
Miranda A multi-protocol client.
Trillian A multi-protocol client.
Opera A web browser with integrated IRC client.

IRC commands

What follows is an overview of some of the basic commands of the IRC protocol. All the commands are already prefixed with a slash "/", as in most clients this will indicate that an IRC command follows that shall be executed. With some IRC clients including ChatZilla and Pidgin, you do not need to know these commands: you tell the client what you want to do using the graphical user interface and the client sends the necessary commands for you.

Basic commands

Some basic commands for IRC are listed in the following section. Please note that not all of them are available in all clients, as some of them are client-sided inventions to make your life easier and not part of the IRC protocol itself.

Command What it does Example



Sign on to a server /attach



/nick Set your nickname /nick YourName
/join Join a channel /join #wikibooks

Send a private message: /msg JohnDoe Hi john.



Clears a channel's text.

Clears all open channel's text.



/away Sets an away message. To return from "away", type /away or send a message. /away I'm away because...

/me loves pie.

would output to the chat in the case of JohnDoe:

JohnDoe loves pie.

/topic Queries or sets the topic of discussion. /topic Using IRC

Privileged User Commands

Commands for half-operators, channel operators, channel owners, and admins:

Command What it does Example
/kick Kicks, or boots a user from the channel. You must be a half-operator or greater to do this. Kick a user from the channel with a reason: /kick #channel JohnDoe I kicked you because...




/ban JohnDoe

/unban JohnDoe

Remote Access

Remote access allows you to access one computer from another using a protocol (ex. Secure Shell).


Telnet is a protocol designed to remotely access computers in a client-server fashion. Telnet is inherently insecure, as the data passed from the client to the server or vice-versa is not encrypted. For connections through insecure networks (such as the Internet), SSH (Secured SHell), should be used so all communications between the client and server are encrypted.

External Links








Using SSH


ssh user@host


Using SFTP


sftp user@host

Using SCP

scp, aka Secure Copy, works just like rcp.

    scp FILE_PATH user@host:REMOTE_PATH
  • Copy from a remote host ,
    scp user@host:REMOTE_PATH LOCAL_PATH



Note : If you want to copy the whole directory then use


Creating SSH Keys


To create an SSH key ,


$ ssh-keygen




$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh

Establish Trust





$ ssh-copy-id



ssh user@host
rm ~/.ssh/



All of that is automatically done for you when you run:

$ ssh-copy-id

SSH Personal Configuration


$ ssh servername


#Specific configuration applied to one host
Host Short_Name
        User domain\username
        Protocol 2
        UseRsh no
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/KEY

# tunnel and X session or programs via SSH.
Host *
        User USERNAME
        Protocol 2
        ForwardX11 yes
        ForwardAgent yes
        UseRsh no
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key_37_rsa
        FallBackToRsh no
        # CheckHostIP no

You can now ssh into with just ssh Short_Name.

Using an SSH Agent


Using Keychain

  • Start your agent on your local host
  • Access your forwarded agent from a remote host
keychain --inherit any-once
  • Load your key
keychain ~/.ssh/KEY
  • Unload your key
keychain --clear
  • Stop the agent
keychain --stop

BASH configuration Change


source ~/.keychain/${HOSTNAME}-sh

Public-key cryptography




Setting up OpenSSH with public key cryptography

PubkeyAuthentication yes
PasswordAuthentication no
  7. If the server's behind a router:
    2. Forward TCP port 22 to your server.
  8. (Re)start the sshd service.

SSH as a Proxy



ssh -D 1080 user@host


  • check "Manual proxy configuration"

SSH from your webbrowser


Further reading



How it works


how to copy and paste







External Links

Remote Desktop Connection


What you can do with Remote Desktop Connection





User Password


  2. Go to Control Panel
  3. Go to User Accounts
  4. Click on your user account
  5. Go to Create a Password
  6. Fill everything out and hit Create Password

Enabling Remote Desktop Connection (on the host)


  2. Select Properties
  3. Go to the Remote tab

Getting your IP address


Connecting to the host machine from another machine


  1. Go to Start
  2. Go to All Programs
  3. Go to Accessories
  4. Go to Communications
  5. Click Remote Desktop Connection
  7. Type in your IP address by 'Computer'
  8. Log in with your username and password




  • You can access your documents from anywhere.



