--------------------------------------------------------- Internet Teaching Lab: Updates

The PC hardware and software used in the Internet lab have changed since the book was published. This page discusses how to address these changes:

"FastEthernet" interfaces

On Cisco routers with 100 Mbps Ethernet interfaces (this includes all Cisco 2600 and 2800 families of routers), the name of the interfaces is FastEthernet:

Ethernet0/0 ---> FastEthernet0/0

Linux distributions

While the book has been written for the RedHat 9.0 distribution, most Linux distributions using kernel version 2.4 or later should work.

"Ethereal" becomes "wireshark"

The user interface of Ethereal has evolved noticeably in recent years, and deviates from the description in the book. In 2006, Ethereal tool has been renamed as "wireshark". The syntax for display and capture filters has not changed. As an alternative to using "wireshark", the version described in the book (ethereal??????) is still available and can be installed on the PCs.

USB Flash Drive instead of Floppies

The book assumes that students save data on floppy disks. However, recently purchased PCs are unlikely to have floppy drive. The best alternatively is to use USB flash drives (Thumbdrives). They are supported on Linux 2.4 or later versions. Under KDE or GNOME or other environments, the system prompts when a USB flash drive is inserted, and mounts the drive automatically to "/media/disk". Alternatively, a (formatted) USB drive can be mounted from the command line as follows:

$ mount /dev/sdb1 /media/desk Before removing a flash drive, the drive must be unmounted: $ umount /dev/sdb1
$ umount /media/disk