In the client software section of this tutorial, we've got a program called ping which tells you if a certain server is on-line or not ( If you haven't read the Client section, do so now ). My problem with the program I've written is that it's written in C and is, therefore, cumbersome to distribute. I want to spread this program globally, so that the whole world can marvel at my genius. One answer is that I convert the C file into an ActiveX Object or Java applet, another is that I place this program on a server and let people come and use it. To help you do just that we've got a whole slew of new programs that teach you how to place your programs onto a server.
At first we thought installing servers would be quite difficult, but in actuality, it turned out to be excruciatingly simple ! The O'Reilly server, Website, was a dream come true. It's small, it doesn't ask us a single difficult question an to top it all off, it's free !! Downloading it wouldn't be a bad idea. Oh and by the way, OReilly has published two great books on Perl CGI programming. They are The Lama Book and The Camel Book. If you're serious about Perl, check them out.
Now lets get one thing clear. We don't have our own domain name and we don't have a permanent IP address. All we have is one dial up link to our ISP and a 14.4 Kbps modem. So how do we run all these servers on our machine? All we really need to run server is our IP address and since our IP address is given to us randomly each time we log on, we have to enter the changed IP address into the server repeatedly. How do we find out our IP address, we use a nifty little utility in Windows95 called winipcfg. Run this program and you'll get all the information you'll ever need about our connection and more.
Move back to the Vijay Mukhi's Technology Cornucopia Page to learn more about the other new Internet Technologies.