Martian

So I have a project that I'm sort of turning over in my head, and I'd like to get a feel for how much interest there would be for such a thing.

Let's say you send an email. You type it up, you maybe proofread it and you hit the send button. The message disappears from your outbox and reappears in the recipient's inbox. What happens in between? For most folks, it's dark voodoo magic. There be monsters.

I recently pulled the trigger on setting up my own server. There were a few reasons I wanted to do this, but one of the fringe benefits was that I was able to give access to someone else who's looking to learn about all of this stuff. He'll be able to poke around, look through logs and config files and see how it all works. It's a great learning opportunity; trouble is, without some sort of guidance a lot of this stuff is basically meaningless.

Similarly, in my day job I often encounter ignorance. It's not wilful or malicious -- it's just that most people don't know how all of this internet stuff really works, and there aren't very many useful resources for learning. I didn't really understand the nuts and bolts of it until I got a chance to work with it directly, and I suspect a lot of people in the field have had a similar experience (our sys admin recently confided in me that he knew nothing about our core product prior to being hired on with our company, for example). Even Wikipedia, that font of general basic knowledge, tends to approach technical subjects with those who already understand the systems in mind. The entry on DNS, for example, has stuff like this in the section titled "Operation":

Granted I understand what they're talking about, but I suspect that's mostly because I knew all about it before I read the article. An article that only makes sense to people who already understand the subject matter isn't terribly useful.

Since I now have my own server in internetland and as a perk of my job I can register domains pretty much willy-nilly, setting up a site dedicated to a particular subject isn't particularly hard for me to do. One of the things I'm thinking about lately is what to do with my newfound server, though, and to that end (and in light of the above) I've been considering writing a series of articles on the various technologies that make the internet work. I'm envisioning it somewhere in between a How Stuff Works article and the mumbo-jumbo jive-talk above -- fairly technical, but grounded and simple enough to be understandable to the layperson.

What these articles will not be is a series of how-to guides. If you need to know all the technical details of how to set up a server for service X, you can find dozens of walkthroughs and configuration guides out there. I don't feel the need to be yet another voice in that particular crowd. They will also be fairly limited in scope -- I plan on talking about internet stuff, and where examples will be given they'll reference Linux software, since that's what I'm comfortable with. I'm also not opposed to the idea of having other contributors for the subjects I'm less familiar with (Windows stuff, desktop hardware, smartphones being a few examples).

My credentials, if anyone is wondering, are that my 9-5 involves working on this stuff on a day-to-day basis. The company I work for earns it's bread on managed DNS hosting services, but on any given day I might be trouble shooting zone data, poring over mail logs in search of wayward messages or diagnosing configuration issues on an Apache web server.

A few topics off the top of my head that I would be covering are as follows:

- email -- how it gets around
- email -- spam and the things we do to prevent it
- TCP/IP -- how computers talk to each other
- web servers -- How a web page gets from the internet to your screen
- SSL -- how we make sure you're giving your credit card info to Amazon and not some sweaty dude in Russia
And, of course
- DNS -- the internet's phone book

So what say you, TFP? Would you be interested in reading something like this, or is it stupid and pointless? I'm particularly looking for the opinions of folks who don't have a technical background; do you want to know how the magic actually happens, or are you happy just so long as it works?

Comments, go!

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I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Willravel

I would certainly be interested. I know a bit, but I most certainly do not know it all, and to understand a technology is to truly appreciate it.

Charlatan

I think most people think of technology the same way they think of cars. As long as you know how to fuel it and drive it, they don't care how it actually works.

While I would say that I am not one of these people, I am also not someone who get's to nitty gritty with details. I know how the internal combustion engine works but wouldn't really know how to fine tune a fuel injector (or install points on a distributor cap).

I am surprised there isn't already an Internet for Dummies book that would lay out these sorts of things in an easy to consume manner.

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Martian

See Charlatan, that's what I'm trying to sort out here.

On the one hand we have the passionate, intensely curious bunch. They love the internet, they love technology, and they want to know every detail of how it works. I'm one of those guys, and I wouldn't be gearing towards those guys because this stuff will be in a real and practical sense beneath them.

At the other end of the spectrum are the folks who don't care. For all they know, the internet is run entirely by tiny little elves -- so long as their email gets where it's going and their access to porn isn't interrupted, they couldn't care less.

Somewhere between these two extremes is my target demographic -- the folks who are kind of curious about how it works, but are lacking either the time or inclination required to learn in the current climate. These folks might appreciate a birds-eye view of the technology that doesn't descend too far into a bunch of technical jargon, but also doesn't skirt around parts of it or "talk down" to the reader. The intent of this thread is determine if this is a large enough market to be worth catering to.

So far as I'm aware, there's no specific resource that goes over the various technologies that contribute to what we know as 'the internet' collected in one spot -- at least, not outside of the classroom. Even if there are books available, a blog has a competitive advantage in that it's free. You might not be invested enough in the subject to drop $30 or more on a reference book, but a few hours of your time is a much lower barrier.

That's not to say that a reference like this doesn't exist. I've never encountered it, and I've heard some complaints from others who haven't and wished there was something like this. The folks I talk to tend to skew a bit, since they have to be using these things by definition if they're talking to me in the first place. Is there an interest in the general public? That's what I'm trying to find out.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Fremen

I'm a bit interested in how the internet works, and I definitely am not knowledgable on the subject.
I've recently been looking up on different sites, trying to learn about building my own computer, seeing if I have what it takes.
I've come to the conclusion that it's not for me. It's too risky, money-wise, so I'll probably end up getting a computer from HP or Dell, since I don't knoe anyone that can build one for me.

My rambling point is, learning about the internet, even just a little, will at least make me feel a little less like a greenhorn.

Count me in as an interested party, Martian. Thanks.

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jewels

What Will said. More knowledge is always a good thing.

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LordEden

I want it, but I want the hardcore technical version along with how to setup all those services you talked about the other night in chat.

Then again, I do this for a living and a tutorial like this would help me get started on the path to Big Boy Servers (tm) and more White Man Money (tm).

I say Yes, but then again I want it for selfish reasons, I don't want to have to take classes on this.

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amonkie

I tend to have two categories of learning:

1) Learning A so I can complete task X successfully - usually this is when having top to bottom and ins and outs knowledge is extremely helpful because it makes things make more sense and click.

2) Learning because I'm curious, but not neccessarily going to do anything about the knowledge.

If I had the inclination to set up my own server like you did and orchestrate all the technical side instead of going through a host, I would absolutely be in #1. But I think that the majority of the population would lean closer to #2. There's a reason why the convenience of having someone else do things for you can come at a higher price tag.

I think I would absolutely be interested if it was in tandem with a real DIY project so that I had hands on experience for the learning, and something to keep tweaking as I learned more.

I may just have to give my Ordained Piano playing Minister walking the streets of Las Vegas idea another look. Maybe time for a new business website!

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Martian

So that's six positive responses. I think that's enough to at least give it a test run. It may take me a week or two to get everything set up -- if you're interested, watch this space.

amonkie, that's actually an interesting thought. It wouldn't be that hard to set up rackmount server or two, toss Xen on it and end up with 20-25 virtualized instances. Teach people the skills they need, and give them a sandbox to play in. If they bork it up too badly, just re-image the instance and you're good to go.

It would take a fair amount of startup though, especially if you want these things publicly routable, and even in a city like Toronto I don't know if there'd be enough demand to actually make it profitable on it's own. Assuming such a thing doesn't exist already, which could actually be the case.

That's leaps and bounds beyond what I'm actually thinking of, anyway.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame