Thank you to all who completed the quick informal survey about the use of utility programs that allow one to verify the origins of messages on the net. Here are some raw numbers, with no analysis:
59 people started the survey. 50 came from the USA, 3 from Canada, 2 from Australia, 2 New Zealand, 1 from the United Kingdom, and 1 from Taiwan. However, 3 people did not answer the questions. Thus, there were 56 valid responses. 41 respondents (71.9%) indicated that they were LIS educators.
Domain name system and DNS servers 26 45.6%
ISO country codes 15 26.3%
How IP numbers work 10 17.5%
How to use whois servers 10 17.5%
ping 9 15.8%
traceroute 3 5.3%
Know tools/concepts but don’t use or teach 20 35.1%
Know others who use/teach 11 19.3%
Don’t know about these tools/concepts 9 15.8%
One person wrote, “Tell us how we can find out more about these utilities”, and I promise to do so.
Meanwhile, if you have a Macintosh or Linux computer, you can read the manual pages for ping, traceroute, and whois from a "terminal" or "console" window. From the Unix shell prompt, type
man whois
man traceroute
man ping
for some plain vanilla explanations of those functions. If you've never used the manual, type
man man
for instructions. And for some very old and tired Unix humor, type "man woman". (groan).
Chris
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Christopher Brown-Syed PhD
Skype: cbrownsyed
"If you are made a leader, do not magnify yourself, but among your men, be as one of them.'" -- Edmund, King of the East Angles (840-870).
