Introduction to Internet Resources and Services

Spring '99
#43405 (Tue)
#43400 (Thu)

Homework Two

Exercise 1. For the following questions, consider the host lexus.gslis.utexas.edu. Which portion of it ...

• Question 1.1. ... is the FQDN?

• Question 1.2. ... is the unqualified host name?

• Question 1.3. ... is the domain?

• Question 1.4. ... is the TLD?

Exercise 2. Use the nslookup utility to obtain the network addresses of the following hosts:

• lexus.gslis.utexas.edu
• fiat.gslis.utexas.edu
• newshost.cc.utexas.edu
• cs.utexas.edu
• www.unicom.com
• garcon.unicom.com

Answer the following questions based on the results you obtained.

• Question 2.1. What conclusion can you make from these results regarding the network addresses of hosts in the utexas.edu domain?

• Question 2.2. What conclusion can you make from these results regarding the network addresses of hosts in the gslis.utexas.edu subdomain?

• Question 2.3. What conclusion can you make from these results regarding the network addresses of hosts in the unicom.com domain?

• Question 2.4. The newshost.cc.utexas.edu Usenet news server may be used only by UT students and staff. It will reject any attempt at access from outside the university. How can they do that?

• Question 2.5. Every device connected to the Internet must have a unique IP address. Lookup up the host addresses for www.gslis.utexas.edu and fiat.gslis.utexas.edu. Describe and explain the results you obtain.

  NOTE: An earlier version of this page repeated www.gslis.utexas.edu as the second host name instead of listing fiat. If, however, you clicked on the link, it did do the lookup on hostname fiat. It's fixed now. Sorry for the confusion.

• Question 2.6. Look up the host address for altavista.com. Repeat the lookup. (Hit RELOAD if using the web form.) Describe and explain what you observe.

Exercise 3. The following questions each specify a ficticious (but valid) domain. If the domain was delegated to a real organization, what could you conclude (if anything) about: 1) where the organization is located, and 2) what sort of organization it is?

• Question 3.1. gimble.gov

• Question 3.2. brillig.com

• Question 3.3. ci.mome.md.us

• Question 3.4. toves.gob.mx [hint: ftp://ftp.nic.mx/rfcmx/rfc1.txt]

• Question 3.5. slithy.ac.uk [hint: http://www.nic.uk/domains/]

Exercise 4. It's your lucky day! Your rich Uncle Jim has decided to retire, and wants you to take over his mail-order empire. You are now the chief executive of Jim's Burger Emporium, famous throughout the country for its delicious mail-order cheeseburgers. Your first decision is to initiate an aggressive expansion onto the net.

First, you need to pick a domain name for the business. You'll probably want to choose a name under one of the GTLDs. If you do, you can use the whois tool at http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois to see whether a domain is already taken or available for you to claim.

Then, you need to choose the email address people will use to submit their orders.

• Question 4.1. What domain name would you like to use?

• Question 4.2. What email address did you choose?

• Question 4.3. Use the whois tool to lookup utexas.edu. To whom has this domain been delegated?

• Question 4.4. If you were a network manager with a technical problem concerning utexas.edu, who might you contact?

• Question 4.5. How many authoritative DNS servers does the University operate?

• Question 4.6. Use the whois tool to lookup gslis.utexas.edu. Why does the lookup fail?

• Question 4.7. Use the whois tool to lookup austin.tx.us. Why does the lookup fail?

Warning: the reliability of the whois database is very poor these days. If you experience problems, you may need to try at a later time or another day. Plan accordingly.

Roamwork Exercise. The following questions send you out to the net to locate some information.

• Question R.1: What is the email address for Mayor Kirk Watson? [hint: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/]

• Question R.2: What is the email address for Congressman Lloyd Doggett? [hint: http://www.house.gov/]

• Question R.3: What is the email address of GSLIS Acting Dean, Dr. E. Glynn Harmon? [hint: http://x500.utexas.edu/]

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