Protocol Overview

Routing protocols determine the "best" route to each destination and distribute routing information among the systems on a network. Routing protocols are divided into two general groups: interior and exterior protocols. GateD software combines management of the interior and exterior routing protocols in one software daemon.

TCP/IP Protocols
The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is commonly also known as TCP/IP named from the most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which were the first two networking protocols defined in this standard. Modern IP networking represents a synthesis of several developments that began to evolve in the 1960s and 1970s, namely the precursors of the Internet and local area networks, which emerged during the 1980s, together with the advent of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. The Internet protocol suite classifies its methods and protocols into four hierarchical abstraction layers. From the lowest to the highest communication layer, these are the link layer, the Internet layer, the transport layer, and the application layer.[1][2] The layers define the operational scope or reach of the protocols in each layer, reflected loosely in the layer names. Each layer has functionality that solves a set of problems relevant in its scope.

HTTP
Short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. For example, when you enter a URL in your browser, this actually sends an HTTP command to the Web server directing it to fetch and transmit the requested Web page.

Web-Based Architecture(s)
Until recently, only Web applications were able to publish information to the Web. Today, it is possible to create OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) systems through standard Web browsers. Using Server Side Scripting (such as Active Server Pages), it is possible to connect to other components of a distributed system in the form of business objects on the Transaction Server and to send messages to the Database Server.

Components and Web Application Architecture

Up to this point in the book, we have looked at how to use Active Server Pages to dynamically build Web pages. ASP scripting allows us to take information passed in by the browser and dynamically create an HTML (or DHTML) page to send back to the browser. When building this page, we can pull in information retrieved from databases such as SQL Server or the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE), and add this to the HTML page to be sent back to the browser. But ASP is more than just creating dynamic Web pages. We have the ability to tie together sets of pages into Web sites that subsequently begin to function like applications. And, thanks to the Application and Session objects, our applications can be stateful, allowing us to share information between an individual's requests to a site, and even between all the users of a site. These applications have all the power and functionality of traditional applications, along with some tremendous benefits. As we make this transition to building larger and more scalable applications with ASP, we will want to take advantage of the technologies that allow us to do so with greater ease. If an application is truly scalable, it has the ability to handle a very large number of users with the same facility, and only slightly poorer performance, than with which it handles a very small number of users. As builders of Web sites that could be generating an income for us, the ability to support more users means more dollars in our pockets. One key way of making applications more scalable is by building them out of components. In this chapter and those that follow, we will take a look how to design applications out of components. Specifically, we will look at:

The architecture of distributed applications, including Windows DNA What makes up a Web application What are components

A quick introduction to ActiveX and COM The three types of components and why we should use them Building Web applications out of components Designing a component-based Web application

To get us started, let's look at the bigger picture of application architectures.

front end application

User interface or that part of a software or a website that a user sees on the screen, and acts on to enter commands or to access other parts of the software or website. See also back end application.

What is front-end development?

In our visually and tecnhologically sophisticated society, access to information and knowledge seems easier than making sense of it or decide its veracity - on the web, pages and appplications are built by front-end developers to present and put data or relationships in context.

Markup
(X)HTML, the structure of the page is the foundation of websites, essential for search engine optimization, vital to place the document with the right hooks for the classes and the ids that will provid

Style

Css, cascading style sheets, a core functionality of front-end development, the styles that lay out the page and give it both its unique visual flair and a clear, user-friendly view to allow readers, who never linger on pages we would like to think they do, some help to read or skim the contents quickly. e the style and the interaction that the reader will ultimately use.

Cross-browser, cross-platform, cross-device functionality

The browser on your computer is to remain the most advanced and feature-rich client application to access the web for a long time, but that doesn't mean that 'snacking' with mobile browsing, or netbooks, etc, isn't a rapidly growing in presence and importance.

Accessibility
Commonly accepted to be exclusively for people with disabilities, It could be argued that whether visual, auditory, motor-related or just cognitive, we all have a disability of one type or

another, ask around and you'll find the full body-abled human to be more of an ideal than a reality.

Templates and CMS, web frameworks

The technical flesh and bones of dynamically generated websites as part of an MVC or an MVT or some other software architecture

Programming
Although by this I mean mostly Javascript, this could apply to ActionScript, PHP or any other popular web languages developped for the front-end.

Usability
Information architecture has blossomed in the past few years but as the people who build the site interact with the clients, the graphic designers, the backend developers and product managers, front-end last-stop position should mean flagging up details, suggesting improvements as well as taking part in usability testing.

Performance
To build even faster sites, your markup, styles and javascript should be both scalable and nimble. A growing discipline, with the foreseeable rising costs of energy in the years to come and the problems caused by scaling performance in rich content sites with customised content (the web 2.0 meme), it is in the best interest for companies to reduce their page size footprint as much as possible to avoid rising bandwidth costs.

Research
This is a list of things that have gone mainstream in the past two and half years: APIs, js libraries, touch and gestural computer interfaces, microblogging, social networking, video content.

In conclusion
Thucydides wrote 'Knowledge without understanding is useless'. Since its inception, the web has been primarily about information but this data-driven trend can just drown people with a flood of disconnected, random info factoids that few can grasp and even fewer be interested in

Front End Development Tool

HTML5 Boilerplate. Prepare for the coming of HTML5. Use this mini-framework. Heck, use this for XHTML. Contains lots of goodies, no matter your flavor of HTML. 2. ie7.js. A JavaScript library to make MSIE behave like a standards-compliant browser. I have yet to test it so, stay tuned, or give me your feedback. If it does what it promises, could be one of the best contributions to the web design community since a non-IE browser. 3. Google Font API. A must-have if you want to get away from the usual 5 or 6 web-safe fonts. 4. Easy favicon generator. Not only can you import your own image (select the resize option), you can touch it up pixel by pixel once imported. 5. My new favorite: PIE. The brilliant minds at css3pie.com have conceived of a method to quickly and more cleanly add css3 effects to a page rendered in an Internet Explorer. What wins me over: rounded corners.

DHTML
Enhanced version of HTML that allows greater control over the visual structure (fonts, line spacing, layout, etc.) of an electronic (hypertext) document. It employs Java script for greater interaction between a webpage and its user without having to repeatedly communicate with the host website's server.

Part 1: PHP, Javascript and VBScript Language Summary

Submitted by johnlim on Mon, 21/06/2004 - 9:56pm.

This is a summary of the language differences between PHP, JScript/Javascript and VBScript that I did to help my company learn the 3 server side scripting languages. Hope it's helpful to others. I started out as an ASP developer, and switched to PHP. I have been using ASP since 1998 (we continue to support our customers who are still using ASP), and PHP since 2000 (our main web development platform). In general, my experience with PHP has been very positive. Here are the nice things i found about PHP:

No need to purchase additional ActiveX controls for

email, gif manipulation, pdf handling, etc. Batteries included. Runs well on both IIS and Apache, Windows and Linux. Cross-platform power. Good performance. PHP is faster than VBScript and JScript, based on the Bagley benchmarks. Even if you are a VB programmer, provided you have some Javascript experience, you are already half-way up the learning curve, as PHP looks like Javascript with $ signs in front of variables. For those of you who miss ADO (i did), there's ADOdb, a database abstraction library that works like ADO. And ASP2PHP is an automated VB to PHP converter. I recommend this PHP installer for IIS (ok, ok, I admit wrote it). The default PHP installer at php.net is not tuned for high performance IIS usage - this one is.

Java applet
An applet is a small Internet-based program written in Java, a programming language for the Web, which can be downloaded by any computer. The applet is also able to run in HTML. The applet is usually embedded in an HTML page on a Web site and can be executed from within a browser

Active X ActiveX control is a control using Microsoft ActiveX technologies. An ActiveX control can be automatically downloaded and executed by a Web browser. ActiveX is not a programming language, but rather a set of rules for how applications should share information. Programmers can develop ActiveX controls in a variety of languages, including C, C++, Visual Basic, and Java.