Week 5 Midterm: What is the origin of the word “Spam”?

What is the origin of the word “Spam”? Spam can be identified as unwanted and annoying messages. “Some people will try and tell you that spam is an acronym. Shit Posing As Mail and Stupid Boring Annoying Messages being two of the most popular.” (http://ezinearticles.com/?The-REAL-Origins-and-Meaning-of-the-Word-SPAM&id=430328) The term today has come to mean network abuse, particularly junk E-mail and massive junk postings. But how did this term come about? Many are not aware that it came it first came from a Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit. The skit is about a restaurant that serves all its food with lots of spam. To describe how much spam was in the food, a waitress repeats the word several times. “A group of Vikings in the corner start a song: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam! Wonderful spam!"

Until told to shut up.” (http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html) This is where the meaning of something that keeps repeating and repeating to great annoyance came about.

The first mass post to be called a spam was posted by two lawyers named Canter and Siegel. They posted a message advertising their useless services in a lottery. They hired an mercenary programmer to write a simple script to post their ad to every single newsgroup on the world’s largest online conferencing system. Several thousand post were made. After this incident people quickly indentified it as “spam”. Soon after, people started using e-mailing software to send junk e-email to large audiences who didn’t ask for it. This is the most common use for the term “spam” today. You cal also get text message spam, and social networking spam. The term spamming got used to apply to a few different behaviors. “Some spam is annoying but harmless. However, some spam is part of an identity theft scam or another kind of fraud. Identity theft spam is often called a phishing scam. To protect yourself against e-mail spam, use e-mail software with built-in spam filtering.” (http://www.microsoft.com/protect/terms/spam.aspx)

Week 5 Midterm: What is IPv6?

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the second Internet Protocol version to be used. It allows more number of addresses available for network devices then IPv4. Unlike IPv4, IPv6 has 128 bits or 6 octets. The large address space was designed for multiple levels of subnetting and address allocation from the Internet backbone to the individual subnets within an organization. There are other benefits of IPv6 such as, allowing live video stream and making phone calls using VoIP(Voice over Internet Protocol). IPv6 offers a higher level of built-in security then IPv4 by using authentication and encryption. “The IPv6 protocol suite requires support for IPSec. This requirement provides a standards-based solution for network security needs and promotes interoperability between different IPv6 implementations.” (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738582%28WS.10%29.aspx#w2k3tr_ipv6_what_upya) It also has been designed with mobile devices in mind. “The conversion from IPv4 to IPv6 will be a larger task for the industry than was the preparation for year 2000. This protocol change will affect nearly all networked applications, end systems, infrastructure systems, and network architectures.” (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738582%28WS.10%29.aspx) The change from IPv4 to IPv6 can be costly and unproductive if not approached with responsibility.  There is no specific timeline on when IPv6 will be in full effect. “It will be many years before IPv6 is widely accepted. Until then, some businesses and applications will use IPv6, while the rest of the Internet will use IPv4.” (How the Internet Works, pg. 23)

Week 5 Midterm: What is the octet?

The octets are the numbers that make up an IP address. In IPv4 there are 4 octets and in IPv6 there are 6 octets. When viewed in binary form they each have eight positions. 1 octet = 8 bits. Octets are distributed in classes A,B, and C. Each octet can contain any value between 0 and 255. “The octets serve a purpose other than simply separating the numbers. They are used to create classes of IP addresses that can be assigned to a particular business, government or other entity based on size and need.” (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/question549.htm) Octets can be split into two sections: Net and Host. The first octet is contained in the net section used to identify the network that a computer belongs to. The computer on the network is identified by the host (or Node). The host section contains the last octet.