Question: What does a local dial-up number do? Richard Wanderman writes about accessing Boston-based TIAC (The Internet Access Company) through a local dial-up phone number in Torrington, Connecticut

Left the Cake out in the Rain -- After using the metaphor of a seven-layer cake to describe TCP in FAQtoids 003, I had my face pushed into the creamy filling by several readers

Those Who Repeat the Past -- We sent you back in time, instead of forward in FAQtoids 003. We said that the offset in mail headers from the zone formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is added to local time to get GMT or Universal Time (UT)

Suppose you belong to a simple lakefront beach club, where you and some neighbors jointly contribute dues to maintain the beach and docks. Now suppose that, several times a day, a rapidly moving caravan of several thousand vehicles zoomed across the beach

Question: Which ISDN Hardware Combination Works Best? I'm planning to upgrade my small office from using PPP via a modem to using ISDN connected to our small Ethernet network

Ethernet and Internet -- Rob Russell of Auckland, New Zealand pointed out what seemed to be a contradiction in the second installment of the Hey, I'm Talking To You article (see NetBITS-002) about how machines find each other over an Ethernet network and over the Internet

This week we cover time and space, two small concepts that will help you travel back to 1956, or around the world in 24 hours. Then we try to expand on what TCP really stands for (and have to flee the country).

Question: Where Do Time Zones Come From? In email headers after the time, I sometimes see a time zone indication like EDT or CET. I am looking for a complete list of these codes, but couldn't find it on the Web

Question: Terrifying Capitals or Pointless? Every introductory article on TCP/IP explains what IP stands for but not what TCP stands for. This trend is so consistent that I must assume it is intentional

Question: Big Brother Is Clicking Here? Every so often I hear or read that Government / Big Business / The Trilateral Commission / AOL / Mom / (fill in the blank) is tracking everything I do on the Internet

Thanks for the tremendous outpouring of support for our first issue of NetBITS. We inadvertently caused some confusion by leading with an article aimed at kids: NetBITS is not a publication specifically for the under-20 crowd

Umbrage -- In introducing our first issue, we mentioned the demise of the print versions of Web Developer and NetGuide magazines. The editor in chief of Web Developer and a CMP (NetGuide's parent publication) staffer wrote in to take some umbrage at the characterization of the publications' Web presence

Last week, in the first part of this article in NetBITS-001, I explained how one machine finds another on a local area network (LAN) using Ethernet. But the Internet doesn't run on Ethernet - it can't, in fact - so how do two machines find each other on the Internet? Matching Names to Faces -- The Internet relies on TCP/IP, a protocol that allows TCP packets to run over Internet Protocol, or IP

Easier Than Upgrading a PC -- Connectix has released the Virtual PC 1.0.1 Updater, which makes Virtual PC easier to use and fixes a number of small problems, including setting modem speeds incorrectly and many game-related issues

"The Internet? It's so busy nobody uses it any more." - not the slogan of www.yogi-berra.com, surprisingly enough [1] Welcome to the first issue of NetBITS, a new publication from TidBITS Electronic Publishing