:: wikimiki.org ::

Internet Message Access Protocol

Internet Message Access Protocol

The Internet Message Access Protocol (commonly known as IMAP, and previously called Interactive Mail Access Protocol) is an application layer Internet protocol used for accessing email on a remote server from a local client. IMAP and POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for email retrieval. Both are supported by virtually all modern email clients and servers, although in some cases in addition to vendor-specific, typically proprietary, interfaces. For example, while proprietary protocols are typically used between Microsoft's Outlook client and an Exchange server and between IBM's Notes client and a Domino server, all of these products also support IMAP and POP3 allowing interoperability with other servers and clients. The current version of IMAP, IMAP version 4 revision 1 (IMAP4rev1), is defined by RFC 3501. IMAP was designed by Mark Crispin in 1986 [http://www.imap.org/about/history.status.html] as a modern alternative to the widely used POP email retrieval protocol. Fundamentally, both of these protocols allow an email client to access messages stored on an email server. Important capabilities in IMAP but not POP3 include:
- Support for both connected and disconnected modes of operation :When using POP3, clients typically connect to the email server very briefly, only as long as it takes to download any new messages. When using IMAP4, clients often stay connected as long as the user interface is active and download message content on demand. For users with many or large messages, this IMAP4 usage pattern can result in much faster response times.
- Support for multiple clients simultaneously connected to the same mailbox :The POP3 protocol assumes the currently connected client is the only client connected to the mailbox. In contrast, the IMAP4 protocol specifically allows simultaneous access by multiple clients and provides mechanisms for clients to detect changes made to the mailbox by other, concurrently connected, clients.
- Support for access to MIME parts of messages and partial fetch :Nearly all internet email is transmitted in MIME format. MIME allows messages to have a tree structure where the leaf nodes are any of a variety of single part content types and the non-leaf nodes are any of a variety of multipart types. The IMAP4 protocol allows clients to separately retrieve any of the individual MIME parts and also to retrieve portions of either individual parts or the entire message. These mechanisms allow clients to retrieve the text portion of a message without retrieving attached files or to stream content as it is being fetched.
- Support for message state information to be kept on the server :Through the use of flags defined in the IMAP4 protocol clients can keep track of message state, for example whether or not the message has been read, replied to, or deleted. These flags are stored on the server, so multiple clients accessing the same mailbox at different times can detect state changes made by other clients.
- Support for access to multiple mailboxes on the server :IMAP4 clients can create, rename, and/or delete mailboxes (usually presented to the user as folders) on the server, and move messages between mailboxes. Multiple mailbox support also allows servers to provide access to shared and public folders.
- Support for server-side searches :IMAP4 provides a mechanism for a client to ask the server to search for messages meeting a variety of criteria. This mechanism avoids requiring clients to download every message in the mailbox in order to perform these searches.
- Support for a well defined extension mechanism :Reflecting the experience of earlier Internet protocols, IMAP defines an explicit mechanism by which it may be extended. Many extensions to the base protocol have been proposed and are in common use. Whether using POP3 or IMAP4 to retrieve messages, clients use the SMTP protocol to send messages. Email clients are sometimes referred to as either POP or IMAP clients, but in both cases SMTP is also used. Most email programs also use LDAP for directory services. IMAP is often used in large networks; for example, a college campus mail system. IMAP allows users to access new messages instantly on their computers, since the mail is stored on the network. With POP3, users have to either download the email to their computer or access it via the web. Both ways take longer than IMAP, and you have to either download any new mail or "refresh" the page to see the new messages. Unlike many older Internet protocols, IMAP4 natively supports encrypted login mechanisms. Plain text transmission of passwords in IMAP4 is also possible. Because the encryption mechanism to be used must be agreed between the server and client, plain text passwords are used in some combinations of clients and servers (typically Microsoft Windows clients and non-Windows servers). It is also possible to encrypt IMAP4 traffic using SSL, either by tunneling IMAP4 communications over SSL on port 993, or by issuing "STARTTLS" within an established IMAP4 session. IMAP4 works over a TCP/IP connection using network port 143.

Common implementations

The following IMAP-servers are common (see also List of mail servers):
- Binc IMAP - uses Maildir format, designed to be familiar for users of qmail and qmail-pop3d [http://www.bincimap.org/]
- Courier IMAP - uses Maildir format.
- Cyrus IMAP server - uses Maildir format.
- Dovecot - Secure IMAP server
- FirstClass Server - FirstClass Server [http://www.firstclass.com/]
- IBM Lotus Domino Server
- Mac OS X Server
- Merak Mail server
- Mercury/32 - Mercury/32 [http://www.pmail.com/overviews/ovw_mercury.htm]
- Microsoft Exchange Server
- Mirapoint [http://www.mirapoint.com/]
- Stalker Communigate Pro [http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/]
- UW IMAP - supports multiple formats including mbox, mbx, MMDF, tenex, mtx, mh, mx, and Usenet news spools. The following IMAP-clients are common (see also List of mail clients): text-based clients:
- UW PINE - One of the first IMAP clients
- Mutt - email client found in many Linux distributions GUI clients:
- Novell Evolution
- KMail
- Microsoft Outlook Express
- Microsoft Outlook
- Mozilla Thunderbird - A cross-platform and increasingly popular mail client.
- Mac OS X Mail

External links

- RFC 3501 ([http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3501.html HTML version]) - specification of IMAP version 4 revision 1
- [http://www.imap.org/ The IMAP connection] - resources for developers of programs using the IMAP protocol.
- [http://www.imap.org/products/ IMAP connection's listing of products and service providers supporting IMAP] Category:Email Category:Internet protocols Category:Internet standards ja:Internet Message Access Protocol

Application layer

The application layer is the seventh level of the seven-layer OSI model. It interfaces directly to and performs common application services for the application processes; it also issues requests to the presentation layer. The common application layer services provide semantic conversion between associated application processes. Note: Examples of common application services of general interest include the virtual file, virtual terminal, and job transfer and manipulation protocols.

Examples

- AFP, Appletalk Filing Protocol
- AIM, AOL Instant Messenger Protocol
- APPC, Advanced Program-to-Program Communication
- BitTorrent
- CFDP, Coherent File Distribution Protocol
- DHCP, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
- FTAM, File Transfer Access and Management
- FTP, File Transfer Protocol
- Gopher, Gopher protocol
- HTTP, HyperText Transfer Protocol
- IMAP, Internet Message Access Protocol
- IRC, Internet Relay Chat
- iTMS, iTunes Music Store Protocol
- LDAP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
- Modbus
- NNTP, Network News Transfer Protocol
- POP3, Post Office Protocol
- SIP, Session Initiation Protocol
- SMTP, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
- SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol
- SSH, Secure Shell
- TELNET, TELEphone NETwork
- TFTP, Trivial File Transfer Protocol
- TSP, Time Stamp Protocol
- X.400
- X.500
- XMPP, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol Category:OSI protocols

Internet

:For the more general networking concept, see internetworking. The Internet, or simply the Net, is the worldwide system of interconnected computer networks which makes information stored on it accessible. This information is transmitted by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Creation of the Internet

During the 1950s, several communications researchers realized that there was a need to allow general communication between users of various computers and communications networks. This led to research into decentralized networks, queuing theory, and packet switching. The subsequent creation of ARPANET in the United States in turn catalyzed a wave of technical developments that made it the basis for the development of the Internet. Contrary to popular myth, the DoD did not create the ARPANET so that they could communicate to the US Government after a nuclear war. The first TCP/IP wide area network was operational in 1984 when the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) constructed a university network backbone that would later become the NSFNet. It was then followed by the opening of the network to commercial interests in 1995. Important separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged into the Internet include Usenet, Bitnet and the various commercial and educational X.25 networks such as Compuserve and JANET. The ability of TCP/IP to work over these pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth. Use of Internet as a phrase to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated around this time. The collective network gained a public face in the 1990s. In August 1991 CERN in Switzerland publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN in Switzerland. In 1993 the Mosaic web browser version 1.0 was released, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 the word "Internet" was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide Web. Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks such as FidoNet have remained separate). This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.

Today's Internet

FidoNets, FTP client, and Telnet client]] Apart from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is held together by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (for example peering agreements) and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is essentially defined by its interconnections and routing policies. In an often-cited, if perhaps gratuitously mathematical definition, Seth Breidbart once described the Internet as "the largest equivalence class in the reflexive, transitive, symmetric closure of the relationship 'can be reached by an IP packet from'". Unlike older communications systems, the Internet protocol suite was deliberately designed to be independent of the underlying physical medium. Any communications network, wired or wireless, that can carry two-way digital data can carry Internet traffic. Thus, Internet packets flow through wired networks like copper wire, coaxial cable, and fiber optic; and through wireless networks like Wi-Fi. Together, all these networks, sharing the same high-level protocols, form the Internet. The Internet protocols originate from discussions within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its working groups, which are open to public participation and review. These committees produce documents that are known as Request for Comments documents (RFCs). Some RFCs are raised to the status of Internet Standard by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). Some of the most used protocols in the Internet protocol suite are IP, TCP, UDP, DNS, PPP, SLIP, ICMP, POP3, IMAP, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, Telnet, FTP, LDAP, SSL, and TLS. Some of the popular services on the Internet that make use of these protocols are e-mail, Usenet newsgroups, file sharing, Instant Messenger, the World Wide Web, Gopher, session access, WAIS, finger, IRC, MUDs, and MUSHs. Of these, e-mail and the World Wide Web are clearly the most used, and many other services are built upon them, such as mailing lists and blogs. The Internet makes it possible to provide real-time services such as Internet radio and webcasts that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Some other popular services of the Internet were not created this way, but were originally based on proprietary systems. These include IRC, ICQ, AIM, and Gnutella. There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks. Similar to how the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as:
- GEANT
- Internet2
- GLORIAD These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of academic computer network organizations In network schematic diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into and out of which network communications can pass.

Internet culture

The Internet is also having a profound impact on work, leisure, knowledge and worldviews. worldviews]]

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is one and only one holder of each name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have a privileged role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet's systems of domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers.

The World Wide Web

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Google, millions worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data. Some companies and individuals have adopted the use of 'weblogs' or blogs, which are largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, via whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work. For more information on the distinction between the World Wide Web and the Internet itself — as in everyday use the two are sometimes confused — see Dark internet where this is discussed in more detail.

Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker away from his or her desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into his or her normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives him or her complete access to all their normal files and data, including e-mail and other applications, while they are away.

Collaboration

This low-cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge and skills has revolutionized some, and given rise to whole new, areas of human activity. One example of this is the collaborative development and distribution of Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) such as Linux, Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. See Collaborative software.

File-sharing

A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networking. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed - hopefully fully encrypted - across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale and distribution of many types of product, wherever they can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of office documents, publications, software products, music, photography, video, animations, graphics and the other arts. This in turn is causing seismic shifts in each of the existing industry associations, such as the RIAA and MPAA, that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Streaming media and VoIP

Many existing radio and television broadcasters have provided Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licences. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a TV or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialised technical web-casts. The simplest equipment can allow anybody, with little censorship or licencing control, to broadcast on a worldwide basis. Time-shift viewing or listening is not a problem as the BBC have shown with their Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. Web-cams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. In this case the picture may update only slowly - perhaps once every few seconds or slower, but Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal or the traffic at a local roundabout live and in real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams have become popular. Some people install webcams in their bedrooms that can be accessed by other voyeurs, often with two-way sound. VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the turn of the millennium. In recent years many people and organizations have made VoIP systems as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the actual voice traffic is carried by the Internet, VoIP is free or costs much less than an actual telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on ADSL or DSL Internet connections anyway. The disadvantages are that it is still difficult to initiate a call with someone, unless they also have a VoIP phone or are at their computer and that there are still several competing standards that are mitigating against universal acceptance. In all of these cases, existing large organisations, that have grown accustomed to regular incomes for their services, are finding increased competition in their service areas, coming directly from the Internet. While newcomers strive to make these inroads, the traditional industries are having to adapt, adopt, complain or suffer. Meanwhile the consumer in each case most probably benefits from the increased range of services and possible price reductions. Some worry about censorship and control while others see a continuing globalisation of culture and norms.

Language

Main article: English on the Internet The most prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may be due to the Internet's origins or to the growing role of English as an international language. It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers to handle characters other than those in the basic Latin alphabet (see Unicode). After English (32 % of web visitors) the most-requested languages on the world wide web are Chinese 13 %, Japanese 8 %, Spanish 6 %, German 6 % and French 4 %. (From [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm Internet World Stats]) By continent, 33 % of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 29 % in Europe and 23 % in North America.[http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm] The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years that good facilities are available for development and communication in most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake still remain.

Cultural awareness

From a cultural awareness perspective, the Internet has been both an advantage and a liability. For people who are interested in other cultures it provides a significant amount of information and an interactivity that would be unavailable otherwise. However, for people who are not interested in other cultures there is some evidence indicating that the Internet enables them to avoid contact to a greater degree than ever before.

Censorship

Some countries, such as Iran and the People's Republic of China, restrict what people in their countries can see on the Internet, especially unwanted political and religious content. In the Western world, it is Germany that has the highest rate of censorship. Internet Service Providers are required by law to block some sites that contain child pornography or Nazi or Islamist propaganda. Censorship is sometimes done through government sponsored censoring filters, or by means of law or culture, making the propagation of targeted materials extremely hard. At the moment most Internet content is available regardless of where one is in the world, so long as one has the means of connecting to it.

Internet access

Germany Common methods of home access include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and cell phones. Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many public places like airport halls, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though these are usually fee based. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi-cafes, where a would-be user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. The whole campus or park, or even the entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular or mobile phone networks, and fixed wireless services. These services have not enjoyed widespread success due to their high cost of deployment, which is passed on to users in high usage fees. New wireless technologies such as WiMAX have the potential to alleviate these concerns and enable simple and cost effective deployment of metropolitan area networks covering large, urban areas. There is a growing trend towards wireless mesh networks, which offer a decentralized and redundant infrastructure and are often considered the future of the Internet. Broadband access over power lines was approved in 2004 in the United States in the face of stiff resistance from the amateur radio community. The problem with modulating a carrier signal onto power lines is that an above-ground power line can act as a giant antenna and jam long-distance radio frequencies used by amateurs, seafarers and others. Countries where Internet access is available to a majority of the population include Germany, India, China, Chile, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Australia, Denmark, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Norway. The use of the Internet around the world has been growing rapidly over the last decade, although the growth rate seems to have slowed somewhat after 2000. The phase of rapid growth is ending in industrialized countries, as usage becomes ubiquitous there, but the spread continues in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. However, there are still problems for many. ADSL and other broadband access are rare or nonexistent in most developing countries. Even in developed countries, high prices, mediocre performance and access restrictions often limit its uptake. Within individual countries, wide differences may exist between larger cities (often having multiple providers of broadband access) and some rural areas, where no broadband access may be available at all. The expansion of the availability of Internet access is a way to bridge the so-called digital divide.

Capitalization conventions

In formal usage, Internet is traditionally written with a capital first letter. The Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the World Wide Web Consortium, and several other Internet-related organizations all use this convention in their publications. In English grammar, proper nouns are capitalized. Most newspapers, newswires, periodicals, and technical journals also capitalize the term. Examples include the New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The Times of India, Hindustan Times and Communications of the ACM. In other cases, the first letter is often written small (internet), and many people are not aware of any convention of using a capital letter. Some argue that internet is the correct form. Since 2000, a significant number of publications have switched to using internet. Among them are The Economist, the Financial Times, the London Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, most publications using internet appear to be located outside of North America although one American news source, Wired News, has adopted the lowercase spelling.

Leisure

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related USENET groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to neta; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity. One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet. Online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games. With the release of Diablo by Blizzard Entertainment, gamers were treated to a built in online game service that was free of charge. With Blizzard's next game, StarCraft, the gaming world saw an explosion in the numbers of players using the Internet to play multi-player games. StarCraft may have been the first non-MMO game in which most players utilized the online gameplay as opposed to the single-player gameplay. Online gaming has progressed so much in the last 10 years that gamers earn a living from being a professional at the subject by winning tournaments and prizes as well as signing sponsor deals. Because there is a large support for certain online games, a new community has been born for people modding games, where users edit games to add a whole new element to it. This is how games such as Counter-Strike were born from the Half-Life Gaming Engine. Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing, according to a study by Peninsula Business Services[http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=914&id=1001802003].

A complex system

Many computer scientists see the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system" (Willinger, et al). The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity.

Marketing

The Internet has also become a big market, and the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast community of people all at once. The Internet has revolutionized shopping –– a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases.

Criticism

Many hyperlinks are outdated as time takes its toll on the existence of URL weblinks. These weblinks are often times defunct and are retained as hyperlinks for extended timeframes as a result of laziness or being busy enough to be sidetracked away from updating webpages. This is a common hoax for people who are fans in the field of what those links provide them with/to.

External links

General

- [http://www.channel101.com/ Internet TV Stations]
- [http://www.isoc.org/ The Internet Society (ISOC)]
- [http://www.techterms.org/internet.php Internet Dictionary] - Definitions of Internet-related terms
- [http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1099-webmaster-glossary/ The Alternate Internet Glossary] (Humor)
- A [http://www.illusivecreations.com Calgary Web Design] company that has put together over 300 articles about the internet and web development. You can view them by going [http://www.illusivecreations.com/articles/ here].
- [http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/article.php/5911_151151 Internet access stats]
- [http://www.sharpened.net/glossary/ Glossary of Computer and Internet Terms]
- [http://scoreboard.keynote.com/scoreboard/Main.aspx?Login=Y&Username=public&Password=public Internet Health Report] from Keynote
- [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm Internet World Stats]

Articles

- [http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/29/business/net.php "EU and U.S. clash over control of the Net" - International Herald Tribune article by Tom Wright]
- [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/intro.html "10 Years that changed the world" - WiReD looks back at the evolution of the Internet over last 10 years]
- [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ John Walker: The Digital Imprimatur]
- [http://www.addressingtheworld.info addressingtheworld.info] - website accompanying a book (ISBN 0742528103) on the history of DNS
- [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm How Stuff Works explanation of the Infrastructure of the Internet]
- [http://www.searchandgo.com/articles/internet/net-explained-1.php Internet Explained] Seven part article explaining the origins to the present and a future look at the Internet.
- [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64596,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7 "It's Just the 'internet' Now" - Wired.com article by Tony Long]

History

- [http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml The Internet Society History Page]
- [http://www.internetvalley.com/archives/mirrors/cerf-how-inet.txt How the Internet Came to Be]
- [http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ Hobbes' Internet Timeline v7.0]
- [http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/e-scholarship2000.html Futures and Non-futures for Scholarly Internet. ]
- [http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/internet_history.html History of the Internet links]
- [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc801.txt RFC 801, planning the TCP/IP switchover]
- [http://www.archive.org/ Internet Archive] - A searchable database of old cached versions of websites dating back to 1996
- A list of lectures, some of which relate to the Internet, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is available [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Comparative-Media-Studies/CMS-930Media--Education--and-the-MarketplaceFall2001/VideoLectures/index.htm here]. Of particular interest is lecture #3 The Next Big Thing: Video Internet which is delivered in Real Player format. The lecture gives a brief history of networking; discusses convergence between the internet/telephone/television networks; the expansion of broadband access; makes predictions about the future of delivery of video over the internet.

References

- Walter Willinger, Ramesh Govindan, Sugih Jamin, Vern Paxson, and Scott Shenker. (2002). Scaling phenomena in the Internet. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, suppl. 1, 2573 – 2580. Category:Communication Category:Digital media Category:Internet Category:Digital Revolution Category:Technology Category:Computer networks Category:Networks ko:인터넷 ms:Internet ja:インターネット simple:Internet th:อินเทอร์เน็ต fiu-vro:Internet

Mail server

A mail transfer agent or MTA (also called a mail server, or a mail exchange server in the context of the Domain Name System) is a computer program or software agent that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another. It receives messages from another MTA (relaying), a mail submission agent (MSA) that itself got the mail from a mail user agent (MUA), or directly from an MUA, thus acting as an MSA itself. The MTA works behind the scenes, while the user usually interacts with the MUA. The delivery of email to a user's mailbox typically takes place via a mail delivery agent (MDA); many MTAs have basic MDA functionality built in, but a dedicated MDA like procmail can provide more sophistication.

External links

- Daniel J. Bernstein, [http://cr.yp.to/surveys/smtpsoftware6.txt Internet host SMTP server survey], November 2001
- [http://www.geocities.com/mailsoftware42/ Open source Mail Server Comparison] Category:Email Category:Mail transport agents ja:メール転送エージェント th:เมลเซิร์ฟเวอร์

Post Office Protocol

In computing, Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is an application layer Internet standard protocol that a local client uses to retrieve email from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. Nearly all subscribers to individual Internet service provider email accounts access their email with clients that use POP3. POP3 has obsoleted the earlier versions of the POP protocol, POP (informally called POP1) and POP2. In contemporary usage, the less precise term POP almost always means POP3 in the context of email protocols. The design of POP3 and its predecessors supports end users with intermittent connections (such as dial-up connections), allowing these users to retrieve email when connected and then to view and manipulate the retrieved messages without needing to stay connected. Although most clients have an option to leave mail on server, email clients using POP3 generally connect, retrieve all messages, store them on the user's PC as new messages, delete them from the server, and then disconnect. In contrast, the newer, more capable Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) supports both connected and disconnected modes of operation. Email clients using IMAP generally leave messages on the server until the user explicitly deletes them. This and other facets of IMAP operation allow multiple clients to access the same mailbox. Most email clients support either POP3 or IMAP to retrieve messages; however, fewer ISPs support IMAP. Clients with a leave mail on server option generally use the POP3 UIDL (Unique IDentification Listing) command. Most POP3 commands identify specific messages by their ordinal number on the mail server. This creates a problem for a client intending to leave messages on the server, since these message numbers may change from one connection to the server to another. For example if a mailbox contains five messages at last connect, and a different client then deletes message #3, the next connecting user will find the last two messages' numbers decremented by one. UIDL provides a mechanism to avoid these numbering issues. The server assigns a string of characters as a permanent and unique ID for the message. When a POP3-compatible email client connects to the server, it can use the UIDL command to get the current mapping from these message IDs to the ordinal message numbers. The client can then use this mapping to determine which messages it has yet to download, which saves time when downloading. Whether using POP3 or IMAP to retrieve messages, email clients use the SMTP protocol to send messages. Email clients are commonly categorized as either POP or IMAP clients, but in both cases the clients also use SMTP. MIME is the de facto standard for attachments and non-ASCII text in email. Although neither POP3 nor SMTP require MIME-formatted email, essentially all internet email comes MIME-formatted so POP clients must also understand and use MIME. IMAP, by design, assumes MIME-formatted email. Like many other older Internet protocols, POP3 originally supported only an unencrypted login mechanism. Although plain text transmission of passwords in POP3 still commonly occurs, POP3 currently supports several authentication methods to provide varying levels of protection against illegitimate access to a user's email. One such method, APOP (which the base specification defines as an "optional command"), uses the MD5 hash function in an attempt to avoid replay attacks and disclosure of a shared secret. Clients implementing APOP include Mozilla, Thunderbird, Eudora, and Novell Evolution. POP3 clients can also support IMAP authentication methods via the AUTH extension. Email clients can encrypt POP3 traffic using SSL. POP3 works over a TCP/IP connection using TCP on network port 110. When encapsulated in SSL, the service is commonly found on TCP port 995.

Dialog example

S: C: S: +OK POP3 server ready <1896.697170952@dbc.mtview.ca.us> C: APOP mrose c4c9334bac560ecc979e58001b3e22fb The client may instead use USER and PASS --> C: USER mrose S +OK User accepted C: PASS mrosepass S +OK Pass accepted S: +OK mrose's maildrop has 2 messages (320 octets) C: STAT S: +OK 2 320 C: LIST S: +OK 2 messages (320 octets) S: 1 120 S: 2 200 S: . C: RETR 1 S: +OK 120 octets S: S: . C: DELE 1 S: +OK message 1 deleted C: RETR 2 S: +OK 200 octets S: S: . C: DELE 2 S: +OK message 2 deleted C: QUIT S: +OK dewey POP3 server signing off (maildrop empty) C: S:

POP3 implementations

- [http://www.openwall.com/popa3d/ popa3d]
- [http://www.dovecot.org dovecot]
- [http://www.toontown.org/teapop/ Teapop]
- [http://james.apache.org/ Apache James]

References

- [http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers IANA port number assignments]

POP3 RFCs

- RFC 1939 - "Post Office Protocol - Version 3"
- RFC 2449 - "POP3 Extension Mechanism"
- RFC 1734 - "POP3 AUTHentication command"
- RFC 2222 - "Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL)"
- RFC 3206 - "The SYS and AUTH POP Response Codes" Category:Email Category:Internet protocols Category:Internet standards ko:POP3 ja:Post Office Protocol

Internet standard

An Internet standard is a specification for an innovative internetworking technology or methodology, which the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) ratified as an open standard after the innovation underwent peer review. An Internet standard begins as an Internet Draft, which may then mature into a Request for Comments memorandum. RFCs that are intended to become Internet standards evolve through a series of three maturation stages: proposed standard, draft standard, and standard; collectively, these stages of evolution are known as the standards track. A proposed standard specification is generally stable, has resolved known design choices, is believed to be well-understood, has received significant community review, and appears to enjoy enough community interest to be considered valuable. However, further experience might result in a change or even retraction of the specification before it advances. Usually, neither implementation nor operational experience is required. A specification from which at least two independent and interoperable implementations from different code bases have been developed, and for which sufficient successful operational experience has been obtained, may be elevated to the draft standard level. A Draft Standard is normally considered to be a final specification, and changes are likely to be made only to solve specific problems encountered. In most circumstances, it is reasonable for vendors to deploy implementations of Draft Standards into a disruption sensitive environment. A specification for which significant implementation and successful operational experience has been obtained may be elevated to the Internet standard level. An Internet standard, which may simply be referred to as a standard, is characterized by a high degree of technical maturity and by a generally held belief that the specified protocol or service provides significant benefit to the Internet community. Generally Internet standards cover interoperability of systems on the internet through defining protocols, messages formats, schemas, and languages. The most fundamental of the standards are the ones defining the Internet Protocol. All Internet standards are given a number in the STD series - The first document in this series, STD 1, describes the remaining documents in the series, and has a list of proposed standards. Often, documents in the STD series are copies of RFCs or are a few RFCs collected together. For example, STD 8 defines the core of the telnet protocol and comprises RFCs 854 and 855.

Reference

The Internet Standards Process is defined in a "Best Current Practice" document [http://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/bcp/bcp9.txt BCP 9] (currently RFC 2026).

External links

- [http://www.iab.org/ Internet Architecture Board]
- [http://www.ietf.org/iesg.html Internet Engineering Steering Group] Category:Internet standards

Microsoft Outlook

left Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, and is part of the Microsoft Office suite. Although often used mainly as an e-mail application, it also provides calendar, task and contact management, Note taking and Journal ability. It can be used as a stand-alone application, but can also operate in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server to provide enhanced functions for multiple users in an organization, such as shared mailboxes and calendars, public folders and meeting time allocation. Versions for Microsoft Windows include:
- Outlook 97.
- Outlook 98.
- Outlook 2000 (also known as Outlook 9).
- Outlook 2002 (also known as Outlook 10 or Outlook XP).
- Office Outlook 2003 (also known as Outlook 11). Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 could be installed in one of two "flavors": Internet Mail Only or IMO mode: A lighter application mode with specific emphasis on POP3 accounts and IMAP accounts and including a lightweight Fax application. Corporate Workgroup or CW mode: A full MAPI client with specific emphasis on Microsoft Exchange accounts. Microsoft also released several versions of Outlook for the Apple Macintosh; however, most mail features were disabled after Office 98. After Office 98, Entourage replaced Outlook on Macintosh systems, however in 2001, Microsoft released Outlook 2001 for Mac to allow Classic users to access Exchange servers. Outlook Express is a slimmed-down email, newsgroup, and contact management application that Microsoft makes available at no charge, in conjunction with the Internet Explorer web browser. Other than the confusingly similar name it has very little in common with Outlook.

Security concerns

One of Microsoft's goals is for the email client to be easy to use. However, the embedded automation and lack of security features compared to competitors (omitted to avoid inconveniencing unsophisticated users (Lotus Notes)) have been repeatedly exploited by malicious hackers using email viruses. These typically take the form of an email attachment which executes on the user's machine and replicates itself by mass-mailing the user's or Exchange server's address list. Examples of such viruses are the Melissa and Sobig worms. Other programs have exploited Outlook's HTML email capabilities to execute malicious code or confirm that email addresses are valid targets for spam. The noteriety of the worms and other viruses has gained Outlook a reputation as a highly insecure email platform. Famous Unix programmer Bill Joy has suggested that Outlook is insecure largely because it was written in C, making it easy to write programs to exploit it. He also believes the widespread use of Outlook is a major contributing factor in the proliferation of spam[http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200310/msg00034.html]. His views are shared by many leading IT professionals. As part of its Trusted Computing initiative, Microsoft has recently taken corrective steps to fix Outlook's reputation in its latest incarnation, Office Outlook 2003. Among the most publicized security features are that Office Outlook 2003 does not automatically load images in HTML emails, and includes a built-in spam filter[http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/compare.mspx#EBAA]. The base code is also said to be much more secure. As of July 2005, this most recent release has been well received, and regarded as the primary driver of Office upgrades among business users. Instances of new worms have slowed significantly, however, due to the release of numerous security updates and Service Packs which have corrgfgected the known vulnerabilities exploited by previous viruses.

External links

- [http://www.microsoft.com/outlook The Official Microsoft Outlook site]
- [http://www.slipstick.com Slipstick.com - A Popular Outlook and Exchange support site]
- [http://www.factplace.com/outlook.htm Microsoft Outlook at FactPlace]
- [http://www.waxmail.biz Free Voice Email plugin for Microsoft Outlook]
- [http://www.mapilab.com MAPILab: 20+ add-ins for Microsoft Outlook 2000-2003]
- [http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/forum-276.php Microsoft Outlook Newsgroups]
- [http://robertpeloschek.blogspot.com/2005/11/importing-mozilla-thunderbird-mails-in.html Importing mails from Mozilla Thunderbird]
- [http://www.potolook.com Potolook - an extensive package of Outlook plug-ins] Category:Personal information managers Category:Mac OS email clients Outlook Category:Windows email clients ja:Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft Exchange Server is a collaborative software server from Microsoft, positioned as a rival to the Lotus Notes / Domino server from IBM and recently challenged by a number of Linux-based competitors such as Scalix. The use of Microsoft Exchange is very widespread in large corporations using Microsoft infrastructure solutions. Among other things, Microsoft Exchange manages electronic mail.

History

Exchange 4.0 formed the initial foundation for Microsoft's Active Directory service, an LDAP-compliant directory server. Active Directory was introduced in 1999 with the release of Windows 2000 [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/ldapcomp.mspx]. Exchange 5.5 comes in two editions, Standard ("5.5/S") and Enterprise ("5.5/E"). They differ in database store size, "connectors," and clustering capabilities. The Standard edition has a database size limitation of 16GB, the Enterprise edition has a limit of 16TB - effectively unlimited for all practical purposes. The Standard edition comes with Site Connector, MS Mail Connector, cc: Mail Connector, MS Notes Connector, Internet Mail Service, and Internet News Connector. The Enterprise edition adds on top of that: PROFS, X.400, and SNADS Connectors. The Enterprise edition can be clustered, Standard cannot. Exchange 2000 overcame many of the limitations of its predecessors, Exchange 4.0 and 5.5. For example, raising the maximum sizes of databases and increasing the number of servers in a cluster from two to four. However, many customers were deterred from upgrading by the requirement for a full Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure to be in place. This, in turn, required upgrading a company's servers to Windows 2000. Many customers have opted to stay on a combination of Exchange 5.5 and Windows NT, both of which are now at the end of their service dates.

Version history

- 1996 - Exchange Server 4.0
- 1997 - Exchange Server 5.0
- 1997 - Exchange Server 5.5 (Standard Edition, Enterprise Edition)
- 2000 - Exchange 2000 Server
- 2003 - Exchange Server 2003

Current version

The current version of Exchange is 2003 SP 2. It can be run on Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003, although some new features only work with the latter. Like Windows Server 2003, Exchange 2003 has many compatibility modes to allow users to slowly migrate to the new system. This is useful in large companies with distributed Exchange environments who cannot afford the downtime and expense that comes with a complete migration. One of the new features in Exchange 2003 is enhanced disaster recovery, which allows administrators to bring the server online quicker. This is done by allowing the server to send and receive mail while the message stores are being recovered from backup. Better anti-virus and anti-spam protection, by providing built-in APIs that facilitate filtering software, also new is the ability to drop inbound e-mail before being processed. There are also improved message and mailbox management tools, which allow administrators to execute common chores more quickly. On the downside, some of Exchange's collaborative features, such as Public Folders, have been deprecated. Others, such as Exchange Conferencing Server have been extracted completely in order to form separate products. Microsoft now appears to be positioning a combination of Microsoft Office, Live Meeting and Sharepoint as its collaboration software of choice. Exchange is now to be simply email and calendaring. Exchange 2003 is available in two versions Standard edition, which has a 16 GB (changed to 18 GB by default and adjustable up to 75 GB with service pack 2) message database maximum and one database per server, and Enterprise Edition which allows a 16 TB maximum database size, and up to 20 databases per server. Enterprise Edition also supports clustering, 4 nodes when using Windows 2000 Server, and 8 nodes with Windows 2003. Exchange 2003 is included with the Microsoft Small Business Server Product. Microsoft Exchange Server uses a proprietary RPC protocol, of which only the API is documented (see MAPI), and is used by the Microsoft Outlook client. Email hosted on an Exchange server can be accessed by numerous client software packages including Lotus Notes. If configured, Exchange accounts can also be accessed through a web browser, known as Outlook Web Access (OWA).

Future

Microsoft have said that there will be a new version of Exchange some time in the future, for Edge Services, which was to have been released in 2005. Finally, a January 2005 announcement from Microsoft filled in some gaps. The new version, currently called Exchange 12, or E12, is to be released on DVD only in 2006/07. The new version is to include voice mail integration, better search and support for Web services, as well as support for the 64-bit version of Windows server.

Licensing

Like Windows Server products, Exchange requires Client Access Licenses which are different than Windows CALs. Although you do not need Windows CALs for users only accessing the Exchange server on each Exchange server. Most corporate license agreements include Exchange CALs.

References

- [http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/overview/ldapcomp.mspx "Active Directory LDAP Compliance"] Microsoft Corporation, December 2, 2003. Retrieved November 2, 2005.

External links

- [http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/ Microsoft Exchange]
- [http://www.msexchange.org/ MSExchange.org] - The leading Exchange Server resource site
- [http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/default.aspx You had me at EHLO] - The Exchange Team Blog
- [http://www.gfi.com/mes/ Anti-spam solution for Microsoft Exchange Server]
- [http://www.msd2d.com/Tip_View_03.aspx?section=exchange Microsoft Exchange Experts] - Exchange developer community for tutorial posts and discussions.
- [http://www.exchangecookbook.com Exchange Cookbook web site] - companion web site to the Exchange Server Cookbook from O'Reilly Media
- [http://www.syncex.com/ Microsoft Exchange Collaboration Portlets] - JSR168 complaint portlets to integrate MS Exchange to Enterprise Portals.
- [http://www.independentsoft.com WebDAV .NET for Exchange] - WebDAV client API for .NET Framework and .NET Compact Framework Exchange Category:Groupware Exchange

IBM

:Big Blue redirects here. For the movie, see The Big Blue. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, NY, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. With over 330,000 employees worldwide and revenues of $96 billion (figures from 2004), IBM is the largest information technology company in the world, and one of the few with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. It has engineers and consultants in over 170 countries and development laboratories located all over the world, in all segments of computer science and information technology; some of them are pioneers in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. In recent years, services and consulting revenues have been larger than those from manufacturing. Samuel J. Palmisano was elected CEO on January 29, 2002 after having led IBM's Global Services, and helping it to become a business with a $100 billion in backlog in 2004 [http://www.ibm.com/ibm/sjp/bio.shtml]. In 2002 the company strengthened its business advisory capabilities by acquiring the consulting arm of professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The consulting arm was previously known as Monday. The company is increasingly focused on business solution driven consulting, services and software, with emphasis also on high value chips and hardware technologies; as of 2005 it employs about 195,000 technical professionals. That total includes about 350 Distinguished Engineers and 60 IBM Fellows, its most senior engineers. IBM Research has eight laboratories, all located in the Northern Hemisphere, with five of those locations outside of the United States. IBM employees have won five Nobel Prizes. In the USA, they have earned four Turing Awards, five National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science, and outside the USA, many equivalents.

Current business activities

In 2002, IBM announced the beginning of a $10 billion program to research and implement the infrastructure technology necessary to be able to provide supercomputer-level resources "on demand" to all businesses as a metered utility. This program will be implemented over the coming years. In recent years IBM has steadily increased its patent portfolio, which is valuable for cross-licensing with other companies. In every year from 1993 until 2004, IBM has been granted significantly more U.S. patents than any other company. That twelve-year period has resulted in over 29,000 patents for which IBM is the primary assignee. [http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/news/20000111_patents99.shtml] Protection of the company's intellectual property has grown into a business in its own right, generating over $10 billion dollars [http://www.industryweek.com/CurrentArticles/asp/articles.asp?ArticleID=1400] to the bottom line for the company during this period. [http://www.forbes.com/2003/08/07/cx_ld_0807ibm_print.html], [http://www.inc.com/articles/legal/ip/patents/23293.html] A 2003 Forbes article quotes the head of IBM Research, who suggested a $1 billion in profit just for the research staff; however, they probably generate the bulk of new inventions in the company. In 2005, IBM sold its PC division to China-based Lenovo. As part of the agreement, Lenovo moved its headquarters to New York State. IBM owns a significant stake (about 19%) in Lenovo. Starting from the date of the acquisition, Lenovo is permitted five years' use of the IBM and "Think" trademarks.

Culture

IBM has often been described as having a sales-centric or a sales-oriented business culture. Traditionally, many of its executives and general managers would be chosen from its sales force. In addition, middle and top management would often be enlisted to give direct support to salesmen in the process of making sales to important customers. For most of the 20th century, a blue suit, white shirt and dark tie was the public uniform of IBM employees. But by the 1990s, IBM relaxed these codes; the dress and behavior of its employees does not differ appreciably from that of their counterparts in large technology companies. In 2003, IBM embarked on an ambitious project to rewrite company values using its "Jam" technology -- Intranet-based online discussions on key business issues for a limited time, involving more than 50,000 employees over 3 days in this case. Jam technology includes sophisticated text analysis software (eClassifier) to mine online comments for themes, and Jams have now been used six times internally at IBM. As a result of the 2003 Jam, the company values were updated to reflect three modern business, marketplace and employee views: "Dedication to every client's success", "Innovation that matters - for our company and for the world", "Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships". In 2004, another Jam was conducted in which more than 52,000 employees exchanged best practices for 72 hours. This event was focused on finding actionable ideas to support implementation of the values identified previously. A new post-Jam Ratings event was developed to allow IBMers to select key ideas that support the values. (For further information, see Harvard Business Review, December 2004, interview with IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano.) IBM's culture has been recently influenced by the open source movement. The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux. This includes over 300 Linux kernel developers. IBM's open source involvement has not been trouble-free, however; see SCO v. IBM.

Diversity and workforce issues

IBM's efforts to promote workforce diversity and equal opportunity date back at least to World War I, when the company hired disabled veterans. More recently, IBM received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign starting in 2003, the second year of the report. IBM is the only technology company ranked in [http://www.workingwoman.com/top10.html Working Mother Magazine's Top 10] for 2004. The company has traditionally resisted labor union organizing, although unions represent some IBM workers outside the United States. [http://www.allianceibm.org Alliance@IBM], part of the Communications Workers of America, is trying to organize IBM in the U.S. In the 1990s, two major pension program changes, including a conversion to a cash balance plan, resulted in an employee class action lawsuit alleging age discrimination. IBM employees won the lawsuit and arrived at a partial settlement, although appeals are still underway. Historically IBM has had a good reputation of long term staff retention with few large scale layoffs. In more recent years there have been a number of broad sweeping cuts to the workforce as IBM attempts to adapt to changing market conditions and a declining profit base. After posting weaker than expected revenues in the first quarter of 2005, IBM eliminated 14,500 positions from its workforce, predominantly in Europe. There has also been a steadily increasing movement of labour to cheap offshore countries such as India. On October 10, 2005, IBM became the first major company in the world to formally commit to not using genetic information in its employment decisions. This came just a few months after IBM announced its support of the National Geographic's Genographic Project.

History

Early years

Genographic Project IBM's history dates back decades before the development of electronic computers – before that it developed punched card data processing equipment. It originated as the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation, which was incorporated on June 15, 1911 in Binghamton, New York. This company was a merger of the Tabulating Machine Corporation, the Computing Scale Corporation and the International Time Recording Company. The president of the Tabulating Machine Corporation at that time was Herman Hollerith, who had founded the company in 1896. Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, became General Manager of CTR in 1914 and President in 1915. In 1917, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company entered the Canadian market under the name of International Business Machines Co., Limited. On February 14, 1924, CTR changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation. The companies that merged to form CTR manufactured a wide range of products, including employee time keeping systems, weighing scales, automatic meat slicers, and most importantly for the development of the computer, punched card equipment. Over time CTR came to focus purely on the punched card business, and ceased its involvement in the other activities.

World War II

During World War II, IBM's German subsidiary Dehomag (a portmanteau formed from "Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH", translated as "German Hollerith Machine Company Ltd.") provided the Nazi regime with punch card machines. Dehomag was taken over by the Nazis in December 1941. In 2001 author Edwin Black published a book titled [http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ IBM and the Holocaust], which alleged that Thomas J. Watson knew of the German regime's activities and was indifferent to any moral issues. The credibility of Black's book [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_12/b3724036.htm has been questioned], as has its claim that the Holocaust would have been impossible without Dehomag's data processing systems. The author [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_14/c3726027.htm#B3726028 has responded to these claims]. As of 2004 IBM's possible complicity in the Holocaust is the subject of [http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/ at least one unresolved lawsuit]. IBM has donated more than 10,000 pages of archived documents concerning Dehomag to Hohenheim University in Germany and New York University. The topic is explored in the 2003 documentary film The Corporation. IBM contributed to the war effort by manufacturing the Browning Automatic Rifle and the M1 Carbine.

Airforce and airline projects

In the 1950s, IBM became a chief contractor for developing computers for the United States Air Force's automated defense systems. Working on the SAGE anti-aircraft system, IBM gained access to crucial research being done at MIT, working on the first real-time, digital computer (which included many other advancements such as an integrated video display, magnetic core memory, light guns, the first effective algebraic computer language, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion techniques, digital data transmission over telephone lines, duplexing, multiprocessing, and networks). IBM built fifty-six SAGE computers at the price of $30 million each, and at the peak of the project devoted more than 7,000 employees (20% of its then workforce) to the project. More valuable to the company in the long run than the profits, however, was the access to cutting-edge research into digital computers being done under military auspices. IBM neglected, however, to gain an even more dominant role in the nascent industry by allowing the RAND Corporation to take over the job of programming the new computers, because, according to one project participant (Robert P. Crago), "we couldn't imagine where we could absorb two thousand programmers at IBM when this job would be over someday." IBM would use its experience designing massive, integrated real-time networks with SAGE to design its SABRE airline reservation system, which met with much success.

Successes of the 1960's

IBM was the largest of the eight major computer companies (with UNIVAC, Burroughs, Scientific Data Systems, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, RCA and Honeywell) through most of the 1960s. People in this business would talk of "IBM and the seven dwarfs", given the much smaller size of the other companies or of their computer divisions. When only Burroughs, Univac, NCR and Honeywell produced mainframes, a bit later, people talked of "IBM and the B.U.N.C.H.". Most of those companies are now long gone as IBM competitors, except for Unisys, which is the result of multiple mergers that included UNIVAC and Burroughs. NCR and Honeywell dropped out of the general mainframe and mini sector and concentrated on lucrative niche markets. General Electric remains one of the world's largest companies, but no longer operates in the computer market. The IBM computer range that earned it its position in the market at that time is still growing today. It was originally known as the IBM System/360 and, in far more modern 64-bit form, is now known as the IBM zSeries (often referred to as "IBM mainframes"). IBM's success in the mid-1960s led to inquiries as to IBM antitrust violations by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business. Litigation continued until 1983, and had a significant impact on the company's practices.

Recent history

On January 19, 1993 Cassandre announced a USD4.97 billion loss for 1992, which was at that time the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history. Since that loss, IBM has made major changes in its business activities, shifting its focus significantly away from components and hardware and towards software and services. In 2004, IBM announced the proposed sale of its PC business to Chinese computer maker Lenovo, which is partially owned by the Chinese government, for USD650 million in cash and USD600 million in Lenovo stock. The deal was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in March 2005, and completed in May 2005. IBM will have a 19% stake in Lenovo, which will move its headquarters to New York State and appoint an IBM executive as its chief executive officer. The company will retain the right to use certain IBM brand names for an initial period of five years.

Facts and trivia

Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
- The IBM Logo was designed by Paul Rand.
- IBM's Software Group, if it were a separate entity, would be the second largest software company in the world, behind only Microsoft in total revenue. Software Group groups its products into five brands: DB2 (information management), Rational (software development lifecycle), Lotus (collaboration), Tivoli (systems management and security) and WebSphere (application as well as data integration and middleware).
- IBM invented many of the core technologies used in all forms of computing, including the first hard disk drive and the Winchester hard disk drive, the cursor (on computer screens), Dynamic RAM (DRAM), the relational database, Thin Film recording heads, RISC architecture, and the floppy disk. While the floppy disk is rapidly falling into disuse, the infamous Control-Alt-Delete keystroke (David Bradley, 2001: "I invented it, but it was Bill [Gates] that made it famous"), also invented at IBM, is still frequently used on PCs running Windows operating systems.
- The first black employee was hired in 1899 by the Computing Scale Corporation (as it was known at the time).
- IBM began hiring women to work as professional systems service staff in 1935. Thomas J. Watson Sr. wrote: "Men and women will do the same kind of work for equal pay. They will have the same treatment, the same responsibilities and the same opportunities for advancement."
- From 1933 to 1944, IBM punch card machines were installed at various German concentration camps. It has been alleged by a journalist that IBM president Thomas J. Watson, Sr. was aware of their use. Note however that concentration camps are a perfectly legal war disposition regulated by the Geneva convention. The problem lies with extermination camps, about which there were already a lot of war rumours, but nothing that could be confirmed or inferred formally before their discovery by allies in 1945. [http://ibmandtheholocaust.com/]
- From 1942 to 1944 IBM was one of nine companies contracted by the U.S. Government to produce M1 Carbine rifles; these are now sought-after antiques.
- IBM also made clocks until they sold their time division in 1958.
- In 1944, IBM was the first corporation to support the United Negro College Fund.
- In 1953, IBM published the first U.S. corporate mandate on equal employment opportunity, stating that the company would hire people based on their ability, "regardless of race, color or creed". Sexual orientation was added to the nondiscrimination policy in 1984. Genetic makeup was added in 2005.
- IBM invented the USB flash drive in 1998 but did not patent it.
- Whilst IBM did not invent the personal computer, architectures cloned from its design for the IBM PC (which relied on third-party componentry) became the industry standard, and are now often simply called the PC. The IBM PC was introduced on August 12 1981; Microsoft and Intel became monopoly suppliers of two of the key components of PC-compatible systems. IBM agreed to sell its PC division to Lenovo in December 2004 and, when the sale is complete, will come out of the business of manufacturing / designing / selling PCs, the business which it created in 1981.
- The IBM iSeries minicomputer (in its 24-year history also variously known as i5, AS/400 and System/38) is the world's largest-selling computer family, if PC-type machines are excluded. It was the first successful 64-bit machine. It has been calculated that, if the Rochester, Minnesota facility that produces the machine were independent, it would be the third largest computer company in the world.
- In 2004, for the twelfth consecutive year, IBM was awarded the greatest number of patents by the USPTO. IBM received 3,248 patents that year. (Reference: [http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/speeches/05-03.htm USPTO Releases Annual List of Top 10 Organizations Receiving Most U.S. Patents])

Acquisitions

- 1889 Bundy Manufacturing Company incorporated.
- 1891 Computing Scale Company incorporated.
- 1893 Dey Patents Company (Dey Time Registers) incorporated.
- 1894 Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company (Rochester, New York) incorporated.
- 1896 Detroit Automatic Scale Company incorporated.
- 1896 Tabulating Machine Company incorporated.
- 1899 Standard Time Stamp Company acquired by Bundy Manufacturing Company.
- 1900 Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company (Rochester) acquired by International Time Recording Company.
- 1901 Chicago Time-Register Company acquire by International Time Recording Company.
- 1901 Dayton Moneyweight Scale Company acquire by Computing Scale Company.
- 1901 Detroit Automatic Scale Company acquired by Computing Scale Company.
- 1902 Bundy Manufacturing Company acquired by International Time Recording Company.
- 1907 Dey Time Registers acquired by International Time Recording Company.
- 1908 Syracuse Time Recording Company acquired by International Time Recording Company.
- 1911 Computing Scale Company acquired by Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).
- 1911 International Time Recording Company acquired by Computing-Time-Recording Company (C-T-R).
- 1911 Tabulating Machine Company acquired by Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).
- 1917 American Automatic Scale Company acquired by Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R) as International Scale Company.
- 1917 C-T-R opens in Canada as IBM.
- 1921 Pierce Accounting Machine Company (asset purchase).
- 1921 Ticketograph Company (of Chicago).
- 1924 C-T-R renamed IBM.
- 1930 Automatic Accounting Scale Company.
- 1932 National Counting Scale Company.
- 1933 Electromatic Typewriters Inc. (See: IBM Electromatic typewriter)
- 1941 Munitions Manufacturing Corporation.
- August, 1959 Pierce Wire Recorder Corporation.
- 1984 ROLM.
- 1986 RealCom Communications Corporation.
- 1995 Lotus Development Corporation for $3.5 billion.
- 1996 Tivoli Systems for $743 million.
- 1997 Software Artistry for $200 million.
- 1997 Unison Software.
- 1998 CommQuest Technologies.
- 1999 Mylex Corporation.
- 1999 Sequent Computer Systems for $810 million.
- 2001 Informix Software (a purchase of assets rather than a true acquisition) for $1.0 billion.
- 2001 Mainspring Inc. for $80 million.
- January, 2002 Crossworlds.
- 2002 PricewaterhouseCoopers' Consulting for $3.5 billion (recalculated by IBM in August 2003 as $3.9 billion).
- October, 2003 CrossAccess.
- 2003 Rational Software Corporation for $2.1 billion.
- 2003 Presence Online, Aptrix. July.
- 2004 Maersk Data & DMData.
- March,