The LAMP/WAMP (Linux/Windows Apache MySQL & PHP) web server stack has evolved into a viable lightweight network server platform. One of the problems of using WAMP servers is the way CGI processes are evoked. When PHP is used as a CGI process, it is reloaded each time a PHP script is called. A new instance of PHP runs each time a script executes. To get around this limitation, web servers running a FastCGI module can keep a service loaded so it doesn’t need to load anew each time it is evoked. [More…]

The Internet protocol (IP) suite centers on the two most common communication standards called TCP and UDP. TCP/IP and UDP/IP evolved in the 1970s as a means for connecting Local Area Networks. The TCP/IP communication model is viewed as having 4 or 5 layers, and is the predecessor to The OSI Model. This article describes the fundamental concepts of the TCP/IP and UDP/IP model. [More…]

The OSI (Open System Interconnection) Reference Model is a 7 layer communication model for computer networks. Originally created in the early 1980s by the ISO (International Standards Organization), it defines a layered protocol for host to client communications. This article briefly describes the layers of the OSI model. [More…]