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Welcome
Ed – Jonathan Burnside
The aim of LSM is to inform about IT related topics that you made of heard of but don't necessarily know about. After all, even if you don't work in IT, chances are your job brings you into contact with IT equipment or issues.
As you read this issue I will be relaxing on a sandy beach recharging my batteries ready for the second half of the year. On my return I'll be looking forward to editing, and maybe writing, some new and interesting articles for LSM.
Have you ever wondered what is hidden beneath the case of your PC? If you have, then this issue is just for you as we will be taking a close look at the internal makeup of the PC.
Our second article covers an issue that most people would rather run away from, website statistics. Many people have seen them but not many know what they all mean and refer to. Hopefully after you have read this article you will be a lot wiser about the subject and also be able to draw some definitive conclusions from your company’s website statistics.
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Computers - The Motherboard
by Jonathan Burnside ©2004
The modern personal computer contains several complicated components. Held within the computer case there should be at least a motherboard, a processor, RAM, a CD drive, a hard disk and a graphics card. Today we'll examine the mother board and its components. Many of you may recognise some of the internal component names but if you do not then don’t worry as all will be explained!!
Externally there should at least be a monitor, a mouse and keyboard. I believe that most of you will know or have some idea as to what role these play…
Motherboard
A motherboard is one of the most important parts of a computer (PC) because all the component parts of the PC are connected to it. There are many different motherboards on the market today and their design and technology vary widely. Once connected to a motherboard all the PC components will be able to work together correctly. Below is a very basic diagram of a mother board. As you can see, a motherboard has its own components, these are numbered and reference below:
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1. This is where the processor is slotted. Basically it is a socket with lots of tiny holes on its surface, these holes are where the pins of the processor chip fit into when it is attached to the motherboard. On modern motherboards these sockets are called Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) sockets. They are called this because there is no force required to place the processor into the socket or remove it.
2. This is the integrated system controller. It is a chip that controls the operation of the majority of components on the motherboard. The computers timer and the keyboard are also controlled by this chip.
3. This is another chip that provides all of the standard peripherals that are needed for components that are added to the motherboard.
4. This is what is called cache memory. What this does is try to predict what data the processor will require next and put it in its fast short-term memory. This process makes computers a lot faster than they would be without it. The average success rate for these predictions is approximately 85% or higher.
5. This is where the computers main memory (RAM) is stored. Computer programs utilise this memory when they are running as it allows them to run at optimum speeds because the information can be access quicker through RAM than directly from the computers hard disk.
6. This is the system BIOS. It is a very basic input/output system. It allows the user to set the computer to recognise the component parts that have been installed onto the motherboard, such as the hard disk.
7. These are expansion slots. There have been numerous different standards for these slots over the years, with PCI being the most popular at the current point in time. Basically these slots are used for adding controller cards, such as graphics cards etc…
I hope this article has made the goings-on under the PC case a little clearer by giving you an insight into the exact functions of the very equipment most of use every single day.
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Web Statistics - Explaining the Terminology
by Jonathan Burnside ©2004
If your company has a website chances are you either receive web statistics from your hosting service provider or you have direct access to a web statistics applications such as Webalizer or Urchin. If this is the case then you will be interested in this article because it explains what the terminology behind the statistics means.
Hits
Whenever there is a request (when you go to a website your browser makes a request to the server that the website is hosted on, it also makes requests when you navigate the site, click on images etc…) made to the server it is considered to be a hit. Requests made from browsers such as Internet Explorer or Netscape etc. are made for such things as HTML pages, audio files, graphical images and the like. If your company website is made up of frames then number of hits will appear greatly inflated because every frame is a HTML page.
Files
This is very similar to ‘Hits’ because ‘Files’ is a log of all the files that are sent back because of a request. HTML pages, audio files, graphical images and the like are considered files. Simply put ‘Hits’ are the number of incoming requests sent to the server and the files are the number of responses to those requests, these figures should be very similar.
Pages
Every HTML document is considered a page, but only the HTML documents or similar and not audio files and graphical images etc. i.e. content. This stat is very dependent of the server because some servers class script documents as pages and some don’t. Some people may argue that this statistic is the number of pure ‘Hits’, but given what I’ve just explained I would definitely disagree with this although it does give you a more accurate idea of site traffic than the previous two stats.
Visits
When a request is made from another site the server logs the time and if another request is made from the same site but later on, after a preconfigured time-out set by the server, then it is considered a new visit. The default time-out on a server is normally 30mins but this can be changed. NOTE: because various limitations of HTTP (the standard protocol used on the World Wide Web), which I won’t bore you with now, this figure is not quite as accurate as you would think, but it should be considered as a good estimate.
Sites
Every request that is made to the server will come from a unique site that can be identified by its ‘IP address’ (Internet Protocol address). This does not mean the number of totally unique people that have visited your but it is probably the closest you can get.
Kbytes
This figure shows the amount of data sent back by the server in response to requests and is a good measure of outward bound traffic from your website.
Top Entry and Exit Pages
This gives you an estimate of the pages (URL’s) that the browser first requested or exited on. Again this could be used as a rough guess for actual visitors but is better used to determine trends of where visitors enter and leave your website.
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