<preface id="preface">

    <title>Preface</title>

    <para>

        Welcome to &TCPIUG;.

    </para>

    <para>

        This book describes how you can use the telephone network to

        share the development of &TCAR; with me, in a political system

        where the telephone line is the only communication network

        most people have (still limitted) access to. This book

        provides a guide you and your friends can follow to build your

        own collaborative networks using computers and the telephone

        network of your country.

    </para>

    <para>

        To implement the configuration described in this book, you

        need two or more computers connected to the telephone network

        of your country by mean of modem devices. Optionally, to

        extend the entire network, you could use Ethternet devices to

        create local area networks (LANs) on both ends of each

        connection established over the telephone network able of

        exchanging data between themselves. For example, consider an

        infrastructure where you have one LAN for each province in

        your country and then, each of these LANs are connected using

        the country's telephone network. Each LAN would have one or

        more server computers to concentrate the information produced

        by that province and then, using the telephone network, each

        server computer would be able of exchanging data between

        themselves.  This infrastructure would be as expensive as a

        national telephone call would be (without counting the

        electrical power consume required by computers, of course).

    </para>

    <para>

        To make the information of this book managable, it has been

        organized in the following parts:

    </para>

    <itemizedlist>

    <listitem>

    <para>

        <xref linkend="connectivity" /> describes how to link

        computers in order to make internet services described in

        <xref linkend="services" /> available to other computers.

    </para>

    </listitem>

    <listitem>

    <para>

        <xref linkend="services" /> describes how to configure

        computers to provide internet services and also exchange

        information between computers using the media described in

        <xref linkend="connectivity" />.

    </para>

    </listitem>

    <listitem>

    <para>

        <xref linkend="licenses" /> contains the lincense documents

        mentioned in this book.

    </para>

    </listitem>

    </itemizedlist>

    &preface-overview;

    &preface-docconvs;

    &preface-feedback;

</preface>