<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>