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Posts Tagged ‘Networking security’

What Is An IP Address?

January 24th, 2010

With computers behind almost everything in society it’s a necessity to pick up on some of the jargon. If you use a computer or browse the internet at all, you’re likely to come across talk of IP Addresses. To find your IP, please have look here – What’s My IP. In the simplest terms, an IP address is a numerical label that marks devices on a network. Basically, it shows where a computer is on a network and can describe what the device is, like a house or apartment in a town. The IP in the term stands for Internet Protocol, and the address can either be static or dynamic. A static address is a unique and permanent number assigned to a computer (find your’s here What Is My IP), like a thumbprint. A dynamic address is a temporary number that is assigned each time a computer enters a particular network. IP addresses are used to distinguish different computers from each other on a network or on the internet. From there somebody can talk over the internet, share information, browse a web page, or even play a game with a friend.

IP addresses are assigned to every computer connected to a network and each looks like four sets of numbers separated by decimals. Each set can range from 0 to 255 and are occasionally described as octets. This refers to binary code, the language through which computers communicate. Each set of numbers in an IP Address is shown as eight 0’s or 1’s in binary. Since there are four sets, each being an octet, IP addresses are often referred to as 32-bit addresses. The binary code used to describe any particular IP address may vary and marks what class of network the IP address belongs to. There are five classes of networks, ranging from A through E.

Each class describes how many IP addresses an organization can support, as well as the size and type of network. Each class provides a certain amount of address space across a network, Class A being the biggest portion and E being the smallest. The first octet in an address shows which class the IP address is apart of. Class A starts with 0. Class B starts as 10. Class C is 110. Class D starts with 1110, and Class E starts with 1111. Classes A though C are standard networks, or unicast networks. Classes D and E are special types of networks, D being multicast and E being reserved. The Classful system is only seen in remnants today and has been effectively replaced by Classless Inter-Domain Routing.

Put simply, an IP address is used to name and find a device or computer on a network and let other devices or computers on the same network interact with it. When you look up a web page, send an email, play an online game, or connect to any kind of network, an IP Address is being used to make it possible. An IP address is not always intended to identify the device, but primarily where it is. If you want to find your own IP Address, there are many sites that do the work for you and display all the details like My IP.

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Network Hardware Basics

October 25th, 2009

Even a basic knowledge of networking is a major asset in today’s world. Even if you don’t want to get into the details of the subject, the ability to connect your computer to other computers, a router or a peripheral will save you a lot of headaches. It is also a good idea to have a basic knowledge of the equipment you need and what it does. In this article we look at the basic building blocks of a computer network and explain what the various pieces of hardware do.

Of course, any network will need at computers. If you are very new to the subject a good first lesson would be to attempt to connect two computers either by ethernet cable or wirelessly so that they can share information. If you can do this, you have created your first network.

However, when you add more computers, printers, scanners and other peripherals, as well as an internet connection, things get a lot more complicated. The average home network will have most or all of these components and business networks get infinitely more complex. So, here is a basic overview of the hardware needed to build a network.

Cable or wireless?

The most basic requirement of any network is that the various components are connected to each other. Here, there are two choices. Cable or wireless. Ethernet cable remains the fastest of the two and remains an important building block of most networks, especially large business network where high data transfer speeds are essential.

That said, the next generation of wireless is set to close the gap on ethernet cable in terms of speed, and offer a much greater range. Already, wireless is favored in smaller networks because it spares the expense and the mess of ethernet cables, and is easier and cheaper to maintain.

Modems

Although networks can exist without being connected to the internet, it is rare in today’s world. And for a network to connect to the internet a modem is required. Most modern home or small business networks will use a cable/ADSL modem. These usually provide speeds of up to 10 Mbps by ethernet. However, in reality, very few internet service providers can provide a connection that even comes close to this speed. Ethernet modems are the norm these days, although USB modems do exist and dial-up modems are still used, though rarely for networks.

Routers

A router is essential for all networks as it provides the connection between the Local Area Network (LAN), which is the home or small business network, and the Wide Area Network (WAN), usually the internet. A lot of home network will use a combined modem, router and switch which will allow the network to connect to the internet and allow any computers and peripherals on the network to communicate with each other. In very large business networks the router (or sometimes a gateway is used) and switch will be individual hardware devices.

Switches and hubs

There is often a lot of confusion about the difference between switches and hubs. Both allow computers and devices within a network to communicate with each other, but there are some significant differences between them. Of the two, switches are by far the better, and more expensive, option. Switches are essential for larger networks because they make the transfer of information much more efficient.

When a switch receives data from a computer or peripheral it can determine which device/s on the network on the network the data is intended for, and will only send it to its intended destination. This will not be noticed on a small home network but can make a big difference on larger networks.

A hub is a simpler device that can connect anywhere between four and 24 devices. The data will pass through the hub but it the hub will not interfere with the data in any way. Therefore, data sent through a hub will be sent to, and can be accessed by, all devices on a network.

Firewalls

Hardware firewall devices are not really necessary for home networks. The firewall software on your individual computers’ operating systems’ firewalls, and the security options provided by your router, should be more than enough to protect your network.

However, for business networks that are storing large amounts of sensitive information a good hardware firewall is essential. All information from outside the network must pass through this before reaching the network’s main switch. If properly configured by a network professional this should provide all the security a business needs. Further software firewall protection within the network is also an option to secure the network further.

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The Best Network Products In The Globe

October 16th, 2009

Cisco systems inc. is one of the multi national corporate corporations whose head quarter is found in the U.S. plus it is understood for developing and selling gadgets plus technological services pertinent to communications. Cisco routers is one of the best developments by the Cisco Corporate which had enabled the network managers a lot in their respective field thru innovation plus uniqueness.

A router is that a technological device that connects alternative networks, integrating all in to 1 service that is, more than simply routing, capable of countless different functions which are with in the communication field. Some of these are internet access, wireless communication, video, voice etc.

Cisco Corporate has introduced a range of Cisco routers during the market. They are already alternative, but assorted in variety and some of here that are commonly known plus well-liked are the 1600, 2500 and the 3600 series. Though this vary massively varies from 600 series to 12000 series but the fore mentioned are the majority of popular.

These routers run through a special reasonably software that is called IOS or the Cisco internet work Operating System. Following are the components; which altogether adds up in building the router device for Cisco: Interface, Processor or the CPU, IOS, Rx Boot Image, RAM, NV RAM, ROM, Flash Memory and the final configuration memory.

The interfaces can be said as the numerous ports which facilitate in connecting the router, to the LAN. Amongst the interfaces, there comes misc. but to call them are E0, E1, SP, S1, BRI nil etc.

The work of the processor is to take care concerning the functions which are performed by the router. This CPU communicates with components with during the router to make sure its working. IOS is a main OS on that the other routers run on. Its size is around two to 5MB but this size may vary dependent upon the router series etc. Currently the IOS version is 12.

RX Boot Image is employed to load the RX boot image, irrespective of if you have no flash card to load the IOS from. It is located during the RAM of the router. The router masses the IOS in the RAM. Its functioning is added or less than which of what our standard system memory does. The NV RAM is the special reasonably memory where the router is configured.

The configuration of the router is saved in to the NV RAM. The ROM is essentially used to get started off the Cisco router. It consists of a few reasonably codes that help the router to perform a few initial tests plus then boot up.

The flash memory is a card which was discussed in the IOS sentence. This is a special card which contains IOS pictures plus you are able write of delete its contents too. They are available under the sizes of as fewer than 4MB, and ranging extra pertinent to the larger models.

KnowledgeComputers is the premier reseller of used Cisco routers in Canada. Our company headquarters are during the gorgeous western Canadian province of British Columbia. We have a tendency to have satellite offices plus well stocked warehouses in Singapore plus in the United States.

Knowledge Computers offers unparalleled service to a lot of Fortune five hundred Firms, little and medium sized corporations as well as fellow resellers plus individual end-users of networking equipment.

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Cisco systems Inc. enhances a unified computing

March 11th, 2009

 

cisco-logoCisco systems Inc. will enhance a unified computing said by John Chambers the CEO of Cisco. The plans were started in 2004.

The unified computing will help to manage the process of virtual machines and associated applications along with automation of various hardware in data centers. With this expansion iso will play role more than providing switches and networking solutions.

By getting into the blade server business, Cisco will also be taking on IBM and Hewlett Packard Co., which have been strong partners on major projects where customers would purchase HP or IBM servers to complement Cisco switches.

The California blade server will be connected to a new data center switch, according to the analysts who have been briefed on the product. The server will be powered by a new Intel chip, and the management console to coordinate the network will be built by three companies: BMC Corp., Cisco and EMC Corp., which will provide its Smarts technology. They said the products will ship as early as May 2009.

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IBM and Chelsio Communications joined hands

March 11th, 2009

IBM and Chelsio communication has entered into a business partnership in which Chelsio Communication which is known as provider of high speed ethernet adapters will provide high speed ethernet connectivity solutions to IBM along with range of networking applications. After this arrangement IBM can serve its customer more dynamically.

The agreement between two companies will give expected to accelerate the development and industry availability of 10GbE adapters and Asic solutions enabling the next-generation IO designs targeted at the enterprise.

The vice president of IBM Kelvin Hawkins said that We expect this relationship to help yield high performance Ethernet solutions and address IO virtualisation and protocol offloads that will be very critical for our future data centres.

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Sonicwall will provide services to MSI

March 11th, 2009

Sonicwall Inc achieved another hall of mark by providing services to MSI technology Township of Lyndhurst. Sonicwall is one of top network solutions provider. The company will help MSI in deploying E-mail, Remote Access and Disaster Recovery monitors.

MSI’s Technical Services Partner, Darren Sammartino, first deployed SonicWALL network security appliances to consolidate the township’s network security by establishing a secure VPN tunnel between Town Hall and the Department of Public Works. This change meant that township employees no longer have to manually carry files back and forth on disks.

MSI added SonicWALL wireless networking solutions to provide secure Wi-Fi in different departments of the company. Using SonicWALL Email Security, MSI cut Lyndhurst’s per-mailbox spam rates from 200 per day to nearly zero. 

MSI Technologies Deploys SonicWALL Solutions to Secure Township of Lyndhurst’s Network, E-mail, Remote Access and Disaster Recovery Initiatives

The  SonicWALL products will deploy in a flexible environment like Lyndhurst allows an administrator to implement separate technologies across the board for a specific solution.

 

About SonicWALL, Inc.

SonicWALL is committed to improving the performance and productivity of businesses of all sizes by engineering the cost and complexity out of running a secure network. Over one million SonicWALL appliances have been shipped through its global network of ten thousand channel partners to keep tens of millions of worldwide business computer users safe and in control of their data. SonicWALL’s award-winning solutions include network security, secure remote access, content security, backup and recovery, and policy and management technology. For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.sonicwall.com/.

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Issues surrounding banking IT security

May 14th, 2008

There are to many internal bank auditors that think that with a class or two can understand the issues surrounding banking IT security, business continuity, or networking infrustructure. It is the reason that OTS frowns on self audits for the IT infrastructure and frequently demands external audits. It is far easier for a technology professional to apply the regulatory standards to the bank’s IT infrastructure and determine the threats and risk exposures associated with the technology, then for the banking professional to accumulate the years of technical knowledge to rise to the level of CISO. In these days of identity theft – I would want the best technician protecting my assets. That being said, the lesson of “humility” is one that many IT professionals need to learn in order to really know any type of business and effective communication with one’s peers and corporate executives is a must have “talent”. We are all expert in our specific job tasks, no matter how large or small, so the ability to treat each other with respect and dignity will make or break your ability to be effective within the organization.

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Disabling ad-hoc networking is one way to prevent a computer

April 27th, 2008

Disabling ad-hoc networking is one way to prevent a computer from connecting to wireless networks indiscriminately. Turning the dang radio off is a sure-fire way, and users should do that whenever they’re working offline. You wouldn’t leave the engine running at a drive-in movie, would you? Here’s how to turn the radio off in Windows:

  1. Right-click on the wireless network icon in the right-hand corner of the screen. (That’s the picture of the computer with radio waves coming out of it.)
  2. Click disable.

“If you’re in transit, on an airplane, for example, and there’s no [Internet connection] anyway, then you should turn your radio off,” Durst says. “If you leave it on, it will keep on trying to talk to other machines.”

Corporate travelers also should be sure to turn their radios off before they return to the office and plug back into the corporate network. This goes for both laptops and Wi-Fi-enabled handheld devices. Anything with a Wi-Fi radio can find Wi-Fi networks that reside outside the office walls. Once they’re back in the office, those radios can form a bridge between a nearby hotspot and the corporate network, creating an inadvertent security threat.

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Media state disconnected in networking

April 5th, 2008

Media state disconnected is a brain consuming fault. One really have to ping the computer first and then go for possible solutions. It is a difficult task but possibilities for media disconnected state may be as follow.

1. Verify everything has power – if either device has no power, windows will report media state disconnectd.

2. Verify any NIC is correctly seated in the motherboard, that the BIOS on the motherboard supports it, and that the slot it’s in is turned on (you can turn off PCI slots on some mobos.)

3a. If wired, verify wiring is not faulty, the internal wiring correctly paired, does not exceed rated length, and lacks line noise.
3b. If wireless, verify correct frequency and no interference.

4. Verify you’re using the correct media and devices. IE, this error will occur if you’re using a straight-through CAT5 instead of a cross-over between two computers/NICS. With wireless in mind, if you have the wrong type of wireless NIC, it might be broadcasting on the wrong frequency.

5. Verify devices are free of physical faults (bad RJ45 port, etcetera.)

6. For driver-dependent devices (ex. NIC), make sure software is correctly installed. If you have gotten to this step and there is no link-light on either of the devices, go back to step 1 and start over. If there no link light (no current between RJ45 jack and connector) then neither this step or any of the following steps will resolve the issue.

7. For firmware-dependent devices (ex. router) makes sure latest (or alternatively, least problematic if new firmware is buggy) firmware is correctly installed and working.

8. For driver dependant devices, make sure core operating system files are not corrupted; a corrupted stack may cause windows to incorrectly report the link as disconnected. Note that resetting TCP/IP & WINSOCK settings via netsh only resets the settings and such (ex. registry keys) pertaining to the stack – they do not fix a broken stack. To fix a broken stack, reinstall TCP/IP & WINSOCK (most easily achieved by simply reinstalling the latest service pack.)

The above are the simple tests to diagnose the problem. The above situation is more seen in networking which is sharing internet too. It is advisable to check the internet connection independently direct to one computer. If it is working fine then it means no problem relates to internet. After checking sigle computer then turn to your networking and perform the above tips, i hope the media will be in conmnected state after reviewing your system.

To check go to start > Run > Type CMD

The window will appear and now type ipconfig

The configuration will appear with necessary information.

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Dealing with comodo firewall

February 1st, 2008


I was reading some forums about comodo firewall. Some users are not feeling easy in dealing with firewall. Here is a video tutorial to deal with this.

1. Go to http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.co… and download the firewall
2. Do what it says to download
3. set the level on the first screen to custom
4. go to the security tab on the top of the comodo firewall window. then add/remove zone click on your network.
5. stay on that tab and click on define a trusted application for all the applications that you trust and allow to run, the banned application is for files that you dont trust or is causing problems.

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Securing your p2p network

January 30th, 2008

The routing primitives implemented by current structured p2p overlays provide a besteffortservice to deliver a message to a replica root associated with a given key. Asdiscussed above, a malicious overlay node has ample opportunities to corrupt overlaylevelcommunication. Therefore, these primitives are not sufficient to construct secureapplications. For example, when inserting an object, an application cannot ensure thatthe replicas are placed on legitimate, diverse replica roots as opposed to faulty nodesthat impersonate replica roots. Even if applications use cryptographic methods to authenticateobjects, malicious nodes may still corrupt, delete, deny access to or supplystale copies of all replicas of an object.To address this problem, we must create a secure routing primitive. The secure routingprimitive ensures that when a non-faulty node sends a message to a key k, themessage reaches all non-faulty members in the set of replica roots Rk with very highprobability. Rk is defined as the set of nodes that contains, for each member of the setof replica keys associated with k, a live root node that is responsible for that replica key.In Pastry, for instance, Rk is simply a set of live nodes with nodeIds numerically closestto the key. Secure routing ensures that  the message is eventually delivered, despitenodes that may corrupt, drop or misroute the message; and  the message is deliveredto all legitimate replica roots for the key, despite nodes that may attempt to impersonatea replica root.Secure routing can be combined with existing security techniques to safely maintainstate in a structured p2p overlay. For instance, self-certifying data can be stored on thereplica roots, or a Byzantine-fault-tolerant replication algorithm be used tomaintain the replicated state. Secure routing guarantees that the replicas are initiallyplaced on legitimate replica roots, and that a lookup message reaches a replica if oneexists. Similarly, secure routing can be used to build other secure services, such asmaintaining file metadata and user quotas in a distributed storage utility. The details ofsuch services are beyond the scope of this paper.Implementing the secure routing primitive requires the solution of three problems:securely assigning nodeIds to nodes, securely maintaining the routing tables, and securelyforwarding messages. Secure nodeId assignment ensures that an attacker cannotchoose the value of nodeIds assigned to the nodes that the attacker controls. Withoutit, the attacker could arrange to control all replicas of a given object, or to mediate alltraffic to and from a victim node.Secure routing table maintenance ensures that the fraction of faulty nodes that appearin the routing tables of correct nodes does not exceed, on average, the fraction offaulty nodes in the entire overlay.Without it, an attacker could prevent correct messagedelivery, given only a relatively small number of faulty nodes. Finally, secure messageforwarding ensures that at least one copy of a message sent to a key reaches each correct

replica root for the key with high probability.

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Network security concern

January 12th, 2008

Every day, students send dozens of electronic messages or store personal files in their accounts thinking that their messages will remain private and their files secure. This, however, might not be the case.

According to one computing assistant (CA) who asked to remain unidentified, break-ins into personal accounts are not uncommon. “People [on the Internet] have a false sense of security.” Many users leave their accounts open in a public cluster and take a break, give out their passwords, or assign predictable passwords which hackers can figure out. Such unwise judgments are what lead to breaches of privacy, he said.

Stanley Eisenstat, professor of computer science, said that the “safety of your account is determined by your own control.” Giving out passwords to friends, he said, is one of the main ways intruders gain access and control over a victim’s account. Even so, Eisenstat said, another important component of a user’s account depends on the security the system uses.

At Yale, the issue of network security is presently being addressed. According to Andy Newman, systems programmer for technology and programming, there are several levels of security available for students’ accounts. For electronic mail accounts, Newman said there is a basic level of security that protects students from other students who might try to view their files. Because of the access privileges given to users’ accounts when they are first set up, people that might try to break in – even at this basic level of security – will “run into substantial walls that will ultimately impede their access,” Newman said.

Aside from the basic level of security accounts are given, employees of ACS “maintain a substantial number of tools that check the Minerva cluster for anomalies that might be indicative of illegal use of accounts,” Newman said. Although the Minerva/Mercury/Morpheus pantheon is monitored continuously, not all accounts can be monitored simultaneously, allowing for some anomalous activity to go undetected.

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