Today Technology

  Here's a list of four of the best programs for Monitoring your LAN and Local Network Traffic inside of your Perimeter. We've really focused on software packages that have management and monitoring capabilities dedicated to a LAN. The Network Performance Monitor by SolarWinds is an excellent overall tool for keeping a close eye on the health of your network. It boasts a strong variety of monitoring tools and a very robust alert system – which means you have to spend less time actively watching your network and can depend on the software to clue you in when something is amiss! The software even lets you customize your own alerts so that you can tailor your awareness to the specific needs of your network's use. This software is all about helping you predict and, ideally, prevent network downtime. It also offers some ability to monitor the actual traffic on your network but focuses heavily on up-time and device management. It also has some handy tools for deploying and monito...

  Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP), a standard inter-switch protocol, ensures a loop-free forwarding network topology at Layer 2. This protocol was defined by the IEEE 802.1w standard and is an extension of the 802.1D Spanning Tree Protocol (STP). RSTP is an improvement over STP as it provides faster convergence after a network topology change or failure. RSTP introduces new port roles, and the original five port states of STP are reduced to three. To build a loop-free topology, switches (bridges) determine the root bridge and compute the port roles. To do this, the bridges use special data frames called Bridge Protocol Data Units (BPDUs) that exchange bridge IDs and root path cost information. BPDUs are exchanged regularly, typically at two second intervals, and enable switches to keep track of network topology changes and to start and stop forwarding on ports as required. Hosts should not send BPDUs to the switch ports and to avoid malfunctioning/malicious hosts from doing so,...

  The operating system of your iDevice is always protected against viruses. The closed environment with its hidden file system makes it much harder for hackers to place a virus than a Windows PC or Android smartphone. In addition, you only need to load your apps from the App Store. Apple scrupulously checks every software. New programs are released for use only when everything is OK. Unlike Windows and Android, iOS does not require you to be afraid of viruses and other malware that can damage or disable your system. However, your data is not always necessarily in a safe place on iOS. Most recently, in 2019, a  major security vulnerability was  discovered in iOS that gave hackers access to a host of sensitive data, including contact data and WhatsApp chats. The hacker's favorite: The jailbreak Manipulate the system by  jailbreaking , open hackers the door to your smartphone. The file system is open here and is especially vulnerable to malicious attacks. What a jailbre...

  A network hub is a networking device that connects to one or more equipment. For example, a computer can connect to a server, printer and another computer through a network hub. It is useful in sharing of resources and broadcasting data it receives. It helps connects these devices together without having to connect to each other directly. There are three types of network hubs: Passive Hubs, Active Hubs and Intelligent Hubs. Passive Hubs One of the types of a network hub is the so-called passive hub. It's a pass-through that does not do anything more than just broadcast signals it receives through its input port, then sends it out through the output port. It does not do anything to regenerate or process the signals because it only functions as a connector of different wires in a topology. Active Hubs An active hub works more than just a connector but also regenerates the data bits to ensure the signals are strong. Another name for an active hub is a multiport repeater. It provides...

    Redirector This is something you should only measure on your Terminal Server(s). You should monitor the "current commands" in the Redirector object. If the value is higher than 20 during sustained periods of time then you could have a bottleneck. Server Work Queues The Server Work Queues object should be monitored on the File server. You should monitor the "Available WorkItems" counter. Sustained values smaller than ten mean that the File server is running out of work items. When it does, performance really starts to plummet. Make sure this doesn't happen by upping the MinFreeworkItems value. Server In this object there's a counter called "Work Item Shortages". This value represents the number of times no work items were available or couldn't be allocated to service a file request. Obviously if you see any other value than zero, you need to start worrying. Upping the InitWorkItems or MaxWorkItems could help out here. Again, there's so m...

  Networking is ever present. Every business needs it from day one. Mobile devices and cloud services depend on it, and IoT devices are mission critical. Nearly every house or apartment has a router and devices communicating with the outside world. Given the proliferation of networked devices, people assume that networking is already a solved problem. But when your network starts behaving erratically, you realize networking is still difficult. Why? The flawed promise of public protocols A network with all its component parts purchased from the same company is extraordinarily uncommon. Modern networking enables hardware from different vendors to interoperate — in theory. There are several flaws in that vision. Public protocols are so flexible that people make hardware do things the writers never anticipated. The protocol definitions can have design flaws or errors in protocols and specifications. For instance, vendors implementing DNS make slightly different choices and those device...

  Redirector This is something you should only measure on your Terminal Server(s). You should monitor the "current commands" in the Redirector object. If the value is higher than 20 during sustained periods of time then you could have a bottleneck. Server Work Queues The Server Work Queues object should be monitored on the File server. You should monitor the "Available WorkItems" counter. Sustained values smaller than ten mean that the File server is running out of work items. When it does, performance really starts to plummet. Make sure this doesn't happen by upping the MinFreeworkItems value. Server In this object there's a counter called "Work Item Shortages". This value represents the number of times no work items were available or couldn't be allocated to service a file request. Obviously if you see any other value than zero, you need to start worrying. Upping the InitWorkItems or MaxWorkItems could help out here. Again, there's so muc...