IT Workers Notepad

Wireless Mess Network #2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:29:00 +0800

The first wireless mesh networks were mobile ad hoc networks – with wireless stations moving around and participating in a peer to peer network. Mesh is an attractive approach for wireless networking since wireless nodes may be mobile and it is common for a wireless node to participate in a network without being able to hear all of the other nodes in the network. Mobile peer to peer networks benefit from the sparse connectivity requirements of the mesh architecture; and the combination of wireless and mesh can provide a reliable network with a great deal of flexibility.

The popularity of Wi-Fi has generated a lot of interest in developing wireless networks that support Wi-Fi access across very large areas. Large coverage access points (AP) are available for these scenarios, but the cost of deploying these wide area Wi-Fi systems is dominated by the cost of the network required to interconnect the APs and connect them to the Internet— the backhaul network. Even with fewer APs, it is very expensive to provide T1, DSL or Ethernet backhaul for each access point. For these deployments, wireless backhaul is an attractive alternative and a good application for mesh networking.Wireless connections can be used between most of the APs and just a few wired connections back to the Internet are required to support the entire network. Wireless links work better when there is clear line of sight between the communicating stations. Permanent wireless infrastructure mesh systems deployed over large areas can use the forwarding capabilities of the mesh architecture to go around physical obstacles such as buildings. Rather than blasting through a building with high power, a wireless mesh system will forward packets through intermediate nodes that are within line of sight and go around the obstruction with robust wireless links operating at much lower power.This approach works very well in dense urban areas with many obstructions.

There are many different types of mesh systems and they often get lumped together. Since early wireless mesh systems were focused on mobile ad-hoc networks, many people assume that wireless mesh systems are low bandwidth or temporary systems that can not scale up to deliver the capacity and quality of service required for enterprise, service provider and public safety networks.That is not the case. Engineered, planned and deployed effectively, wireless mesh networks can scale very well while still offering a cost-effective evolution strategy that preserves the network investment. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of single, dual, and multi-radio mesh options is the first step.

Single-radio Wireless Mesh
In a single-radio mesh, each mesh node acts as an AP that supports local Wi-Fi client access and forwards traffic wirelessly to other mesh nodes.The same radio is used for access and wireless backhaul. This option represents the lowest cost entry point in the deployment of a wireless mesh network infrastructure. However, because each mesh AP uses an omni-directional antenna to allow it to communicate with any of its neighbor APs, almost every packet generated by local clients must be repeated on the same channel to send it to at least one neighboring mesh AP.The packet is then forwarded to another node in the mesh and ultimately to a node that is connected to a wired network. This packet forwarding generates a lot of traffic.As more mesh APs are added, a higher percentage of the wireless traffic in any cell is dedicated to forwarding.Very little of the channel capacity is available to support users.

There is debate in the industry about the impact of mesh forwarding and actual throughput that is possible in this scenario.The capacity analysis is somewhere between 1/N times the channel capacity and (1/2)^N times the channel capacity where N is the number of wireless hops in the longest path between a client and the wired infrastructure.

Figure 2: Single-radio Wireless Mesh Capacity

Figure 2 shows AP capacity estimates for a single-radio Wi-Fi mesh network using these equations. User capacity available at each AP declines as you add more APs to the network and increase the number of wireless hops.The starting capacity is 5 Mbps because the network is a single channel of 802.11b, which has a raw data rate of 11 Mbps and useful throughput measured at the TCP/IP layer of about 5 Mbps. This throughput is shared between the access traffic and the backhaul traffic in a single radio mesh. Throughout this paper, the vertical axis can be scaled to reflect the radio capacity. Some good rules of thumb are; 5Mbps for 802.11b only mode, 11Mbps for 802.11b/g mixed mode and 22Mbps for 802.11g only mode.The latter is not typically deployed in public environments due to backwards compatibility with the large pool of 802.11b devices.

It doesn’t really matter which of the equations is closer to real world behavior. 1/N is more optimistic, but neither scales to support large networks. Capacity available in each cell declines rapidly as more APs are added.

There are mesh protocols that optimize the forwarding behavior and eliminate unnecessary transmissions. But the best these optimizations can do is to bring the network closer to 1/N performance, which is inadequate for most permanent infrastructure applications today. Single-radio mesh systems will not deliver broadband performance to the user population throughout a very large coverage area.

This analysis may seem harsh, but it is actually oversimplified. It assumes perfect mesh forwarding, no interference and perfect coordination of the Wi-Fi channel access.That will never happen, so real world throughput and capacity will usually be even lower.

Figure 3: Single-radio Mesh Architecture, String of Mesh APs

To illustrate this point, consider a linear string of mesh APs arranged so that each one can hear only one adjacent neighbor on either side (Figure 3).This is not a likely real world deployment, but it simplifies the analysis and we will use this example to compare each of the wireless infrastructure mesh approaches. Throughout this paper we will also assume that client access load is evenly distributed across the mesh APs. In this string of APs with the wired connection on the end, N the number of hops from figure 4, is same as the number of mesh APs.

The total channel capacity is 5 Mbps.You can see that 1/N performance is basically not achievable. N=5, so each AP should have 1 Mbps of capacity. All of the traffic from the entire mesh network will have to flow through AP5 to get to the wired network. If each mesh AP accepts a load of exactly 1 Mbps of traffic from its clients, then AP5 will have to forward 4 Mbps of traffic from APs 1, 2, 3 and 4; and has exactly 1 Mbps of capacity left for its local clients. For this to work, there would have to be perfect contention, interference and collision management. The mesh APs would have to coordinate their transmissions with each other and perfectly control the transmissions of all their respective clients. That is not how Wi-Fi works.

In a single-radio Wi-Fi mesh network, all clients and mesh APs must operate on the same channel and use the 802.11 Media Access Control protocol. As a result, the entire mesh ends up acting like a single, giant access point—all of the mesh APs and all of the clients must contend for a single channel.This shared network contention and interference reduces capacity further and introduces unpredictable delays in the system as forwarded packets from mesh APs and new packets from clients contend for the same channel.

The configuration in Figure 3 has minimal connectivity required to complete the mesh and minimum interaction between adjacent APs for a 5-node mesh AP network.APs 2, 3, and 4 can hear two other APs; and AP1 and AP5 hear one other AP each. Each time AP3 transmits,AP2 and AP4 must defer and hold off their transmissions since they are using the 802.11 MAC protocol, which is essentially “listen before talk”.Whenever that hold-off doesn’t happen, collisions and retransmissions occur resulting in more congestion and lower capacity.

A capacity analysis of these systems should include both the effects of the mesh forwarding and the effects of the shared network backhaul, which can be significant. Consider the string of Mesh APs in Figure 3. If we move the wired backhaul from AP5 to AP3, what happens to the capacity?

N, the number of forwarding hops, is reduced from 5 to 3, so we might expect the capacity to be higher than the N=5 capacity shown in Figure 4. However, due to the shared network behavior and the fact that AP3 can hear more mesh AP neighbors than AP5, the capacity is actually lower as shown in Figure 4. (Note:The x axis in Figure 4 is the number of Mesh APs, not the number of wireless hops in the longest path through the mesh.)

Figure 4: Single-radio Mesh String,Wired Connection in the Middle

The 1/N equation we used earlier predicts that per-AP capacity will be 1.67 Mbps when N=3. However, when we factor in the effects of contention and interference when the wired connection is in the middle of a string of 5 APs (Figure 3 with the wired connection at AP3), the estimated capacity is .58 Mbps. This matches the (1/2)N prediction of .56 Mbps when N = 5.

The string of mesh APs that we have described so far is not a typical mesh configuration.The cluster of mesh APs shown in Figure 5 is a more common example of a small mesh network.

Figure 5: Single-radio Mesh Cluster

In this case, contention and interference would reduce the capacity available for client access beyond what we have described in the string of APs examples previously discussed. Large coverage mesh APs in these systems have high power radios and high gain antennas.The mesh APs can hear each other at a much greater range than they can hear the clients they support, because most Wi-Fi client devices are low power with low gain antennas.

In this cluster, AP3 can hear all the other APs except for AP5.All traffic for the entire mesh network flows through AP3 so it will frequently hold off the other APs, limiting their ability to handle traffic from their local clients.A more complicated formula is required to characterize the impact of neighboring mesh APs in a shared backhaul network as well as the mesh forwarding.

The capacity in a single-radio mesh is limited by both access and backhaul issues. Optimizing the mesh forwarding protocol will not solve the problem.The basic capacity is too low and adding more mesh nodes makes it worse—no matter how perfect the mesh protocol.

Single-radio solutions offer the lowest cost entry point in the deployment of mesh networks. In an infrastructure network, single radio mesh systems are best used for small mesh clusters of a few nodes. Larger systems may be created by providing wired backhaul to one of the nodes in each cluster or using wireless backhaul links to aggregate multiple clusters. Single radio mesh solutions can also be the right approach for mobile, ad hoc peer-to-peer wireless networks where the emphasis is on basic connectivity or used for large sensor network and meter reading networks where the data rate is very low.

to be continued...

Wireless Mess Network #1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:55:00 +0800

Capacity of Wireless Mesh Networks
Understanding Single Radio, Dual Radio and Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks

This post not a tutorial, just sharing knowledge about Wireless Mesh Network from many reference we have and from our experience on the field as a wireless internet sevice provider and computer network consultant.

We focuses on wireless mesh infrastructure systems used for creating large Wi-Fi access networks, and examines three different approaches currently available for implementing them. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of each approach with a particular focus on the capacity that is available to users. Can wireless mesh infrastructure systems deliver enough capacity to support broadband services for a large number of users?

Mesh is a type of network architecture. Originally, Ethernet was a shared bus topology in which every node tapped into a common cable that carried all transmissions from all nodes. In bus networks, any node on the network hears all transmissions from every other node in the network. Most local area networks (LANs) today use a star topology in which every network node is connected to a switch (switches can be interconnected to form larger networks).

Mesh networks are different – full physical layer connectivity is not required.As long as a node is connected to at least one other node in a mesh network, it will have full connectivity to the entire network because each mesh node forwards packets to other nodes in the network as required. Mesh protocols automatically determine the best route through the network and can dynamically reconfigure the network if a link becomes unusable. There are many different types of mesh networks. Mesh networks can be wired or wireless. For wireless networks there are ad-hoc mobile mesh networks and permanent infrastructure mesh networks.There are single radio mesh networks, dual-radio mesh networks and multi-radio mesh networks. All of these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses.They can be targeted at different applications and used to address different stages in the evolution and growth of the network.

The first wireless mesh networks were mobile ad hoc networks – with wireless stations moving around and participating in a peer to peer network. Mesh is an attractive approach for wireless networking since wireless nodes may be mobile and it is common for a wireless node to participate in a network without being able to hear all of the other nodes in the network. Mobile peer to peer networks benefit from the sparse connectivity requirements of the mesh architecture; and the combination of wireless and mesh can provide a reliable network with a great deal of flexibility.

to be continued...

Free Portable Applications - The Best

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 4 Mar 2011 13:47:00 +0800

A Portable Application is a computer software program that is able to run independently from a hard drive, USB drive, or an iPod, without the need to install any files into the system.

By using portable applications, you can take your “computer setup” with you, keeping all your favorite software in one suite. That’s a more intelligent approach than trying instead to minimize the number of programs you install, so their installation can be recreated on another device.

There are thousands of portable applications available, many of them are versions of installable programs. Using the list below, you can build a very powerful suite with the best of the best portable apps for different software categories:

Free Portable Anonymous Surfing Browser:
xB Browser — Download

“A portable version of Firefox with a well integrated Tor engine that uses the free Tor network. It’s easy to setup and doesn’t require advanced knowledge, but you will have to use it as a second browser for anonymous surfing in contrast to Vidalia or JonDo that also support normal browsing.” (Creates an empty folder in the user profile.)

Another option is to use a Portable Firefox with the JonDo-Portable service and the JonDoFox configuration. The advantage is that the JonDoFox configuration comes with many other specially selected security addons (NoScript, CS-Lite, Adblock Plus), installs as an alternate profile (allowing you to switch between normal and anonymizing profiles), and allows proxy switching between the Tor or JonDo anonymizing networks. However, the JonDo-Portable service requires Java and is more resource intensive.

Free Portable Web Browser:
Portable Firefox — Home | Download

Firefox is an excellent Internet browser to use for portable surfing, with many built-in security measures and addons. Additionally, you can run it from your flash drive so that most of your tracks will be stored on the flash drive and not on the computer you use. Note that some addons may not be portable. Creates crash files by default in the user AppData folder. In order to make it fully portable, see here.

Portable Firefox is excellent for use in a flash drive since it’s specially configured to reduce reads/writes to the disk and to run faster from a portable device. But note that you must run only the FirefoxPortable EXE file, otherwise it won’t be portable anymore. PortableApps is currently working on a portable version that allows trace free updates with the internal Firefox updater (at current it now works but with writing to the user folder).

PortableApps has an excellent and informative download site for their version of Portable Firefox (use the PortableApps Guide for installation tips). You can also get the winPenPack X-Firefox version, but it’s much more difficult to setup unless you use their suite.

Free Portable Anti-Malware:
ClamWin — Home | Download
ClamWin is a popular choice for portable malware scanning; it makes the top spot here mainly for lack of competition from truly portable apps! In any case, it scans for both viruses and spyware. But it won’t provide real time protection, and it doesn’t have scheduling or program updating in the portable version. It allows you to update the database with the newest threats any time you want (or use ClamWinPortableDBUpdate for auto updates), but dialup users will have great difficulty getting them initially, if they are patient enough to get them at all (it took me a morning while surfing around doing other stuff!).

Be sure to upload any newly downloaded or suspicious files to an online multi-scanner such as Virustotal or Jotti before copying them to your flash drive and use ClamWin for regular scanning. Additionally, I suggest periodic scanning with your regular antivirus and antispyware software when you can. Many of the best antivirus and antispyware scanners/removers must be installed.

Free Portable All-in-one PC Tune-up (Win OS):
Comodo System Cleaner — Home | Download

Comodo System Cleaner continues to improve since the first time I saw it. It has three main cleaners (disk, privacy, registry) and a “clean my computer” one-click button to run them all. It uses a two step “safe delete or registry protection” procedure to prevent you from deleting essential files or registry entries, including a built-in backup and restore tab and a restart of the computer. The second step requires you to restart the computer before finalizing its actions. In addition, it allows you to set a new restore point before cleaning for a third safety precaution. Why all the fuss? Well, automated cleaning is risky business, so also be sure to have a good backup of your files and a drive image.

Free Portable Disk Defragmenter:
Defraggler — Home | Download

“A solid combination of performance, stability and usability from Piriform. With a very clean interface design based on the common Windows defrag interface, Defraggler is incredibly easy to use and offers all the options you need to keep your machine running smoothly – including the ability to defragment individual files and folders as well as an in-built defragmentation scheduler.”

All of the portable websites have ignored MyDefrag’s existence so far. It doesn’t help that its author argues against any positive reasons for someone wanting to have a “no-install” version (here). However, MyDefragGUI ignores JK’s reservations and makes MyDefrag portable. MyDefragGUI is an alternate interface designed to make running MyDefrag easier. It’s an excellent choice for boot optimization and multiple sorting/optimizing scripts. The daily optimization script in particular helps to balance the wear and tear caused by defragging itself with the benefits of defragging (in saving wear and tear over time).

Free Portable File Cleaner:
CCleaner Portable — Home | Download

One of the essentials for a portable collection and getting closer and closer to an all-in-one utility. It hits several of our articles for different purposes and could compete for many more. “It’s very effective in freeing up disk space by removing unused and temporary files, cookies, Recycle bin entries, history and cache files in many applications, and much more.”

Plus it cleans the registry, manages the startup, uninstalls software, securely erases anything it deletes, wipes the free space and MFT, deletes old system restore points, manages cookies, or runs as a task with the /AUTO command argument.

Free Portable Memory Optimizer:
CleanMem — Download

Some people argue that memory optimizers aren’t needed anymore. “But CleanMem seems to work and it helps you automatically recover memory and file cache space to improve performance. The program will install and run every 30 min via the windows task scheduler. It doesn’t run in the background constantly.”

Just extract the ZIP download file to a folder of your choice and click “schtasks.exe” for it to run automatically by the task scheduler, but don’t use either of the BAT files since they aren’t needed in the portable version and they install files to c:\windows\system32.

Free Portable Secure Delete:
Portable Eraser — Home | Download

It’s easy to recover deleted files unless you routinely wipe the file data away. Eraser “overwrites the data area with your choice of random data patterns, and also wipes data in the recycling bin, unused disk space, and a number of other places where data can secretly lurk.” Creates an INI file in C:\windows.

Many file cleaners include secure erasing such as CCleaner and Revo Uninstaller. But even if you securely delete files with something like CCleaner, I recommend regular free space wiping to increase the effectiveness of erasure (1 pass is usually enough on modern drives).

Free Portable Program Uninstaller:
Revo Uninstaller — Home | Download

Revo uninstalls software and scans for any leftover remnants. It’s “the only freeware product I know of that will make a decent job of cleaning up a failed install.” Additionally, click “Tools” for its startup manager, list of windows tools, and junk files scanner. Don’t miss the “Tracks Cleaner” right below the Junk Scanner for its several other cleaners (browser cleaner, Office cleaner, Windows cleaner, free space wiper, file shredder).

Free Portable Startup Manager:
Autoruns — Download or Run Online

If you have many unnecessary startup programs and tray icons hogging your RAM space and slowing your PC, then you can get many specialized startup managers beyond CCleaner and Revo above. For users who want to manage all possible startups, Autoruns is a gem. It allows you to manage auto start programs by simply unchecking them (so you can turn them back on if you really did need them), but you can also manage scheduled tasks, services, drivers, sidebar gadgets, and many other things. Writes settings to registry.

Free Portable Windows Tweaker:
Ultimate Windows Tweaker — Download
Sometimes windows comes with more extras than you need or want, and sometimes its default applications have a mind of their own and represent a privacy or control threat to the user! You won’t be able to completely get rid of Windows Media Player or Internet explorer with this tool, but it takes a good shot at them!

“UWT is a well equipped tweaker utility that supports Vista/Windows 7 (32/64 bit). Besides others it covers user account, security, performance and internet tweaking. The only thing that did not work on my 32Bit Vista Home Premium was the Network tweaking option. I received an error message and the page would not show. Still, UWT is a great tweaking utility worth a try.” Copies files/folders to the system directory.

Free Portable Digital Photo/Image Viewer:
XnView — Home | Download

XnView is “a heavyweight champion. Like Irfan, it’s very versatile; it can read and display nearly 400 types of graphic files, and convert any of these to more than 50 formats. It displays images very quickly, and these may be viewed full screen, as slideshows or as thumbnails. It’s quite capable at processing images, too; you can rotate, crop, resize, adjust brightness and color, apply filters or effects, create a web page and much more”. To make it fully portable, see here.

Free Portable Digital Image Editor:
LightBox/Sagelight Image Editor — Download

If you just need a simple, basic editor than Lightbox is the top pick. It “has an attractive user interface that is straight forward, and offers intuitive slide-bar adjustments for your images. It also has split screen views to help you compare your images before and after the corrections have been made. It includes simple tools to correct red-eye, sharpen, crop, re-size, add borders, and print. The free version is a gem that you will want to check out”. If you need more powerful features, check the alternatives below and the product review article.

Free Portable Email Client:
Mozilla Thunderbird Portable — Home | Download

“It’s a highly customizable email client with an intuitive user interface. Highly expandable through add-ons.” I was surprised by how quickly it works and how easily it interacted with my online email provider (Gmail). It made a complete copy of my Gmail account and checked for any new messages regularly. The interface is very easy to navigate, considering it’s just like Firefox (and that happens to be my main browser). That said, it’s not a light application and some extensions may not be portable.

If you want a lightweight email client to run from the tray and just check your mail, then POP Peeper is an excellent option. See these steps to have POP Peeper store your data in its own folder. Another option is to set it to never store data to the disk, or manually enter its “data” folder path in the storage options.

Free Portable Instant Messenger:
Pidgin Portable — Home | Download

“For most users, I think Pidgin currently fits the bill best. It’s easy-to-use, cleanly-designed, and very functional. Being non-commercial, open-source software makes it even easier to support. I can confidently recommend Pidgin as the first choice for a multi-protocol IM client.” It aptly calls itself “the universal chat client.” Check its home page for a long list of supported clients.

Free Portable BitTorrent Client:
µTorrent — Home | Download

“Bittorrents are fast, equitable, and efficient download formats, and µTorrent is the most popular client for this format. Its positives are: Excellent performance on all test torrents. Small, lightest (tie) on system resources but has all the needed features. Excellent support. Always improving as a bittorrent client. Negatives: Several ‘highly critical’ security alerts (now patched) were issued in 2008 by Secunia.” Follow these steps to force it to write settings to its own folder.

Free Portable Download Manager:
Free Download Manager — Home | Download

“A good choice for its stability and support for various browsers. Supports IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari. Other features include simultaneous multi-part downloads, flash video download, restart and recover, powerful scheduler, management of downloaded files, downloads from RapidShare, prioritized and partial torrent downloads, etc.” Writes some non-user oriented settings to the registry.

Free Portable FTP Client:
FireFTP — Home | Download

“FTP clients are programs that reside on a PC, enabling fast bulk file transfers between the PC and a server. They are very useful when you need to download or transfer more than a few files and are an essential tool for website management.”

“With a robust feature set, ease of use, and browser integration, FireFTP should serve the needs of all (except perhaps the heaviest power users) and is quickly becoming one of my favorite FTP clients.”

UberTwitter was Suspended by Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 13:04:00 +0800

Suspended since about 11 hours ago and in 4 hours after, UberMedia CEO already makes some movement to fix it, what a fast reaction *amazed*. UberTwitter now called UberSocial. Here is a Q&A from Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of UberMedia

Twitter told us today that they suspended our applications for three reasons:

Twitter said that in UberTwitter and Twidroyd we use a tweet-elongation service named tmi.me that allows people to write more than 140 characters, and that this service may post private messages on a public website. At their request, we have removed this ability.

Twitter said that in UberCurrent we change links that are part of an affiliate program to be our own links. We don’t currently do this, but we removed all changing of links to eliminate any possibility of this.

Twitter said that they would like us to change the name UberTwitter, and we have changed the name to UberSocial, effective immediately.

Twitter also said that as soon as we made these changes, they would restore our access to their API. All the changes have been made, and Twitter has been notified, and we are waiting for the apps to be restored.

UberTwitter (now UberSocial) are very popular application for blackberry user. They have many feature that "only on" UberTwitter and there is the problem came from.

VSAT Video Tutorial - Finally At Field

noreply@blogger.com (WARTEKnet) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:06:00 +0800

The VSAT Installation Manual introduces you step-by-step to the technical requirements and practical applications of setting up an antenna and a VSAT-based satellite router to access internet broadband service. Topics covered include the VSAT components, the process of site surveying, antenna installation and alignment, satellite router installation, and troubleshooting.

This information is very useful for beginners.

VSAT Video Tutorial - 4 Antenna Installation

noreply@blogger.com (WARTEKnet) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:02:00 +0800

The VSAT Installation Manual introduces you step-by-step to the technical requirements and practical applications of setting up an antenna and a VSAT-based satellite router to access the internet broadband service. Topics covered include the VSAT components, the process of site surveying, antenna installation and alignment, satellite router installation, and troubleshooting.

This information is very useful for beginners.

VSAT Video Tutorial - 3 Site Survey

noreply@blogger.com (WARTEKnet) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:00:00 +0800

The VSAT Installation Manual introduces you step-by-step to the technical requirements and practical applications of setting up an antenna and a VSAT-based satellite router to access the internet broadband service. Topics covered include the VSAT components, the process of site surveying, antenna installation and alignment, satellite router installation, and troubleshooting.

This information is very useful for beginners.

VSAT Video Tutorial - 2 Component

noreply@blogger.com (WARTEKnet) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:56:00 +0800

The VSAT Installation Manual introduces you step-by-step to the technical requirements and practical applications of setting up an antenna and a VSAT-based satellite router to access the internet broadband service. Topics covered include the VSAT components, the process of site surveying, antenna installation and alignment, satellite router installation, and troubleshooting.

This information is very useful for beginners.

VSAT Video Tutorial - 1 Intro

noreply@blogger.com (WARTEKnet) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 21:51:00 +0800

The VSAT Installation Manual introduces you step-by-step to the technical requirements and practical applications of setting up an antenna and a VSAT-based satellite router to access the internet broadband service. Topics covered include the VSAT components, the process of site surveying, antenna installation and alignment, satellite router installation, and troubleshooting.

This information is very useful for beginners.

More Safest Online with OpenDNS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:35:00 +0800

DNS is such an integral part of our Internet life working behind the scenes every time we connect to a website. In most situations, our Internet Service Provider specifies the DNS Server address that we key into the browser network settings or the router.

When you type an address like www.yahoo.com in your browser address bar, the computer doesn’t know where yahoo.com points to and it will therefore ask the DNS server.

The job of a DNS server is to translate this human-readable web address (like www.yahoo.com) into a computer-readable number also known as an IP address (209.131.36.158). Once your computer knows the IP location of a web domain name, it opens the website in your browser.

Unfortunately, this can prove to be the weakest link in the entire workflow. For example, if the DNS server of your ISP is slow, the time it takes to resolve the web address adds up to the overall loading time of the website.

To solve this problem, we look at a simple and reliable service called OpenDNS that speeds up your Internet connection and also handles some other very important issues. There are no software to install, it’s very easy to set up and the price is zero!

To use OpenDNS, all you have to do is open your Network Connections or Router’s settings page and update the default DNS server to point to the OpenDNS nameservers that are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

The whole process takes a few seconds but with this single step alone, you just made your computer safer and increased the overall browsing speed. Here’s why:

Unlike the DNS servers of your less reliable ISP, OpenDNS servers store the IP addresses of millions of websites in their cache so it would take less time to resolve your requests. So if you have asked for an IP address of a website that has been previously requested by another OpenDNS user, you will get the reply instantly.

Another huge advantage of using OpenDNS is that it blocks phishing websites from loading on your computer. It uses data from Phishtank, a community site that is also used by Yahoo! Mail to determine if some particular website is part of any online phishing scam.

Blogging as Career

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:02:00 +0800

Based on the number of blogs coming up and increasing day by day, blogging has been a very popular hobby these days. But it is no long a hobby as there are actually individuals who are earning money just simply by blogging. The most amazing thing of all, there are even people who blog for a living or taking up blogging as a career.

Well, since it is possible to earn money just by blogging via a number of ways like having affiliate marketing banners and get paid to post. The most popular but ironically the most difficult to make money from is actually Google Adsense. You simply needs a massive traffic in order for you to earn any money. Full time bloggers generally have a few blogs to increase their earning by posting blog posts and also increasing the traffic altogether.

In order to have a good blog that enjoys endless traffic will have to apply search engine optimization or SEO technique as it is proven to be the most vital and important for you to gain success in getting traffic to your blog. Another technique is web 2.0 by using RSS, XML and other applications that increases the chance for your blog to be viewed. After it has been viewed, it is up to how interesting the content in your blog that can keep your visitors coming back.

Contact

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 9 Sep 2009 09:09:00 +0800

This blog content is maintenance by the Warteknet team, which lead by Ahsan Burhany.

Network Security For SOHO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:19:00 +0800

“Nothing more than the whim of a 13 year old hacker is required to knock any user, site or server right off the Internet” Steve Gibson, Gibson Research Corporation

As small businesses move with the Internet revolution - from dial-up connections to broadband 24 x 7 Internet, the security threats to the network increase dramatically. Now PCs and networks are visible on the Internet constantly, giving hackers more time and opportunity than ever to wreak havoc on the businesses of the world.

With over 700,000 small businesses in the United States alone with a broadband Internet connection, it is obvious there are a huge number of business that have opened themselves up to the Internet. With recent high profile hacker attacks against such large corporations as Amazon, E-Bay, NASA and Microsoft; Internet and network security is at the forefront of media attention, but are small businesses at risk? How can businesses enjoy the huge benefits that the Internet brings while protecting themselves against the threats that come with it?

Benefits of Shared Internet Access

Internet access is almost essential for any business hoping to succeed today. But the cost of getting many PCs connected through individual accounts can be very costly. However, sharing one Internet connection between multiple computers can save money and make employees more productive. By giving every PC on your network Internet access, employees are within easy reach of information that they need to do their job more effectively – and all at no extra cost. Using a gateway or Network Address Translation (NAT) device, many computers can be connected through one Internet connection.

Broadband Internet

The introduction of affordable broadband technologies such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable has meant that the Internet has turned from a useful tool to a business essential, allowing 24 x 7 access and higher data rates allowing faster access to information. The ability to do more in less time can mean that employee productivity has increased. Remote users can access the LAN at a speed that allows them to work as if they were in the office rather than through a painfully slow analogue link. Large emails can be sent quickly and easily instead of waiting for minutes for the PC to send the mail and be able to carry on with other work. With all these benefits, however, come added security threats – PCs and networks are visible on the Internet 24 hours a day. Network security has to be an essential part of the network – preventing the many threats from damaging your network and business.

Is Anyone Safe?

According to IDC, the average new broadband connection experiences three attempted attacks in the first 48 hours of operation. Hackers do not know whether a visible device on the Internet is a large network that is hidden, a home network or just an individual computer – so everyone on the Internet is a target for attack. Within the last few years many large enterprises, including the CIA and NASA have had their web sites attacked. As well as this, companies such as Amazon, eBay, CNN and Yahoo were attacked, causing their systems to overload and shut down with resulting losses of around $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, a Gartner Group survey shows that hackers will attack more than 50% of small and medium businesses using the Internet – so everyone on the Internet, large or small, is a target for attack.

Attacks and Security Threats

There are a number of different types of attack that can be used by a hacker to gain access to your network or to cause damage. The two main types of attack are; Denial of Service – this is where a hacker will attempt to bring down part of or your entire network by causing devices to crash or rendering them inoperable. Intrusion – this is where a hacker enters the network and tries to gain information (such as passwords or access to data). This might be done without the owner of the network even knowing that anyone has gained unauthorised access to the network.

Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks

DoS attacks have become increasingly widespread, with high profile targets hit as mentioned earlier. DoS attacks are not aimed at stealing information or data, but instead at crashing or disabling devices and networks so that they are unusable. Common attacks include Ping of Death, SYN Flood and LAND Attack.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks can also wreak havoc on computers, web sites and networks. Using a complex system of “Zombie” computers to attack a chosen target. The users of computers that have the zombie Trojan installed do not even know that their computer is infected and possibly attacking targets all over the world! These Trojans can give full access to the computer, including access to file systems and even real-time keystrokes.

Trojans are destructive programs that masquerade as normal applications. Once on a computer, a Trojan can be used to attack your computer or to take part in an attack on a remote computer – the only way to ensure that your computer is safe is to prevent Trojans from being planted. By the installation of good network security, it can prevent the installation of these Zombie Trojans.

Intrusion Attacks

Intrusion attacks are used to gain unauthorised access to a device or network. Once inside, the hacker can steal data or passwords, or can vandalise the system by destroying valuable data. The first step in an intrusion attack is to gather information about the network that is to be attacked. This is done by probing the target network to try and find any weaknesses or security holes that can be exploited. A tool such as a Port Scanner can be used to easily scan every port on a range of network addresses searching for any vulnerable ports. If any port connections are made, these are reported to the hacker and in this way a picture of the network is built up.

Once the hacker has gained as much information as possible, they will then try to breach the security of the network using one of the vulnerable ports discovered. A good network security product will block port scanners, denying the hacker the ability to gather information about the network.

Security Technologies

Different Types of Firewall. Firewalls and security are available in a number of different forms, hardware or software, or security software incorporated into another device such as a router.

Hardware Vs Software. Dedicated software security is usually a complex application that requires a UNIX or Windows NT/2000 Server to run on. These products are well suited to businesses that already have UNIX or NT/2000 Servers and the technical support required to configure and maintain them.

Hardware firewalls, or gateway products that include security are normally based on ease of use and maintenance offering a plug and play solution. Preconfiguration is built into the product so that the user configuration is as easy as possible. As a result of this, gateway type devices are suitable for small and medium sized businesses with little or no in-house technical support and networking knowledge.

Routers that have additional security software upgrades can offer a good level of security. This solution is normally more expensive than the other options and can lack the performance needed as the security upgrade can extensively slow down the performance of the router as it is not optimised to carry out this function.

Network Address Translation (NAT), Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) & DoS detection

There is a difference in the level of security offered by NAT and SPI. NAT hides the local area network (LAN) behind it by making it look like there is only one PC sending data out onto the Internet. It does this by changing the private network addresses of PCs on the LAN to a public network address given by the Internet Service Provider. In this way, it looks like all data from the network is actually originating from one device. Therefore hackers that might be monitoring Internet traffic will only see one device. Stateful Packet Inspection monitors every packet entering or leaving the LAN and applies a series of firewall rules to decide whether to allow the packet to enter the network or not. It is called a stateful packet inspection because it examines the contents of the packet to determine what the state of the communication is - i.e. it ensures that the stated destination computer has previously requested the current communication. This is a way of ensuring that all communications are initiated by the recipient computer and are taking place only with sources that are known and trusted from previous interactions.

In addition to being more rigorous in their inspection of packets, stateful inspection firewalls also close off ports until connection to the specific port is requested. This allows an added layer of protection from the threat of port scanning. Denial of Service Attack Detection monitors traffic outside the protected network and looks for patterns of data that match known denial of service attack patterns. If a known pattern is detected then the connection is dropped, ensuring that the attack fails, therefore keeping the network secure and the details of the attack are logged for future reference.

Choosing your technology

The choice of which network security technology to use comes down to two things. How much money you are prepared to invest and how secure you want your network to be. A combination of at least two of the technologies will ensure the best security. For example – NAT and DoS prevention will provide a good level of security that will stop hackers from entering your network and from breaking your network through attacks. If more security is required then SPI can be used as well – this gives a fully comprehensive security system for your network.

To ensure that the level of security is of the highest standard, it is a good guideline to ensure that the product is certified by an external independent security organisation (e.g. ICSA). This will make sure that all the claims made about the product are true.

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)

A VPN is a secure method of accessing a private network using the public Internet. Encryption is used to ensure that any data sent is secure from those who might choose to snoop on the Internet. This can result in significant cost savings when compared to the cost of leased lines or dial-up costs for remote users to connect to a central network. Instead of having to pay for very expensive leased line links between sites or making, what could be, long distance calls to connect to a central network, VPNs can allow a remote site or user to connect to their local ISP and then connect to the central site securely, all at the cost of a local call.

It is vitally important that a firewall be able to pass through VPN traffic. This will allow PCs on the LAN to initiate a VPN tunnel to a remote site (e.g. a central office) to allow secure data transfer. It can also be possible for a gateway to initiate and terminate VPN tunnels itself. This allows multiple PCs on the LAN to share the same VPN tunnel and can also speed up the performance of the VPN tunnel if the gateway uses hardware to encrypt the data rather than software. There are a number of different VPN technologies that are available today. The main protocols are Point-to-Point Tunnel Protocol (PPTP), Secure Internet Protocol (IPSec) and Layer 2 Tunnel Protocol (L2TP). A further, indepth explanation of these is given in “Virtual Private Networks: Internetbased VPNs”.

e-Government Briefing Paper

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:16:00 +0800

Customer relationship management, basic definition:
Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach to doing business and providing better customer service. The technological solutions badged under the CRM header are enablers of this approach. As an approach to doing business, CRM implementation is as much about cultural and process change as it is about new technology.

Within the context of local government, customer relationship management (CRM) aims to improve customer service by encouraging a higher quality of customer interaction, and smoother internal operations. The emphasis is on improving service to the individual customer. This requires a shift from department-centric operations, to a more customer-focused approach.

Deployment of successful CRM can result in:

better customer information – better customer engagement strategies
better productivity – better communication with customers
better customer care – for each customer

Technical definition
There are three main components of a CRM system:
First, Analytical CRM – which provides information about service demand and performance, and includes the following elements:

customer segmentation
trend analysis
data warehousing
management information systems (MIS)

Second, Operational CRM – which automates elements of the service:

activity and time management
information and service request processing
service delivery
customer service and support
remote access to services and information

Third, Collaborative CRM – which allows joined-up working:

neighbourhood portals
customer access
partner/contractor access
e-business
personalisation of CRM

And there are five types of data to consider:
1. Customer data - customers can be anyone you transact with including partners and suppliers, and data about customers is continually outdated. Constant maintenance is required to prevent the system from overflowing with useless information.
2. Relationship (or transactional) data - all of the touch points with customers can be considered as transactions as they have an effect on the customer and the authority. They are history and they can help to predict future trends.
3. Management (or category) data - data within the system is classified by categories - allowing structure, data quality, analysis and segmentation. Authorities can expect to add any number of categories to the system and can choose from many when classifying material. Good use of categories aids an efficient system.
4. Meta data – it is one of the most financially and operationally important sections of the system, as it stores the system’s configuration. It is imperative that the metadata it is not corrupted or lost, as this would result in system failure.
5. Unstructured data - allows customer service staff to make notes on the system and store documents against data.

It is also important to remember that the needs of the IT platform are very different to the needs of the users:

Platform needs:

thick client or browser (preferably browser)
an operating system (for example, Windows, Linux, Unix)
a database
integration to back-office systems.
aim for e-government interoperability framework (e-GIF) compliance.

User needs:

a system that is easy to use
control of the telephone as a tool
ability to get data to whoever needs it
navigation to (and through) other applications
a harness on the internet
the reporting required
a help function that is understood and understands the user
the right hardware – for example, hand-helds for field based users
diary management – integrated to corporate diary software

Benefits to the local authority
The most obvious benefit is that of improved customer service. By providing current information through several access channels, available services can become more flexible for the customer, which in turn encourages greater interaction between the local authority and the user. For example, one stop shops and authority websites offer varied means by which to contact the authority. Expansion of available communication channels can create an increasingly citizen centric service, with less emphasis upon the authority and more upon the service user.

CRM can also encourage customers to try new access channels, such as the internet, which can be both more time and cost efficient from the point of view of the authority.

In addition to improved customer service, CRM can also ensure greater accountability. A CRM system provides a consistent and current source of information concerning a specific service and user, which in turn can create a more responsive service.

e-Government: Developed VS Developing Countries

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:14:00 +0800

Every year, the United Nations releases a report on the least developed countries (LDC) and compares their economic conditions in several different categories. For 2002, 49 countries were designated as the least developed. These countries were decided based on their low GDP per capita, their weak human assets, and their high degree of economic vulnerability (UNCTAD, 2002). E-Government implementation and development is a highpriority issue on various countries’ agenda. Some countries have surpassed others in online services that they offer to their citizens. Indicators on education and literacy show that, in Mozambique, only 7% of the total population was enrolled in secondary school. Indicators on communications and media show that, in Bangladesh, only 3.4% of the population has a telephone, while 9.3% are in the circulation of daily newspapers (UNCTAD, 2002).

Although e-government technologies have a potential to improve the lives of 80% of the world’s population that lives in developing countries, the developed countries such as the U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia are so far leaders in e-government (Annual Global Accenture Study, 2002), reaping the vast majority of initial gains of e-government implementation. Actually, the gap between developed and developing countries in Internet technological infrastructures, practices, and usage has been wider rather than narrower over recent years. Besides the lack of sufficient capital to build up expensive national information infrastructure (NII) on which e-government is based, developing countries also lack the sufficient knowledge and skill to develop suitable and effective strategies for establishing and promoting e-government.

An estimated 500 e-government programs were launched in the year 2001 by governments worldwide (Palmer, 2002). E-Government strategies have had a tremendous impact on the way governments interact with their citizens. More than 75% of Australians file income taxes online, while the mayor of Minnesota receives about 13,000 e-mails from the public each week (Palmer, 2002). According to the 2002 Annual Global Accenture (former Anderson consulting: AC) Study, Canada is the leader in e-government implementation. The remaining top 10 countries are (in order): Singapore, the United States, Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, Hong Kong, Germany, and Ireland. A survey by the United Nations found that of its 190 member states, only 36 out of the 169 available Web sites had one-stop portals and less than 20 offered online transactions (Jackson, 2002). This clearly shows a big gap in current e-government implementation status in different countries. A more recent study using the United Nations data empirically proves that e-government development and implementation differ in three areas: income level, development status, and region (Siau & Long, 2005).

In comparison with other countries, the United States along with Australia, Singapore, and Canada are the early leaders in the march toward e-government. Governments in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Norway, Hong Kong, and New Zealand have vowed to change their policies toward the implementation of e-government in order to take the full advantage of the digital information age. Other cautious implementers include Italy, Japan, Netherlands, and South Africa. Though there has been significant progress made in developed countries in e-government implementation, many developing countries have been left behind with a long way to catch up.

History and Culture
The history and culture between developed and developing countries are different in many aspects. Developed countries are known more for their early economic and governmental growth, with many governments forming in the 1500's. Several of the developing countries have just recently gained their independence and still do not have a specific government structure. Culture is also a major difference between developed and developing countries. Religious and other backgrounds among citizens of developing countries prevent them from doing certain activities that are commonplace among developed countries. War is also notorious among some developing countries in the Middle East and Asia (e.g., Afghanistan), which depletes their economy and their government structure.

Technology Staff
The in-house staff for most developed countries has been in existence and well-established. Although many of them are old, with half of the existing United States government information technology (IT) workers eligible to retire within the next three years (Ledford, 2002), the existing department is up and working. In contrast, many developing countries do not have an IT department in place or have an IT department that is low-skilled and insufficiently equipped. Education in these countries is a major problem as well as lack of financial resources to pay skilled workers. This brings up major issues with the development and maintenance of systems. Governments in many developed countries choose to outsource e-government projects. Developed countries often house companies specialized in e-government development within their borders, which makes outsourcing an affordable and convenient alternative. Though companies specialized in e-government development may be available in developing countries, the competitive systems development rates they charge may not be affordable for many developing countries. Even if outsourcing is affordable, without appropriate understanding of IT, many government officials of developing countries will find it difficult to specify requirements and resources to devote for the projects to be outsourced.

Infrastructure
The size and abilities of infrastructures between developed and developing countries differ dramatically. For example, India’s capacity for international telecom traffic reached just 780 Mbps by the end of 2000, which is a mere 1.4% of the capacity available in the neighboring country, China (Dooley, 2002). Developed countries have the infrastructure size and abilities to make Internet and telephone access available to almost all of their residents, with some populations over 300 million. The insufficient infrastructure of developing countries is due to economic conditions, war or destruction, which may have recently occurred, and governmental regulations of the telecommunications industry. A dilemma of government regulations also exists in India, where the sector has been a monopoly since its independence from Great Britain in 1947 (Dooley, 2002). All of these factors, unfortunately, hinder the progress of e-government in developing countries. Citizens The difference of Internet accessibility between developed and developing countries is a reflection of the countries’ infrastructure and telecommunication abilities.

As mentioned previously, developing countries lack financial resources and government stability and structure to contain a sizable infrastructure. This results in low access to the Internet and telephone. One third of the world’s population has never made a phone call, and 63 countries have less than 1% access to the Internet (ICeGD, 2002). In developed countries, almost every citizen has access to the Internet, and the rate of computer literacy surpasses that of developing countries. Government Officers It is imperative that government officials understand and value e-government. The level of resources they are willing to allocate is dependent on their understanding of technology and the benefits that will ensue. In developed countries, most government officials use the Internet or computers on a daily basis. Therefore, government officials in developed countries are familiar with technology and realize how efficient it is. This increases their dedication to allocating additional resources for further implementation. In developing countries, IT is a vague concept, and government officials are somewhat unwilling to allocate already scarce resources toward something they are not familiar with.

A Conceptual Framework Of e-Government Implementation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:10:00 +0800

Most, if not all, e-government strategies and implementation plans in developing countries have been based on theories and experiences of developed countries (Huang, D’Ambra, & Bhalla, 2002). Feeling the pressure and demand from citizens to provide e-government services online, many developing countries have no choice but to hastily jump into the e-government implementation wagon by following e-government development strategies proposed and carried out by developed countries. However, due to substantial differences in many key aspects of e-government related technological and social conditions between developed and developing countries, e-government development strategies and experiences from developed countries may not be directly applicable to developing countries. Even in developed countries, about 20-25% of egovernment projects are either never implemented or abandoned immediately after implementation, and a further 33% fail partially in terms of falling short of major goals, causing significant undesirable outcomes or both (Heeks, 2000).

The Center for International Development at Harvard University, USA, supported by IBM, identified four key factors describing differences between developing and developed countries in terms of implementing e-commerce (Kirkman, Osorio, & Sachs, 2002). These four factors are adapted to study e-government in this research, which are termed as National E-Government Infrastructure (NeI) factors.

Nel Factor 1: Network Access
Network access is measured by the availability, cost, and quality of information and communication technology (ICTs) networks, services, and equipment. More specifically, it includes the following key elements:

Infrastructure Development. Infrastructure development is a necessity before countries can consider any large projects dedicated to e-government. Citizens must have access to services before any of the cost saving benefits will apply. Also, with a lack of back-end infrastructure, governments and their employees will be unable to move into a transactional process and further stages of e-government implementation.

Resources and IT Support. Outsourcing can be an option for countries to implement e-government. The private sector has an obligation to support governments throughout the world in their dedication to e-government. Developing countries need financial discounts and support from the private sector to successfully develop applications due to their lack of resources and staff.

Utilization. The citizen utilization of the Internet is based on the access to the Internet and the Web site. Technical support must provide 24/7 access in addition to providing a better infrastructure so that more citizens can utilize the Internet. Much like in developed countries, citizen utilization is an important part of the cost savings for countries.

Nel Factor 2: Network Learning
Network learning concerns two key issues:
(1) Does an educational system integrate ICTs into its processes to improve learning? and
(2) Are there technical training programs in the community that can train and prepare an ICT workforce? Technical staffing and training is a major issue in e-government implementation. In developing countries, the problems lie in the lack of financial resources to hire full–time, in-house support and in the inability to find such support due to the lack of education in these countries. Outsourcing is an alternative; however, affordable and competent companies may not be available. Even if a country can find the finances to support an outsourcing project, stability and maintenance of the application are often difficult.

Nel Factor 3: Network Economy
Network economy concerns how businesses and governments use information and communication technologies to interact with the public and with each other. Key issues involved include collaboration,
partnership, public-private sector partnership, e-community creation, and so forth. Boundary removal between different agencies in a government is a major issue in egovernment. In many developing countries,
government structure is undefined and destabilized by corruption and communism. Consequently, boundary removal and department collaboration is a difficult and slow process. In many countries, war and terrorism is a constant issue that disrupts government operations on a daily basis. Government departments must collaborate with each other, with private sectors, and with related communities in order for e-government to be implemented in an efficient way. Due to the low computer literacy and high cost of online access,
long and unnecessary transactions need to be cut down in processes to allow users to quickly access documents and print them or fill them out online.

Nel Factor 4: Network Policy
Network policy concerns the extent that the policy environment promotes or hinders the growth of ICT adoption and use. Some related key issues include legislations, laws, strategies (visions and missions), accountability, and so forth. Government agencies and departments must be accountable for their information and processes they support. It is essential for processes and duties to be segregated and
responsibilities to be assigned to appropriate agencies and departments. These agencies and departments then need to work together to design their Web pages and IT flows. After implementation, they must have the abilities and be held accountable to support the Web pages and troubleshoot them. Governments must also be accountable for their financial and accounting systems.

Many developing countries have issues and economic problems due to their lack of reliable accounting systems. Culture and Society Factors E-Commerce largely deals with business transactions in private sector whereas e-government deals with services in the public sector. Due to key differences between private and public sectors (e.g., Bozeman & Bretschneider, 1986; Caudle, Gorr, & Newcomer, 1991; Rainey, Backoff, & Levine, 1976), factors other than the ones identified by the previouslymentioned Harvard University e-commerce research project may also be important to e-government strategies and implementations. Prior relevant research suggested some key factors for e-government strategies and implementations, which can be used to identify differences in e-government between developed and developing countries. Those suggested factors include society factors like history, citizens (Huang, ’Ambra, & Bhalla, 2002), government staff and governance (Wimmer, Traunmuller, & Lenk, 2001), organizational structure (Baligh, 1994); and cultural factors like national culture (Hoftstede, 1980, 1991), organizational culture (Hoftstede, 1980; Schein, 1993), and social norms (Ajzen, 1988). Other than those suggested by literature, society factors like politics and information availability should also be considered. Developing countries are often less democratized with underdeveloped press communication resulting in unbalanced and deficient information availability. These politics and information factors have significant impact on the speed of infrastructure establishment in developing countries, thus should be considered in creating e-government strategies.

Based upon the earlier literature review and discussion, a research framework incorporating critical success factors (CSFs) which influence e-government strategies and implementations is proposed. Some CSFs identified in the proposed framework could be more important to developed countries than to developing countries, or vice versa. The framework can also be used to assess and guide the strategic development of e-government implementation in developed and developing countries.

How To Find Out Your Wifi Mac Address in Windows Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:25:00 +0800

Yesterday i have to connected some laptop with wifi to AP (Access Point) at my office, some use XP other Vista, with XP i have no trouble how to find out their Mac Address (my AP security filtering client Mac address) but with Vista, hmm.. i can't find it with right-click the wireless lan properties? Why they hide it?

Finally after googling, i found it! Is very simple just go to DOS Prompt then type there: ipconfig /all

They'll show you the mac address, not just the wireless but the other network peripherals too! This command work at Windows XP, Vista, 2000 and server edition.

What? Fedora 9 Releashed Too?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:26:00 +0800

I'm not yet finished my hot date with fedora 8, now they give me another hotties number 9?! Wow! Wonderfull! Wanna go there read about this babe. This night is will be a long night!

My Fave Linux Distro Gentoo 2008.0 final release is out!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:12:00 +0800

Gentoo is one from three of my fave Linux Distro (other: Fedora, CentOS). Finally Gentoo Linux 2008.0 has been released. This release contains numerous new features, including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the live CD. Live DVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree. Highlights: updated installer - the installer now only performs networkless installations using the packages and ebuild tree on the Live CD; improved hardware support - moving to the 2.6.24 kernel added many new drivers for hardware released since the 2007.0 release; updated packages - Portage 2.1.4.4, a 2.6.24 kernel, Xfce 4.4.2, GCC 4.1.2 and glibc 2.6.1." Read the complete release announcement for further information. Download the installable live CDs from here: livecd-i686-installer-2008.0-r1.iso (688MB, or this torrent if you use torrent client).

e-Government, Between Idea and Implementation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:04:00 +0800

BAHASA INDONESIA

E-Government definition from The World Bank Group is: E-Government refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. Palu city government really concern about the "using IT technology" in their organization. In 2006 as network administrator from local University i was involved when Palu city government build 3 big towers (about 30 meters height) and 4 mini tower (about 20 meters height) to coverage all the government building in Palu city with wireless network connection.

Windows XP SP3 final release 5512

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:15:00 +0800

Microsoft revealed in the introduction of the Overview of Windows XP Service Pack 3. With the Release Candidates of Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 heading to increased testing pools the past week, and with Microsoft cooking the first public build of the first refresh for its latest Windows client, the official overview for XP SP3 is the only crumb from the service pack fiesta over at the Redmond company. The Release Candidate of XP SP3 in a pre-final stage has already shipped to MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system. This specific package also contains debugging symbols specific to binaries included in Service Pack 3.

ISO Image and Remastering XP with SP3 5512 included
You can find and download --lot of-- the torrent file with your torrent client here. If you don't have torrent client, download it here, it's freeware.

Get Access To Your Own Files or Folders (Access Denied)

noreply@blogger.com (WARTEKnet) — Fri, 9 May 2008 00:43:00 +0800

This is a short guide to help gain ownership of a folder that give you those annoying "Access denied" messages on your own system. This will reassign the ownership of the blocked folder giving you complete access to whatever you want, giving control back to you!

This guide was developed because even though I had administrator rights, I couldn't get access to certain folders. It was really annoying because I owned this system and Windows would not even let me access certain folders on my own system giving me an "access denied" message. What the h***!! This case usually happened after we upgrade our windows XP or install new windows XP in old partition or restoring from backup.

This guide will also help you gain access to other people's folders on your own system (such as My Documents or even profiles).

This guide is meant for Windows XP Systems. I'm not sure about the result or steps with Vista.

1) Log on to the computer with an account that is setup as an Administrator. If you are using XP Home, you must boot into safe mode, and then log on to an account that has Admin access in order to access the security tab.

2) If you are using xp pro, the first thing you must do is disable Simple File Sharing. In a folder menu, click Tools, then Folder Options.

3) In the "View" tab, scroll down until you see "Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended)". Turn that off. Then close the "Folder Options" window.

4) Right-click the folder that you want to take control of, and then click Properties. You should see 4 tabs that say "general", "sharing", "Security", and "Customize". Click the Security tab.

5) Next, click the "Advanced" tab, and then click the Owner tab.

6) In the user list, click the user name or you want have access to the folder, or click Administrator if you are logged in as the Administrator. If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder you originally selected, click the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.

7) Next, click OK, and then select Yes when you receive the message:

"You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folder name. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control?"

Click "Yes". This will transfer ownership of the folder over to whomever you selected.

TinyMe Test 7 Realesed!

noreply@blogger.com (WARTEKnet) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:10:00 +0800

TinyMe Test 7, a PCLinuxOS-based (PCLinux, the linux distribution on top list at distrowatch.com in latest 3 month) distribution designed for installation on older computers, has been released: "TinyMe test 7 is now available! Here's a list of what we've done since test 6: Created TinyCC, a desktop control center; fixed bug where users could not change resolution in PCLinuxOS control center; Openbox menu now conforms to PCLinuxOS menu system; updated Openbox to 3.4.5; updated SciTE, gThumb, Opera, Galculator, ALSA, Sakura, and NDISwrapper; updated Conky, system monitor; switched to Nitrogen for wallpaper setting tool; simplified desktop system monitor to make it less obtrusive; improved logout options; added Sylpheed e-mail client, gFTP, video installation tool.

TinyMe test 7 is now available! All known major bugs have been squashed. While TinyMe still has a couple of known minor issues, it is our hope that this is practically good as final. Here's a list of what we've done since test 6:

Created TinyCC, a Desktop Control Center.
Fixed bug where users could not change resolution in PCLinuxOS Control Center. Added task-x11.
Fixed bug where some users would get a message of "Your session has lasted less than 10 seconds" right after logging in. We are now using Gnome Session Manager to start the TinyMe desktop.
Openbox menu now conforms to PCLinuxOS menu system. Right-click on the desktop to see the Openbox menu.
Updated Openbox to 3.4.5.
Updated SciTE, gThumb, Opera, Galculator, ALSA, Sakura, and ndiswrapper.
Updated Conky, system monitor. Now supports RSS feeds and wireless networking. Audacious information now only shows when Audacious is running.
Updated Gnome files. New features such as search and "recently used" are available.
Switched to Nitrogen for wallpaper setter (and added a few wallpapers).
Simplified desktop system monitor to make it less obtrusive.
More icons on desktop.
Improved logout options. Now has an option to Switch User.
Root and regular users have different GTK themes.
LiveCD should now eject on shutdown.
Added Testdisk.
Added ePDFViewer.
Added Sylpheed e-mail client.
Added gFTP, a small yet robust e-mail client.
Added VIT, Video Installation Tool. VIT will help you get the proper video drivers for your video card.

Known issues:

When burning an ISO, Grafburn does not unmount drive if it is mounted.
Openbox menu hack causes garbage to be produced when installing some programs or otherwise running update-menus.
WPA encryption is reported to not work.

You can download TinyMe Test 7 at:
http://www.mypclinuxos.com/doku.php/tinyme:download

TinyMe is a PCLinuxOS-based distribution which is targeted at older computers and people who want a very light and fast desktop environment. It runs Openbox for the window manager, LXPanel for the panel, Nitrogen sets the wallpaper, and iDesk provides the icons. There is are two control centers in TinyMe, one for managing your desktop and one for configuring your system. TinyMe comes as a small, 200MB ISO, yet provides tools for most all of your everyday wants and needs: Web browsing, E-Mail, Word Processing, Audio Player, Photo Viewer and Digital Camera application, PDF viewer, Text Editor, FTP client, and even Gweled, a game.