Category: Network Management

Article

TRENDNet Adds Unmanaged POE switch pair | SmallNetBuilder

From the horse’s mouth

TRENDNet

Product Pages (TPE-T80H 8 port, TP-T160H 16-port)

My Comments

TRENDNet have just launched a pair of unmanaged desktop switches that have 802.3at Power-Over-Ethernet across ports and are offering them as a USD$280 8-port variant and a USD$510 16-port variant.

Most unmanaged desktop Ethernet switches that offer Power-Over-Ethernet power typically offer this for half of the ports that they have but this pair of switches has all ports with Power Over Ethernet. These units have 30 watts maximum per port for 802.11at power with the TPE-T80H 8-port variant having 125 watts total power and the TPE-T160H 16-port variant having 250 watts total power.

One major limitation with both these switches is that they are limited to 10/100Mbit/s throughput which may be OK for running most cameras, IP phones or 802.11n access points. It would be better to see TRENDNet offer them as an all-Gigabit version to cater for the newer 802.11ac access points or higher-throughput 802.11n access points, especially if adding this functionality has a slight per-port premium over a 10/100 setup.

Both of them can be desktop switches but also come with “rack ears” so they can be installed in a 19” standard equipment rack. This allows contractors to install the switches in an “integrated” manner rather than having them pile up on a desktop.

Here, I would position these switches for a baseline VoIP or IP surveillance setup or a system that has a mix of access points and entry-level VoIP or IP-surveillance equipment.

Article

You Can Start and Stop This Wi-Fi Voice Recorder From Your Smartphone | Gizmodo

From the horse’s mouth

Olympus America

Press Release

Product Page

My Comments

When I mentioned about the digital cameras in my first report on the Consumer Electronics Show 2014, I had gave a brief mention to the Olympus DM-901 digital voice recorder which is able to exploit Wi-Fi wireless network technology. The question that could be raised is whether the recorder works as its own wireless network or is able to be part of an existing small wireless network such as a home network, a phone’s “personal hotspot” or a Mi-Fi’s local network.

This recorder uses Wi-Fi alongside a smartphone app to provide it with remote-control ability. For example, when you are recording a presentation, you could place the recorder on the podium or a piece of furniture near where the speaker is and choose where to sit rather than always having to be “up the front” with your recorder to make sure it’s recording properly.

There is also the ability to upload pictures you take with your smartphone to the recorder in order to create a visual index. This would be relevant when you are taking pictures of the slides shown in the presentation or items that are being demonstrated through that presentation or you take a picture of someone who is giving their report in a multi-speaker meeting.

The recorder also has the ability to upload recordings to Dropbox for cloud-based archiving or sharing but I would also like to see this be extended to the ability to upload to SoundCloud or other audio-sharing services.

Like most of the good-quality voice recorders, the Olympus has the voice-recording optimisation abilities which include 2 high-grade microphones with “zoom microphone” function that also ramps up the recording level, along with a voice-balancing algorithm to balance between loud and soft voices.

There is the 4Gb on-board storage but the Olympus has an SDHC card slot so you can record to SD cards and have separate SD cards for each project you are working on. The 4Gb on-board storage can allow for 850 hours of lowest-quality recording (WMA 8kbps mono). There is a high-quality PCM recording option along with the microphones having a 70Hz-20KHz frequency range that may get you by for basic live-music recording needs like recording a child singing or playing the piano. The battery can run for 29 hours recording on a single charge which will give you room for some of the big audio note-taking projects.

Personally, I would like to see future generations of this recorder also have Bluetooth A2DP or DLNA-over-Wi-Fi playback abilities so you can play the recorder through the new crop of wireless speakers for a larger room-filling sound yet have a wireless link. Similarly, a model with an external microphone input or line-level input could come in handy if the goal is to obtain a better recording from a PA system’s microphone. The Wi-Fi functionality could also be augmented with direct support for PassPoint-enabled Wi-Fi hotspots because of the prevalence of hotspots at meeting venues and hotels.

But what I see of this is a cutting-edge voice recorder that offers functionality that wouldn’t be offered on this class of device.

Article

802.11ac Specification Is Final | SmallNetBuilder

My Comments

There is a lot of Wi-Fi wireless-network hardware out there that is compliant to the 802.11ac wireless-network specification but this equipment is built on a draft version of that standard. This standard uses the 5GHz band to offer around very high data transfers with rates that are even close to Gigabit Ethernet speeds. Some of us may be loathe to buy or specify the earlier equipment due to it not working well with equipment from different vendors due to the earlier draft standards.

But this week, the IEEE standardisation body have called the final version of the 802.11ac specification a final standard which is capable of even working to 7 Gbps. To make sure that your current 802.11ac equipment works to this standard, it is worth checking at the manufacturer’s Website for newer firmware that implements the final version of this standard.

Similarly, it would be the time to be able to buy or specify 802.11ac wireless-network equipment that works to the final standard or is able to work to that standard after a firmware update. As far as rolling out or improving your wireless network is concerned, the 802.11ac-compliant wireless router or access point can work with 802.11n clients at the 802.11n speeds but I would recommend these are set for any n/ac compatibility mode.

For that matter, this announcement has not come at a good time as the Consumer Electronics Show 2014 in Las Vegas due to the plethora of home and small-business network equipment based on this standard being launched there. The next milestone would be for Intel to embed this technology in to their Centrino wireless-network chipsets to work with the latest laptops. Welcome to lightning fast Wi-Fi multimedia on your tablet or Ultrabook.

Article

Even small businesses can benefit from a standard operating environment

My Comments

What is a standard operating environment?

A standard operating environment is a set of hardware and software specifications required for computer systems operated in a business or other organisation. This can range from a particular hardware build for the regular computers, through a particular version of the computer’s operating systems to the mix of application software that runs on these computers including the version of these programs.

Small businesses who run a few computers may find the concept of a standard operating environment very foreign because their IT situation tends to work on an organic basis. This is typically where computers and peripherals are purchased one at a time on an “as-needed” basis.

Where is this often seen?

Large organisations who maintain many computers run the computers on a standard operating environment in order for make the task of deploying or supporting these computers easier for the organisation’s IT staff. Some of these organisations also place value on the standard operating environment as a way to assure system and organisational security along with employee productivity.

Similarly, IT contractors and value-added resellers who set up computing environments for small businesses such as POS systems for retail work on a standard operating environment when supplying these systems. This is more so if the systems are being offered on a “turnkey” basis.

Why is this advantageous

The advantages offered by a standard operating environment mean that it is easier to diagnose problems that crop up on these computers, train users on how to operate these computers and deploy any newer computers.

This is facilitated with practices like installing software on a new computer from a baseline disk image that you keep or specifying to an IT supplier the make-up of your machines that you are buying. The use of group policies and similar functions supported by the desktop operating systems can be used as a tool to lock down the standard operating environment.

There is also the ability to test new software on a few machines to “smoke out” any problems with the software or test-drive new hardware specifications before you call it as being part of your environment.

Can multiple standard operating environments exist?

You can create multiple standard operating environments for particular computer-usage functions.

One way this can be achieved is through a “modular” standard operating environment that has a baseline specification for hardware, operating system, Web browser, security, office-productivity and other software; along with a list of other software that matches the computer’s function such as accounting, video-editing or other software. This would work well if your computing equipment is based on the same platform such as Windows or Macintosh.

Another way would be to create a few standard-operating-environments which can pertain to particular hardware platforms such as creating a Windows environment, an Apple Macintosh environment and an Android tablet environment. These would appeal to organisations that work with different platforms based on their prowess.

What to avoid

Inability to roll out system-improvement patches and updates

A mistake that can be easily made with a standard operating environment is to “freeze” the software specification to the exact version you are running. This habit may preclude the deployment of critical updates, security patches and other incremental revisions  that are necessary to keep a system that runs smoothly and is secure in your business environment.

There was a situation where a video-surveillance system with cameras that ran older firmware that couldn’t work with anything newer than an older version of Windows server. This system’s server which was on its own network with the cameras had been compromised due to a weakness in the software.

To avoid this, make sure that when you call a standard operating environment, you use the major versions of the software as your defined versions. As well, assess the standard operating environment every few years so you can run newer software in to the equation.

Systems that shirk the established software interfaces and device classes

Another mistake that can occur is avoiding updates or upgrades that don’t touch established interfaces for hardware and software.

Currently, we are seeing class-wide interface specifications for particular hardware and software like the Mass-Storage Class, Audio Class and Human Interface Device classes for USB connections; A2DP/AVRCP Profile, Headset/Handsfree Profile and Human Interface Device Profiles for Bluetooth; along with SMB/CIFS, DLNA and WebDAV for network-based setups.  These have allowed the use of devices that do the job better with a standard operating environment because it is feasible to upgrade the devices to suit one’s needs without deploying new software that could break the setup.

This is also important as newer hardware that will supersede your existing hardware becomes part of the equation and you find existing hardware approaching the end if its useful life. Here, you may have to run software components to allow your legacy software to benefit from the industry standards or, as I have mentioned before,, factor in the industry standards when you revise the standard operating environment.

How to go about it

This could be applied by using “downgrade rights” for operating systems that are supplied with computers if your organisation runs an earlier version of that operating system. It can also include buying equipment from the same dealer such as a business-focused computer store rather than Harvey Norman or the like.

Also identifying a “mix” of hardware and software that is working together yet is able to take the latest updates and patches that assure security, stability and performance can be a useful method for determining a standard operating environment. For a small business, this could mean identifying a computer like a laptop that you can tolerate as a “testbed” computer and using that to take updates before organising mass updates.

Similarly you can use this machine to test-drive new software versions to see how they run and whether it is worth it to deploy them in to the standard operating environment. This, along with flexibility to use particular productivity-boosting tools avoids the creation of a standard operating environment that is reminiscent of that ordinary old Ford station wagon.

One way that I would prefer for establishing a standard operating environment is to call a baseline software specification for each computing platform you are using i.e. Windows, MacOS X, etc. This covers the operating system and the desktop productivity suite that you run with. As for the class of computer to use, you could call a baseline specification for the different hardware classes such as desktops, laptops, etc. For function-specific software, you can then call a mix of software that does the job to full effect and this may be assisted by an IT contractor which focuses on the business class you are representing.

Conclusion

The idea of a standard operationg environment can come in to its own when your business matures and you start to acquire a significant number of computers and could be a way to describe a business “growing up”. But there needs to be a proper way of going about it and allowing for software performance, security and stability updates.

A house of the kind that you may buy to fix up

You have set a goal for yourself to buy that old house or apartment and move in to it with a view to improve it over the near term to make it more suited to you and your lifestyle. On the other hand, you want to buy a cheap old house, apartment or shop that isn’t in a serious state of disrepair; and “do it up” with a view to either sell it or rent it out at a later date.

These ideas may be brought on with the home-renovations TV shows and magazines, or you are a builder, architect or someone similar who has retired from the trade but want to “keep your hands busy” with a home-improvement challenge.

Of course, your effort will primarily be focused on a structurally-sound house with all of the deterioration removed from the house. You will also be targeting energy efficiency by replacing older inefficient fittings and appliances with newer efficient equipment as well as installing insulation. In some cases, you may also increase your project’s safety and security factor by making deck rails and the like compliant to new standards, installing smoke alarms or installing newer better locks on the outside doors.

Wiring infrastructure

But you would need to consider factoring in the online and networked life as part of this effort. This can be done by assessing the electrical and telecommunications wiring that is part of your house’s infrastructure. It also includes whether to plan a Category 5 Ethernet wiring infrastructure as described in an article I wrote about wiring your house for Ethernet.

Choosing your trades

When it comes to the time for you or your builder to choose the trades involved with your renovation project, you will have to pay attention to what your electricians are capable of. Here, it is important to know whether they are aware of today’s online lifestyle and are competent with making wiring suit this.

For example, most of the electricians who work with AV and IT wiring or do “connected home” wiring are more likely to work for the online lifestyle. Here, they are more likely to assess and work with telephony, Ethernet and similar wiring setups or see AC wiring from an “online lifestyle” view.

Wall plates and fittings

If your effort is centred on a house with particular fitting styles like the round fittings and you want to “keep the look”, it is a good idea to know of people who can source modern switches and outlets commensurate to the styles. Here, you have the advantage of safer and more modern designs that suit today’s requirements while you have something that blends in attractively with the look.

AC wiring

AC-wiring infrastructure that is in good order isn’t just safe but reliably serves as a wired no-new-wires segment with these HomePlug devices

The AC wiring in the house has to be in good condition not just to be safe and reliable but to reliably run a HomePlug AV segment over that wiring. This is something you would also tackle as you move the house towards modern reliable efficient appliances and equipment such as moving the heating away from oil and other inefficient fuels. Similarly your effort may also be about rewiring to accommodate newer power usage requirements like an increased number of appliances in use at one time.

I would make sure that the switchgear that is part of your AC infrastructure is up-to-date and reliable not just for safe electricity supply but also to allow a HomePlug AV powerline segment to operate in a reliable manner. As well as a fuse blowing too frequently or nuisance tripping from a circuit breaker, a HomePlug segment that exhibits unreliable or poor operation is also an indication of switchgear that has “gone to pot”.

The first thing to be aware of are older fuse boxes and consumer units that use the really old switchgear. This is more something you come across with older houses that haven’t ever been rewired or had a “shotgun approach” when it comes to maintenance of their electrical infrastructure. If a house has been recently rewired with newer switchgear, you are more likely to have reliable HomePlug network operation.

US readers will come across the Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter circuit breakers in their consumer switchboards as these are being mandated for most residential AC circuits as part of recent iterations of the National Electrical Code. There are some variants of these circuit breakers that use a capacitor across the power-supply bridge rather than an inductor and these work against a reliable well-performing HomePlug segment. A good practice would be to make sure that you have the AFCI circuit breakers that implement inductors across the power-supply bridge installed in the consumer switchboard where this type of circuit breaker is needed. Existing installations may require your electrician to “go over” your switchboard to install inductor-based AFCI circuit breakers in place of the capacitor-based types.

Telephone

As for reworking the house’s telephone wiring, you may have to set up a “top-down” approach for each telephone line. This is where you identify a “hub” close to the demarcation point for your telephone infrastructure and make this easily accessible from indoors.

Here, you can set up a central ADSL or VDSL2 splitter which is essential if you have an alarm system, especially a “full” monitored type rather than simple dial-out system is in place or you consider using a business telephone system. This also plays well for if you move towards a VoIP telephone system with an analogue telephone adaptor or Internet gateway with integrated IP telephony functionality like most of the “n-boxes” sold in France. It also works well for fibre-to-the-premises or telephony-via-cable-TV installations where a telephony bridge of some sort is to be in place.

The in-place wiring has to be assessed for reliability and quality to make sure that you aren’t dealing with wiring that will ruin reliable DSL operation or cause excessive noise on the phone system.

I would also see if you can get the telco to investigate the wiring from the exchange to the premises especially if the property is in a rural, regional or peri-urban area. This is because it is known for telcos to allow the wiring to “go to pot” because these areas aren’t considered “worth it” and an ADSL install may simply be just a DSLAM installed in the exchange. Flaky connectors may pass for a voice call but they impair the reliability of any data traffic like ADSL or fax traffic.

Ethernet

8-port Gigabit Ethernet switch for use when you wire for Ethernet

An Ethernet backbone is a must when you are dealing with a large house especially a large country house or a house with a lot of interior walls that are made of brick, stone or similar material including brick or masonry fireplaces of the remnants thereof. But this option is worth considering for most mid-size and small houses if you can afford it. Here, this allows for high throughput network and Internet traffic across the house including working as a backbone for a multiple-access-point wireless network

In the case of a large house, an Ethernet backbone must reach at least a few rooms upstairs and downstairs and across the length of the large house. This could cover the office area and all of the lounge areas plus one or two bedrooms like the master suite. Smaller properties could allow you to just cover an office area and one or two of the lounge areas.

If you are wanting to read more about wiring for Ethernet, I have written a special article about wiring your premises for Ethernet and how to go about this. This includes covering a larger number of rooms or achieving the bare minimum along with two or more possible wiring layouts that can be used.

Positioning all the equipment

Here, you could identify a well-ventilated cupboard or similar space which you could use as a “hub” for your telecommunications equipment. This area would require plenty of wall space and the ability to install shelving where you can keep modems, routers, NAS units and the like. The wall space can play its part if you are using Ethernet switches and routers that can be mounted on the wall.

Some of you may prefer to position all of the equipment in the home office but this may require a way to conceal the equipment where aesthetics are desired. You could achieve this with an integrated cupboard similar to a wardrobe where you can store this equipment.

One goal with this area is to make sure that it is ventilatied in some form so as to allow the equipment to be kept cool. As well, make sure you have the outlets, including plenty of power outlets in that area. If you are doing anything with an existing in-place alarm system such as upgrading it, you could move the “panel” to that cupboard, but you would need to be sure there is enough room for the other network devices in this space.

Factoring in the online lifestyle

In the main lounge areas where you are likely to do a lot of TV watching, make sure that where there is the TV antenna (aerial) socket, there is an Ethernet socket if you integrating Ethernet infrastructure.. This is to cater for reliable operation of your smart TV’s online functionality. As well, the Wi-Fi segment should reliable cover that area especially as people use a smartphone or tablet as a “second screen” during TV watching or game playing.

At least one or two of the bedrooms should be considered important in the online lifestyle context because some households purpose these beyond a bedroom. For example, these may be used as a study / office or den / secondary lounge space. Here, you would need to make sure that an Ethernet outlet exists in this room if you run Ethernet infrastructure, while you have optimum Wi-Fi wireless coverage encompassing that room.

The private spaces are still important in the online lifestyle especially when you want to work on a project of some form alone. Here, the home-office or “den” is important as a private space. But you may find that another room or hall space serving as a secondary “study / office” area. Here, the secondary space should have reliable Wi-Fi coverage at least.

Conclusion

Once you tackle a home renovation job with the online lifestyle whether for yourself or as part of something that others can benefit from, you are able to be assured of reliable operation of the new technology that is part of your online lifestyle even though you keep the old place maintaining its charm.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Solwise

Product Page (PL-600AV-SMT-PIGGY AC Passthrough HomePlug AV2 adaptor)

My Comments

Linksys and Zyxel had offered two HomePlug AV2 devices to the North American market that are based on the first generation of this technology. Here, these units don’t implement the multiple-input multiple-output functionality that allows for higher throughput but the current implementations allow for robust HomePlug-based powerline network segments.

Regular readers will know that the HomePlug AV2 technology provides an improvement over the HomePlug AV and AV500 by integrating various abilities that allow for robustness, such as the ability for a HomePlug AV2 node to become its own repeater. This is in addition to it being able to use the safety earth wire along with the power wires to provide for increased signal reliability in the most difficult of operating environments such as commercial or industrial environments or inter-building links.

Solwise have become the first to roll out a HomePlug AV2 setup with the same first-generation implementation for the UK market and the first to show up this product with the UK mains plug. This time it is in the form of a GBP£29.59 “homeplug” with a Gigabit Ethernet socket and a filtered AC passthrough outlet to plug your other appliances into. This means that you don’t forfeit an AC outlet just to run your HomePlug AV2 segment.

What I see of this is that Solwise are validating the HomePlug technology by selling equipment that isn’t ordinary but can do a lot more. They even place their cards on the table by exposing what chipsets these units use so that people can know what runs best for their small network.

Article

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/11/10/fbis-operation-ghost-click-takes-out-operators-of-dnschanger-malware-network/

FBI guidance document on checking your computer’s DNS settings (PDF) – mainly applies to most regular-computer operating systems

My Comments and explanation

What are DNS servers?

The DNS is the Internet’s phone book

Domain Name Servers – the Internet’s phone book

The Domain Name Servers are effectively the Internet’s “telephone directories”. In this analogy, you may be thinking of calling a particular person or business in a particular area, but you don’t know their phone number. So you would have looked up the White Pages telephone book and searched this book by name and location till you found their number which you would dial to make that call. If you couldn’t find it in that directory, you would proceed to call a published “Directory Assistance” number like 411 in the USA, 192 in the UK or 1223 in Australia to ask for that number.

With the Internet, each computer is addressed by a particular IP address which effectively is the computer’s or network’s “phone number”. But it would be hard to remember these addresses for the Web sites we visit or the email servers we send the emails to. The Domain Name Servers take up the role of the telephone directories of the Internet by mapping the human-understandable Web addresses and domain names like homenetworking01.info to the IP addresses that are these sites and resources’ actual locations on the Internet.

How are these determined in your computer or network?

In most cases, the details about what DNS servers to use are passed on to your computer or other device through your home network by the router every time each piece of equipment on that network uses the DHCP protocol to get information from that device about where it stands in your network like its IP address. The router typically gets these details from your Internet provider’s servers every time it sets up the Internet connection with your Internet provider as part of asking the servers where it stands in the wider world of the Internet.

It is feasible to configure a DNS server list for a particular computer, device  or network using the operating system’s network-settings interface or the Web-based management interface in the case of your router. This is a practice that is commonly done by corporations with their private networks to create human-readable identities to particular servers or networks that host particular resources.

Why does the DNS appeal to computing’s “bad actors”?

The DNS appeals to computing’s “bad actors” because it allows one to redirect a particular domain name to a different IP address that what it is supposed to go to. This can be to a Web server that is loaded with malware, existing as one of many different traps for users to supply information that is confidential to them or their organisation; or to keep them away from sites that provide proper information like security updates for your computer in order to make it easier for the network to be used by the Internet’s “bad actors”.

For email, it can also be about creating “honeypot” addresses that take advantage of domain-name typos in order to catch confidential email that is mistakenly addressed.

It can also be used as part of a concerted attempt against Websites by setting up “click-fraud” or “malvertisement” activities against advertising networks or their stakeholders i.e. the advertisers and publishers by sending users to or through dodgy Websites instead of to the advertiser’s campaign landing page.

This modification can be caused by malware that modifies the computer’s DNS settings or gets at these settings on a home-network router that hasn’t been properly set up with a password to affect the settings that everyone on the network knows.

Keeping the DNS settings safe

DNS settings in Windows ipconfig / all screen

The first step is to know what the DNS settings are to be for your computer and network. Here, this should be found out from your Internet service provider or the IT support staff at your workplace.

Check the DNS settings on your equipment to make sure they reflect what these settings are meant to be. Most platforms will show these details in a “Network Connections” option like the “Control Panel – Network And Internet – Network And Sharing Center” in Windows 8 and 8.1, or “[Apple] – System Preferences – Networking” on the Macintosh OS X. Windows users can use the Command Prompt to obtain these details by typing “ipconfig /all” to obtain the full details about their network connection. Most other network-enabled devices like Smart TVs and network printers have these details as part of the “Network” or similar settings, typically as part of a “troubleshooting” or “settings” menu.

DNS settings on network setup screen on Brother network printer

Infact, if you suspect that malware has got at your computer because it appears to go to different Websites than what you asked for, make a “spot check” on your network’s DNS settings using your games console’s, smart TV’s or network printer’s user interface to see if your router has been “got at” by the malware.

As for your router, check the DNS settings in your WAN, Internet, Network or DHCP settings menu in its Web-based management page. The router’s management password should also be set to a password other than the default password so that any DNS-changing malware can’t change these settings for the home network and is something you need to do as part of commissioning a new router. Most of these routers also allow you to export the settiings to your computer’s secondary storage and import them back to the router. This is a practice that is worth doing once you have all the settings in place so that if you reset the router to “ground zero”, you can keep your configuration.

As well, practicing good computer housekeeping like “think before you click” on email and Website links and keeping your desktop security software and operating system up-to-date with the latest security patches is a prudent step towards keeping away from malware that can change your network’s DNS addresses. For mobile and other “platform” computing environments like iOS, Android or your smart-TV environment, researching on apps provided by that app store is also a prudent way to go about keeping the DNS information safe.