The economic value of networks

Networking has given a different perspective on the economy. Taking a business to the net gives it a better chance of survival, As a business you would do whatever you could to keep your business going and if it applies to your business you should definitely consider going online.

So what can the net bring to your business?

Pro’s

• Global marketing, allowing you to ship across the world to anyone who needs your product.
• 24 hour service, allowing people to order from your business 24/7.
• Allows for automation, Invoices, billing and shipping orders can be handled via software

Cons

• Can be expensive in the short term to get online, the need for servers, proxy’s, databases and software
• Less need for employees due to automation so people can lose jobs.

Individual, business and nation security

Individual

As a user it is your responsibility to be a smart user when on a network as human error is the most common threat to anyone on a network. Individuals are their own worst enemy online and it will be through their own fault that their data is breached. To be secure as an individual you should consider

• Secure passwords (Possibly encrypted)
• Knowing about the types of attacks used by hackers to breach a network
• Taking physical security into consideration(not leaving yourself logged in, not leaving USB’s in PC’s)

Business

As a business you are not just in charge for your own security but also the security of every user on the network and the customer data stored on your network. Every precaution must be taken to ensure the risk of a breach is minimal. A business must take all possible threats into consideration and have steps to counter/prevent attacks coming into the business. A business should consider

• User authentication for log-ins
• A network proxy to deny any requests to malicious sites
• A firewall(hardware and software) to protect more valuable assets such as databases
• Patching systems so they are less vulnerable to OS problems
• securing hardware physically

National

National security is simply a concept, it is put in place to protect the country and its citizens against what would e deemed a national crisis.

Measures taken to ensure national security include:

• using diplomacy to rally allies and isolate threats
• marshalling economic power to facilitate or compel cooperation
• maintaining effective armed forces
• implementing civil defense and emergency preparedness measures (including anti-terrorism)
• ensuring the resilience and redundancy of critical infrastructure
• using intelligence services to detect and defeat or avoid threats and espionage, and to protect classified information
• using counterintelligence services or secret police to protect the nation from internal threats

Hardware performance factors within a network.

Your hardware is the most influential factor for system performance

Without powerful hardware the network would feel slow and clunky. There are lots of hardware factors that can slow a network.

• The make, model, clock speed, core count and amount of Cache within the CPU/CPU’s.
• The amount of CPU’s within the system(if multi CPU system).
• The amount of RAM  in the system, the speed of the RAM, the access times of the ram and the bus width.
• The width and speed of the data bus .
• The amount of L1/2/3 cache within the CPU.
• The type of hard disk in the system, Magnetic storage would slow a network where as flash(SSD) would make read times for files much quicker but is more expensive.
• The speed and bus width of the network controller and whether they have built in cache.

Connecting A mobile device to a WI-FI network

Connecting to a WI-FI network is quick and easy, you only need to a few basic steps to connect.

1. Turn on WI-FI in your system tray. Swipe down on the top of your device and Tap the WI-FI symbol this will allow the phone to scan for wireless networks.
2. Swipe down again and access the settings menu within your device by tapping the little gear in the top corner.
3. Choose the WI-FI option in the settings menu, as you can see it is disconnected from any network at the moment but we will soon change that.
4. If you know the name of your network(the SSID or service set identifier) you would like to connect select that network in my case its Eduroam.
5. If there is a password or type of authentication enter it in the field labelled so in this case it is a e-mail authentication. 
6. if you have followed these steps you should now be connected to a network well done!

 

The hardware and software needed for a network

We looked at the basics of a home network previously but networking is a lot more complex than what has been already looked at the hardware and the software can get a bit complex.

The hardware.
Your network can consist of multiple elements these are.

1. Firewall(Hardware)
   The first line of defense in your network, A hardware Firewall filters data packets through the correct ports and “destroys” any packets that are seen as malicious. With a hardware firewall you can set up layers of defense as you can have multiple firewalls between different elements of your network and the closer you get to say your main database the firewall would only allow for certain users to access the database.
2. Modem/Router
   The modem/router is the main part of the network as it gets the packets from the Web decides where all network traffic goes as. For example as client one is requesting the necessary packets to load you tube, client 2 is requesting the necessary packets to load google and its the routers job to make sure they get to the right destination.
3. A Switch.
   in some instances but not all a network switch or switching hub can be used.  This is used to forward data to clients using their physical address(MAC address) it also allows for multiple devices to connect to a network via ethernet for example 16 computers on the floor of an office will be connected through a switch.
4. Proxy(Used for traffic filtering).
   There are many types of proxy but usually within a large scale network the proxy is used as a block on the web, when a user requests access to what we will call “rude” sites the proxy re routes the data and denies the request of the user and usually gives a message saying the site is blocked.
5. Server.
   on a office network or a college network the web server is used to process and deliver web pages to the client upon their request using the HTTP protocol or HTTPS protocol
6. Administrator System.
   The administrator system is used to add users to the network assign correct permission and maintain the entire networks integrity.
7. User System/Systems.
   These are what they say on the tin, user systems. They are for your workers to access your databases web server etc’ and cannot be used without a log in to the network.
8. NIC/Ethernet cards.
   The main connection for any network, typically The Ethernet port/NIC card is embedded into the motherboard but they are still relevant in larger networks as they allow users to log in to multiple different networks.

an example of a network containing these elements will look like this

The software

There are certain software elements which are coded into the hardware of the network and some that are optional. Some of these elements are.

1. Software Firewall
   The software firewall is for your singular user system and is what allows certain files to be saved or software to be installed on the system
2. DHCP(dynamic host configuration protocol)
   DHCP is built in to your router, It detects that a system has booted and is requesting an IP address to allow for internet access. The DHCP assigns the device a “random” IP and allows the system to log in unless the user has assigned their MAC address a static IP.

The basic components of a home network

How it will probably look

What are the basic components of a home network

To set up a basic home network you require some basic components. These include;

ADSL2+/COAX cable and port.
Your ISP (in Britain anyway) will most likely be feeding off of BT’s telephone lines(unless you are with virgin who have their own lines) the signal is transmitted to your house and comes inside and to the router via ADSL2+ or COAX. If you have neither of these ports the ISP will fit one for you.

A modem and/or a router
 The router will usually be provided to you by your ISP(internet service provider). It is recommended that you use their router on your network as A. it is free and B. it is configured to run properly on the ISP lines and give out equal signal to all devices but this can be strenuous. Your other option is to buy a third party router and put the ISP router into modem mode, plug in your new shiny £400 asus ROG rapture, enjoy the optimized bandwidth to your designated purpose(in this instance it would be gaming).
Your router is in charge of where all the traffic in your network goes and sends the data packets to the correct device. For example, i send a request to connect to google, the router gets this request from my device and by my devices unique set of identifiers it knows my device sent a request to connect to google, where to send the request and where to send it once the ping comes back.

A device you wish to connect.
Whether it be a mobile phone, laptop, desktop, mac, tablet and in today “internet of things” your kettle. All devices connect to the network via wired connection or wireless. Devices are wire connected via Ethernet cable(RJ45) or wireless via wireless protocol the current generation being 802.11ac wave 1/2.

How do these connections work?
Your router has a default IP address which is that of the manufacturer for example the default IP for D-link and Netgear routers is 192.168.0.1. Connecting your device to the network via wireless connection may seen as simple as clicking two buttons and watching the magic work but it is so much more than that.

1.Your router broadcasts the network SSID(service set identifier) for you to find it.
2. You connect to the router and input your password it then authenticates your connection and allows network traffic on your device.
3.Your device is assigned a unique IP, subnet mask and default gateway by the router via DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) This is how it identifies your device along with its MAC address(media access control address)
4. You send requests to the web and your request is filtered through the router and out into the web, sent back to you, routed back through the router and displays the page you wanted to see in a matter of seconds.

 

MS DOS network commands

What is MS DOS?

MS DOS is the back line of windows, it is what windows was built on before the WIMP environment was created. It is used to access information about your system and the network it is connected too, most know it as the command prompt.

Some of the more command commands for networking within the command prompt are:

Ipconfig or ipconfig/all
this will display any network assigned to the network card/adapters within the machine

Tracert
This command is used to show you how many times a singular network packet of information has to “hop” between destinations to get to its final destination

Netstat
This shows every current connection to your PC whether it be other computers, external VPN or printers

Ping
Ping is used to send 4 packets of data to a site of your choosing to determine whether issues with your network or the external network you are trying to access

Pathping
Gives information about the network latency between any hops between you and your target destination. For example between 2 colleges on the same WAN if i ping a printer 8 miles away it shows 3 hops their IP addresses and how long it took to get to that destination. Pathping takes longer to generate data than it does to ping the address in question

FTP(File Transfer Protocol
FTP is used to transfer files within a network via and FTP server, any data sent within an FTP server is un-encrypted unless it is uses HTTPS to secure it.

nslookup
This is used to get information that you can use to diagnose the DNS infrastructure of a network, this tool is only available if the TCP/IP protocol is intalled.

 

 

The growth of the internet

The internet has grown to the point in which we never thought it would, the simple idea of the internet has become the largest project ever created with the goal being to link everyone.

Currently we use IP addresses to communicate between devices worldwide. There are 2 kinds of IP address IPV4 and IPV6

IPV4 has a possible 4,294,967,296 addresses which today there are no remaining addresses left meaning we had to develop a new way of communicating this being  IPV6

IPV6 has a possible 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses which if you consider the span that is

340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 768 million, 211 thousand and 456 compared 

compared to

4 Billion, 294 million, 967 thousand and 296

it has grown literally in what i learned today in as  “Undecillions” which it doesnt take a genius to see the growth from billions to an almost un imaginable number  since the creation of the ARPANET which was a network set up by the US to communicate between each other to the  creation of the WorldWideWeb weve literally went from the 4 addresses on the original ARPANET to undecillions of possible addresses which we have already filled all of IPV4 in only 60 years so how long will it take to fill IPV6? Is that even possible? we will have to wait and see.

The importance of Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware

There are many kinds of computer virus some being embedded lines of code in your perfectly normal .DocM and others being whole pieces of software designed to mess with your system in its own way. How do we combat this? with Anti-Virus and Anti Malware! Not all ways the most reliable and definitely not perfect these pieces of software are used to check for even the smallest anomaly in any software and alert the user so why are there different kinds and whats the difference between anti virus and anti malware?

Anti  virus-

Anti virus is designed to detect quarantine and destroy any software or file that is seen as malicious to the system it does this by

• Scanning your file structure to find any malicious patterns within software
• allowing the user to schedule scans daily, weekly or even hourly for viruses within the system
• Allows for the user to specify a file or piece of software to be scanned
• Remove any Malicious code embedded into software
• Show the overall health of your computer(this is a term i would use loosely)

 

Anti malware-

Anti malware protects the system by scanning and removing any infections or malicious software from the system some of which include

• Worms
• Rootkits
• Keyloggers
• Ransomware
• Adware

So how does it work?

Anti malware uses a database of known patterns within malware and compares these patterns to any possible file within your system, if the file is found malicious it will flag the file as malicious and request its removal or completely remove it itself depending on the severity.

 

So is Anti virus/malware important

Yes! without any sort of protection you leave yourself exposed to the many horrible wonders of the internet where one day you log in on your system and without realising it someone is in your machine via a backdoor messing around with your files leaving RATS embedded and logging your key strokes. A bit of a serious example but your data security is a serious matter whether you take it seriously is up to you.  I would however recommend you seek out a trusted anti Virus/malware provider and install it such as AVG and Malware-bytes.

 

The internet of things!

A common term thrown around these days but what is it exactly?

The internet of things is happening all around us everyday in ways we may not even realize. From an energy meter connected to a database to show you how much credit you have left in your gas and electricity to a toaster that sends notifications to your smartphone when it has popped!

The internet of things in short(also in my opinion)

“is Making something that does not need to be connected to the internet connect to it anyway. Who needs a Smart lock, a kettle that notifies us when its boiled or a fridge connected to the amazon pantry? The answer, we do. why though, because we are gullible people who love anything that makes our life easier”. That is my take on it anyway but in a technical term it is “The network created between physical devices, vehicles and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity that allow devices to collect and exchange data”.

How big is the IoT?

HUGE! the internet of things is as big as you can make it whether it be hooking up your smart bulbs to amazon echo to voice control your lights or on a larger scale using the IoT to control processes within,

• Manufacturing
• Agriculture
• Energy management
• Medical and Healthcare
• Home automation
• Travel and Transport
• Smart Retail

Is it safe?

When it comes to the internet of things you have to be cautious as connecting things to the internet opens it up to the vulnerabilities that the internet brings with it take the smart lock for example.

a lock that you can access remotely to allow people in and out of your house. say for instance your son/daughter got home from school only to find they had lost their key you can access the smart lock via WI-FI and remote access the lock to over ride it and let your son/daughter in.

A perfectly innocent scenario but lets think of a smart lock from a malicious point of view. Straight away if you were scouting buildings and seen smart locks you would assume the person had money. you then have to consider what they are trying to keep safe with these locks and if they are in fact vulnerable. so you get your laptop and research the lock and find it uses the wireless connectivity, you break into the network and open the lock and without realizing it you inadvertently painted a target on your head. Also from a non tech point of view anyone passing by seeing these lock without the “hacking skills” will surely have the skills to swing a hammer through your double glazed window?