How to Organize Your Computer Files For Easy Retrieval

When you have a large number of files or messages to look through, being able to quickly sort them makes it much easier to find what you're looking for.

Suppose you have a few hundred files in the My Documents folder and you're looking for a certain pdf that someone sent you a while ago. You don't recall the exact name of the document or when you got it.

Start by opening My documents folder. If the view is set to thumbnails, tiles, icons, or list, change it to details. You can do this by clicking on the word View from the menu bar and then clicking on the word Details.

Notice the column headings that say Name, Size, Type, and Date Modified. Clicking on any of those column headings will sort all the files in that folder by that characteristic. So clicking on Name will sort the files alphabetically by name.

Clicking on Type will sort the files by type. All of your pdf files will appear together in one section of the list, making it much easier for you to find the one you want. And probably much quicker than scanning through a lengthy list of files in random (unsorted) order.

This sorting strategy is also quite effective for locating email messages. When using your email client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) you can quickly sort messages by any column heading.

The actual words for the column headings will vary from program to program, but this usually means you can sort by message subject, sender, recipient, date, size, priority, and whether or not attachments are included.

Another useful trick is holding down the shift key while clicking on a column heading. This reverses the order of the list from ascending to descending. This means that you can show your results in reverse alphabetical order when sorting by name and you when sorting by date you can choose to have either the newest or oldest item at the top of the list.

Using these strategies is a powerful way to save time and effort.

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Computer Accessories Promo Items

If you're running a cyber café, there are a number of ways you can do to build your brand and increase sales. Here are some suggestions:

Offer incentives for customer membership. Aside from the savings that a year's membership brings, practical promo items like USB flash drives, mini speakers, MP3 players, and other computer accessories will surely attract the attention of your market. Have your café's logo and contact information clearly imprinted so people who see it will know how to get to your place.

Complete the experience by offering food and drinks. People who travel for business or leisure want to maximize their time, so having food and drinks in your menu will surely encourage your clients to stay longer.

Offer a freebie for special deals. Customers who expect to stay longer than four hours will appreciate a free cup of latte. Have your drinks available in customized mugs that carry your logo. You can also tie up with hotels, inns, and bed-and-breakfasts by offering promo computer accessories and other items as giveaways to clients who book a room. You never know, they just might need your services.

Thank loyal patrons with promo items like computer accessories. Your shop makes money from people who bring in business continuously. Keep track of your regular patrons (some of them may already be members) and send them a small thank-you gift at the end of the year. It's a good way to keep them. Other promo items include computer speakers and accessories, T-shirts, stress balls, and yearly planners.

Expand your offerings. People who visit your cyber café might have companions who would like to sit down and eat or read. Why not put up a few tables, offer something on the menu and some general-interest magazines and books as well as Scrabble, chess, cribbage, and other nonvirtual games? You can take this a step further by having a separate area available for private parties and business functions. Your cyber cafe can specialize in online events and launches of Websites. Promo items like computer accessories make great giveaways for these occasions.

Enhance the atmosphere. Make your cyber café an attractive destination for non-Internet-browsing by playing some jazz, blues, or any other good music. Coupled with an enjoyable menu and some good literature, your cyber café will surely pull in more customers.

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Set Up Tips For A Virtual Private Network

Many businesses considering a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to cover their internet and database applications share the same set-up concerns. You want to know the most efficient and cost effective approach to get "from here to there". You'll also want to evaluate whether to go with a site-to-site connection or user connection approach. Plus....you'll want some idea of the best options for appropriate hardware.

To help this learning opportunity along let's set-up a realistic practical example....and then address each of the concerns around this scenario.

Here goes:

You have 10 satellite offices spread some distance apart .... each with multiple users .... that you want to connect to a central headquarters location.

For this scenario here's my suggestions to address the most common set-up concerns.....

First.....a Site-to-site connection is best; by having two VPN endpoint routers talk to each other, you can have all the computers behind each router connect as opposed to paying (say) $35 or more for each computer to have a client loaded. Depending upon what router you buy, some come with pre-installed PPTP and IPSEC VPN clients already installed so you're all set.

Next, the type of network connection you are going to be using is a critical element. Such as Cable, xDSL, T1, or DS3. Depending on the size of your usage base (number of users and load each places on your network) you should consider a T1 line as your backbone. You can always scale up as the need arises (to a bonded T1 or DS3) or scale down if warranted (fractional T1). This level of dedicated bandwidth circuit also affords more reliability, stability, and scalability ..... not to mention a QoS (Quality of Service) and SLA (Service Level Agreement) form providers who over these levels of circuits. That makes business sense.

Remember to gauge your budget for hardware, and also determine if there is an expectation for having any folks traveling who'll need remote access. The former I'll address next. The later bears on your circuit size decision discussed above.

For the guts of the network your common choices run the gamut of Linksys, SMC and Netgear; Zywall is another option; and so is OpenVPn, which is script based. The deciding factor will always be "cost" and "ease of configuration." Then again, if you're one who doesn't mind a little work (and you shouldn't if you're in the network game) a little overtime is necessary and worth it with some solutions.

Alright, for hardware here's some ideas......

From the Linksys SOHO/SMB turnkey solution department, I submit the following hardware devices. Many IT managers use Newegg.com for a source because they have good prices (in my opinion).

1) WRV54G - "Severely" underrated. Supports 50 IPSEC VPN tunnels and 5 onboard Quickvpn IPSEC VPN clients; you can upgrade clients from 5 to 50 (yes, it's real VPN). Does not support NAT-T/GRE, so you cannot configure a microsoft VPN server connection with this unit.

2) WRT54GL routers using DD-WRT 24B VPN edition Firmware. It supports both client and server Open VPN. This is very secure and stable. Far less expensive, keeping with the hardware VPN direction, than anything I have found.

3) RV016/042/082 - All support a minimum of 5 IPSEC VPN tunnels (or higher), minimum of 5 quickvpn clients (with upgrade option same as WRV54G). Units support NAT-T/GRE, has onboard PPTP server with 5 clients, and allows you to configure a microsoft VPN server behind it for addtional PPTP/L2TP clients (128 in total).

4) WRVS4400N - Supports 5 IPSEC VPN tunnels, 5 Quickvpn clients (no upgrade option as of yet), and supports NAT=T/GRE. Additionally, you have port based VLAN available, IDS/IPS services, to include email alert, user define-able access control lists, define-able services, supports IPV4/IPV6 for LAN connections, WMM for improved QoS and video/audio. Yes, I'm showing favoritism on this one. I've friends currently testing this and it's looking like the Linksys products of old.

Just visit the Linksys.com website and peruse the Router/VPN Solutions area for business series routers.

Lastly, the following software solutions are free:

1) Monowall - requires an old PC with two NICs (for starters); download image to your computer, burn to a disk, go forth and conquer.

2) Smoothwall - same as Monowall

3) SSL Explorer - SSL solution for vpn

4) OpenVPN - script based vpn

Overall: I prefer hardware solutions so I'm inclined to go with a router that has either an onboard PPTP server or the capability to support NAT-T/GRE. Using hardware reduces the load on having a workstation/server host your VPN, but that doesn't make software solutions any less effective.

Well there you have it. Some practical tips on VPN set-up to help you make a practical business sense decision on the common concerns you'll face. The only thing left is to roll up your sleeves and "just do it".

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Free Computer Repair Software - How to Speed Up Your PC!

OK, here is where to find the computer repair software that is already on your XP, Vista or Windows 7 PC. Yeah, I know, hard to believe right? But still, I'll show you how to speed up your PC for free right now. Ready?

Trust me. Having a slow PC can be a nightmare, right? Fortunately for you, there are a ton of solutions hidden right under your Start Menu or in this article:) Ready, here we go!

Step One For Fixing Your Slow XP, Vista, or Windows 7 Machine...

Declutter your desktop. Yep, I'm serious and this one thing you probably have not tried yet, right? Just drag all the files you don't want into your Recyle Bin--and hit Delete or Secure Empty Trash. Boom! Instant computer repair. This one trick alone, well, few people take advantage of it. But, since you're here, I figured I might as well let you in on this valuable, yet very quick and easy, computer repair solution...

Ready for step two? OK!

Step Two: Put those files you Do want into a new folder.

Having cleaned up all your files, there are a few that will make or break your computer-the ones you should keep. So, put those into a new folder and have just a few folders on your PC desktop, OK?

Step Three to speeding up your pc in no time flat

After you declutter your desktop by deleting your files, and putting your needed files into a new folder or two, you are still not done. There are a ton of more options for your VIsta or XP or WIndows 7 computer you can make right now. Ready? OK, you need to go into concentrate mode b/c this is a ninja hack that I"m telling you about, OK? Click on your Start Menu and then go to All Programs and then Systems and Tools. Then click on the tab that says Disk Cleanup. FInd it? Running that computer repair software will clean up a ton of temporary files that you don't need and/or are not using. Cool right?

Yes, there are a ton of other solutions that really work-and are pretty darn cheap as well.

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Cisco CCNA / CCNP Certification Exam: Creating A Study Plan

Whether you're just starting to think about passing the CCNA or CCNP exams, or you've been on the certification track for a while, you've got to have a plan for success. If you wanted to drive your car from Florida to California, you'd create a plan to get there. You'd get a map and decide how far you wanted to drive per day, and maybe even make some hotel reservations in advance. You certainly wouldn't get in your car, just drive it randomly down the nearest highway, and hope you ended up in California, would you?

Certainly not. Earning your CCNA certification is the same way. It's not enough to just study a few minutes "when you feel like it", or tell yourself that you'll start studying for the exams "when I get such-and-such done". The perfect time to start on the road to Cisco certification is not tomorrow, and it's not next week. It's today.

You're much better off with one hour of solid study than three hours of interrupted, unfocused study. Here are a few ways to go about getting the kind of quality study time that will get you to the CCNA or CCNP (or any Cisco certification, for that matter!).

Schedule your study time, and regard this study time as you would an appointment with a client. If you were to meet a customer at 10:00 to discuss a network install, would you just decide not to show up and watch television instead? Not if you wanted the job. The same goes for your study time. That's an appointment with the most important customer of all - YOU.

Turn your cell, iPod, TV, instant messenger, and all other electronic collars off for the duration of your study time. I know those of us in information technology don't like to say this, but we can actually exist without being in touch with the world for a little while. You may even get to like it! Having uninterrupted study time is key to CCNA and CCNP exam success.

Finally, schedule your exam before you start studying. Contrary to what many people think, "deadline" is not a dirty word. We do our best work when we have a deadline and a schedule to keep. Make out your study schedule, schedule your exam, and get to work just as you would a network project for a customer. The project you're working on is your career and your life, and by following these simple steps you can make it a highly successful project - by passing your CCNA and CCNP exam!

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FTP - Why is This Insecure Protocol Still Popular?

The earliest draft for the file transfer protocol was published as early as 1971 and the final version of the FTP protocol was published in 1985 as RFC 959. Even after the development of several extensions to support secure transfer in 1997, it is still common to see organizations continue to use FTP. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, FTP has become a universal standard for transferring files. All operating systems, including mainframes and minicomputers of a bygone era, support FTP. In most cases, the software that is needed to transfer files using FTP is available as part of the installed operating system. For archaic and little used operating systems, data transfer software that makes use of modern public key encryption to securely transfer files may not even be available. A system administrator who has to work with these systems has no choice but to continue to use FTP.

Secondly, the protocol supports anonymous FTP. Many repositories want to make files freely available to the general public. A user can simply login to these sites and transfer files without having to provide a password. Most of these sites are maintained by universities or large corporations and accept the user email address as the password. For these sites, secure file transfer is unnecessary because there is nothing to hide or protect. These sites are expected to continue operating using regular insecure FTP.

Finally, there is a computational and data overhead associated with secure data transfer. This is because each byte of data in the file to be transferred needs to be encrypted using public key encryption algorithms. This can cause slowdown in the data transfer rate. In corporate and other organizational intranets that have already been protected from the outside world by a firewall, it may be more efficient to allow regular insecure file transfers inside of the intranet.

In conclusion, there are many secure transfer mechanisms available today such as FTPS and SFTP that can encrypt file transfers using public key encryption and prevent data from being intercepted or corrupted. However, the original FTP mechanism that has been in existence decades earlier will continue to play an important role in facilitating file transfer and system administrators still need to be prepared to support it when appropriate.

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Cisco CCNP / BSCI Exam Tutorial: Ten IP Routing Details You Must Know!

To pass the BSCI exam and earn your CCNP, you've got to keep a lot of details in mind. It's easy to overlook the "simpler" protocols and services such as static routing and distance vector protocols. With this in mind, here's a quick review of some details you should know for success in the exam room and real-world networks!

When packets need to be routed, the routing table is parsed for the longest prefix match if multiple paths exist with the same prefix length, the route with the lowest AD is preferred. If there are still multiple valid paths, equal-cost load-sharing goes into effect.

The ip route command is used to create static routes the command ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 creates a default static route.

A static route with a next-hop IP address has an AD of one, while a static route with a local exit interface has an AD of zero.

A floating static route is a static route with an AD higher than that of the dynamic routing protocols running on the router, ensuring that the static route can only be used if the routing protocol goes down.

On-Demand Routing (ODR) is only appropriate in a hub-and-spoke network. The spokes effectively become stub routers. ODR uses Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) to send route information.

To propagate a default route with IP routing, use the ip default-network command. To do so with IP routing disabled, use ip default-gateway. You can also redistribute a static route into most protocols, but not IGRP. IGRP does not understand a static route to 0.0.0.0.

The ip helper-address command takes certain broadcasts and translates then into unicasts in order to allow the router to forward them. These default ports are:

TIME, port 37

TACACS, port 49

DNS, port 53

BOOTP/DHCP Server, port 67

BOOTP/DHCP Client, port 68

TFTP, port 69

NetBIOS name service, port 137

NetBIOS datagram services, port 138

To name other ports, use the ip forward-protocol command. To remove any of these ports from the default list, use the no ip forward-protocol command.

ICMP Router Discovery Protocol (IRDP) hosts hear multicast Hellos from routers, allowing host-router discovery. HSRP routers create a virtual router that hosts think is a real router. Both protocols help networks cut over to a functional router quickly when their primary router goes down.

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Understanding MPLS VPN Architecture

MPLS VPN allows international companies to connect cost-effectively across multiple locations. It is a truly reliable product that extreme users can count on. It is very configurable and responsive in meeting the needs of businesses and offers a wide variety of choices on quality service and class of service. MPLS VPN offers end points-to-end points managed solution. VPN or Virtual Private Networks solution offers the possibility of building a corporate network that delivers excellent performance, reliability and security of a dedicated private network online. AT&T's professional service takes advantage of the latest Multiprotocol Label Switching technology to offer their business partners, employees and customers secure access to corporate network and information from virtually any location.

MPLS VPN is uses advanced IP Internet protocol over an optical network. MPLS VPN offers benefits that includes a performance that counterparts traditional infrastructure switches based on underlying Asynchronous Transfer Mode. Its architecture and latency has enhanced network performance. Moreover, MPLS VPN Quality of Service optimizes available bandwidth by merging data and voice traffic which are crucial to networking. Its service quality assigns exclusive labels for your data. It is able to identify destination and allow for safe data transmission throughout the network. Furthermore, it offers capabilities that give the highest priority and additional bandwidth for time-critical applications, such as streaming programs over applications where rush demands become less of a concern. Some examples would be emails running through virtual paths and ensure that data is completely segregated from other customers; end-to-end quality of service at customer edge through the core; and data security that remains completely private inside the network and never penetrates in the public internet.

Multiprotocol Label Switching is an innovative technology designed for superior performance packet forwarding. This new technology has several uses, both for the service provider and the corporate network, and more widely used today allows for the use of Virtual Private Network (VPN). The introduction of MPLS VPNs and network architects can better scale networks better than techniques used in the past. Administrators and network engineers need fast and effective training on this new technology in order to run effective usage of MPLS VPN on their networks. This goal in mind, MPLS VPN architectures provides a detailed discussion, especially the architecture on MPLS Cisco. It is useful to know more about MPLS and configuration and other network-centered issues which are all significant in this application.

MPLS VPN architecture and its system is better appreciated in its design and implementation guidelines, and in the countless issues resolved by its technology. However, customers need a practical guide to understand the whole planning and implementation of MPLS for the network. Excellent products from reliable and reputable service providers not only ensure solutions but also offer a detailed analysis of the Multiprotocol Label Switching architecture and innovation. This way customers will understand better its mechanisms and functions that constitute to the architecture.

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Cost-Effective Firewall Solutions For Small Business

Whenever firewalls and network security come into play, there is a surprising amount of oversight and lack of attention in the small business world. Many shops are running just the regular router they get from their ISP, with NAT being their sole defense against the outside world, and even that, arguably, is not a defense at all. When asked about this setup, they smile sheepishly and say: "We can't afford a good firewall solution! We'll have to make do with this until we can."

This is a cringe-worthy response: I'm a big believer in proactive IT, and security is one of those areas, along with backups, that get neglected because of cost. Because there is no immediate value-add to security (indeed, the effect of good security is invisible), many companies choose to invest that money elsewhere, reasoning that they can't afford an effective firewall appliance like a Sonicwall or an ASA.

Given today's recession, many small businesses have to cut operating costs, and sadly firewalls are an area that may not be as immediately necessary as others. The saddest part, however, is that there are open-source solutions out there that make perfectly serviceable firewalls for nothing but the cost of an outdated PC or virtual machine.

IPCop - Cost Effective Firewall
IPCop, the example we'll use in this article, is an open-source OS based on Linux that is designed to act as a firewall and router. Unlike a vanilla Linux distro running iptables, IPCop goes far beyond simple add and drop rules; it has features one might expect from a more advanced firewall appliance, including intrusion detection, VPN services, and traffic shaping capability. IPCop was designed for this very application (cost-effective firewall solution) and as such it is made for the small business network admin in mind: The entire OS is run through a stylish web interface, allowing easy administration of the IPCop firewall from any web-accessible machine, and the installation is straightforward and full of easy-to-understand directions.

IPCop is one of a number of distros, like Smoothwall, which aim to be full-featured firewalls for small business. Unlike Smoothwall and others, however, IPCop is completely free, thus making the insertion of an IPCop instance in your network both a painless and extremely cost-effective solution, especially where a dedicated hardware firewall appliance is an expense your business simply cannot afford.

IPCop Disadvantages
IPCop does have its disadvantages, of course, especially when compared to a more robust appliance like a Cisco ASA. It lacks the fine granularity of IOS, for example, and some of the more advanced ACLs and command-line magic the IOS performs is beyond the scope of the IPCop instances. That said, however, IPCop comes very close to the performance of an entry-level ASA, and many of the functions an ASA provides are duplicated effectively in IPCop's web interface.

Linux Distro
The title of this article, however, is not "Best firewall appliance". We're here to talk about cost-effective firewall solutions, and in that regard a Linux-based distro is unbeatable. While it does require some spare hardware, the system requirements are quite sparse, and so the implementation cost is minimal at best (and the software is, of course, open-source and free). In fact, even disregarding the price, I am willing to put forth the semi-controversial idea that IPCop may be as good as a dedicated firewall device in a small business setting; many of the functions it provides are more than suitable for a small business network.

That said, no network should be without security; the cost of a firewall appliance, though prohibitive, need not stop a small business from implementing security solutions. With open-source, free solutions like IPCop, a network admin can insert a firewall into his network infrastructure at little to no cost, immediately making his network more secure and giving him the power and functionality of a dedicated firewall appliance at a fraction of the price.

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Figuring Out Your Role as an IT Consultant

A customer typically hires you as an IT consultant in order to reach a goal he has set, and your main function is to advise him on how to meet this goal. Although there is more of a trend towards hiring an IT consultant to simply advise, sometimes you may want to carry out a planned project yourself.

There are three different roles you can play as an IT consultant: the advisory role; the advisory and action role; and the action role. Determining which one to play will depend upon the client's style, how you work together and the nature of the project.

Advisory Role

The most common role you will play as an IT consultant is that of an advisor to the client. You will need to research and investigate, then review the information you collect. After you've evaluated everything you find, you present a report and recommendations for the next steps to your client, and your client is responsible for carrying out these steps.

Advisory and Action

Sometimes as an IT consultant you will be asked to be both an advisor and the person that carries out the plan you determine. This is a more profitable role for you because you will be paid for your time spent advising and working on the project; it will also be a much more satisfying role because you will get to see all the aspects of the project completed. However, you have to be sure you have the required skills to carry out the entire project before proceeding.

Action

Sometimes a client will have a project planned and evaluated, and they simply need an IT consultant to complete it for them. If you have the skills to complete the job, this can be an easy task because you have the guidelines already set for you.

Regardless of what role you take as an IT consultant, you are responsible for completing the job assigned by your clients in a way that best meets their needs. Your role will most likely change depending upon the project, and you should gauge it by the method that will be best for your client.

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Uses and Benefits of Client-Server Database Management Systems

All organizations maintain and use data for day-to-day business operations. A database management system is the software that is used to store data, maintain those data, and provide easy access to stored data. It allows organizations to store data in a central location using a standard format.

Two Basic Categories

Besides looking at the model used to store the data, Database Management Systems can be divided into two basic categories: personal databases and client/server databases. Many of the same concepts apply to both DBMS categories. The differences lie largely in the amount of data that can be stored, the number of concurrent users supported, networking capabilities, and the level of data security provided.

Personal database management systems like Microsoft Access work best in single-user environments. The ideal environment is one user updating and reporting on the data from one PC. Although personal database management systems can be networked and shared, the general rule-of-thumb is that there should be no more than ten concurrent users. If security, network traffic, or the ability to recover from system failures is important, a client/server DBMS would be a better choice.

Client/Server Database Management Systems

Client/server DBMS's are designed to support multiple users in a networked environment. Powerful servers store and process large quantities of organizational data, while client PCs can request data from the server and then query, update, and report on it locally. A typical client/server application has a front end like Microsoft Access that runs on the local client workstation and a back end like Microsoft SQL Server that runs on the server. In these implementations, the front end provides the local user interface on a PC, while the back end has the power to store and process data from multiple users on a network server.

How it Works

For instance, the client (you at your PC) would request a listing of August computer sales. The server database holds the information for all organizational sales and must run a query to retrieve August computer sales, which it then passes to the requesting client. You now have a local copy of August computer sales that you can use your local client software to manipulate.

Depending on the application, you might make changes to the local data and then the client could send updates to the servers that are then applied to the organizational database.

Client/ server applications are cost effective and scalable. They can also take advantage of common PC software like Microsoft Access on the client, making them easy for users to learn and use.

Data are a valuable organizational resource. Good data and information retrieval technology can improve the organization's ability to compete in an industry, deliver products to consumers, and evaluate opportunities. The loss or contamination of an organization's data can contribute to failure.

A good management system provides users with facilities to maintain stored data, tools to create screens used to view and update data, report generation capabilities, query services to obtain fast answers to questions about the data, and common interfaces to share data. On the down side, shared data are never as secure as centralized data stored on a mainframe.

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Cisco 2811 Routers For Small to Medium Businesses

The Cisco 2811 integrated services router is being searched heavily in India and in the United States. How can this be? This Cisco router, classified as a Cisco 2800 series router, has been around for years. What factors are contributing to its increase in popularity? This question could be answered in many ways even only having such limited information on this device.

Possible reasons for the popularity increase:

A promotion or special is being offered through an email campaign from Cisco directly.
More businesses already were using the Cisco 2811, and find it to be a reliable router over other brands and series. To be more direct, they are looking for replacements or expanding their networks.
Network resellers and wholesalers on the B2B end are finding the Cisco 2811 router harder to acquire for resale.

Why would small and medium-sized businesses choose the Cisco 2811 to incorporate in their network?

Attributing to the possible popularity increase, this Cisco router has been around for awhile and has earned a good reputation through various B2B channels, forum postings, paid ads, promotions, press releases and word of mouth. I'm even taking the time to write about this odd occurrence in popularity. Here are some features of the Cisco 2811 router that may be being some buzz back to this Cisco series router:

For router security, the device supports up to 1500 VPN tunnels with the AIM-EPII-PLUS module, has antivirus defense support through the NAC, and acts as a intrusion detection system as well as a Cisco firewall.
On the voice site of the router, there is analog and digital voice call support, optional voicemail support and optional CME and SRST support for up to 36 IP phones for local call processing.
Basic features include support for over 90 existing and new modules, two integrated 10/100 fast ethernet ports and optional layer 2 switch support with Power over Ethernet (PoE).

Does Cisco still support the Cisco 2811?

Yes, the Cisco 2811 has not reached its end-of-life date according to their company website. When Cisco ends the life of a product, they usually will remove most information on the device to force you into a different solution. A company should put most of its resources into networking devices that meet today's expectations. Therefore, it makes sense when they do issue a end-of-life placement.

I'm a business owner but I have no idea how to operate a Cisco router

I would search local classified sites like Craigslist to find an experienced networker. You can also ask the opinion on device setup and support from where you buy the Cisco 2811. If it is in your budget and you are growing, I would hire a CCNA professional to manage your network. A CCNA is the most basic level of certification from Cisco, and validates they have basic networking knowledge for Cisco networking.

Different Cisco router bundles that exist

I know this is a given, but make sure your network is powered by AC or DC. Picking up the wrong package will waste you time and money.

Cisco2811 - Integrated services router with AC power, 2FE, 1 NME, 4 HWICs, 2 PVDM slots, 2 AIMs, and Cisco IOS IP Base Software
Cisco2811-AC-IP - Integrated services router with AC power including power over ethernet distribution capability, 2FE, 1 NME, 4 HWICs, 2 PVDM slots, 2 AIMs, and Cisco IOS IP Base Software
Cisco2811-DC - Integrated services router with DC power, 2FE, 1 NME, 4 HWICs, 2 PVDM slots, 2 AIMs, and Cisco IOS IP Base Software

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Why Is My Computer Too Slow? How To Speed Up a Slow Running Computer

Is your slow computer making you nuts? Does is it take forever for your computer to boot up? Is your computer acting rather strange? Or it can be that your computer prompts you with lots of errors every now and then? If so, then you might need to clean up and fix your system's registry to stop your computer running slow.

This is normally the best way to deal with a poor computer. Over time, installation and removal of programs leaves registry entries in random locations in your system. Every function or program has a registry entry so the more software and programs installed, the more likely the registry will be disorganized. In fact, software updates can leave a significant amount of obsolete registry entries which, in turn, slows down the processing time of your computer.

By installing and running a system and registry cleanup and repair software, you can prevent this problem.

System and registry repair should be done simultaneously so it would be great if you use one program that has both of these functions. Almost all parts of your computer's registry will have a piece of an unnecessary entry in and it is important to fix the whole registry to deal with your slow computer.

A good system and registry tool will definitely prevent this common problem by fixing the issue as soon as they develops. Usually, these programs provide a complete fix to your computer and repair both windows and registry errors and stop malware as well which can result in a computer running slow.

If you see any of the following issues and can't find the root cause of it you will find nine times out of ten it is due to registry errors.

1. Each time you click on a shortcut on your desktop other icons start to blink or momentarily lose their icons and you have to wait a few seconds before this stops.

2. Desktop shortcuts do not work.

3. Some programs will not run and freeze your computer while others run ok.

4. Your computer takes a long time to open a program after you start it.

The last point above is due to the fact there is registry corruption. What is happening is this. When you try to start a program windows searches the registry for the files which tell it how to run the program. If those registry entries are corrupt windows takes a very long time to work around this and if the corruption is bad enough you will receive an error message that the program will not start.

If your computer is running slow or you are seeing the errors listed above scan it now with a system and registry scanner and speed it up again.

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Wireless Network Security: How to Use Kismet

Kismet is a wireless network detector / sniffer which can give you a vast amount of information about wireless networks. Wireless network security flaws are well documented but often very hard for the common person to understand. I will be showing you how to use kismet with out even having to install Linux, or compile kismet.

First you need to proceed to remote-exploit.org and download and burn their Auditor CD. (IF you don't know how to burn an ISO image, go to Google). This version of Linux doesn't install or modify your hard drive; it will boot from the CD and use a Ram Drive (On your Memory).

Auditor is not only a great tool for testing wireless network security with kismet but it also has many other computer security tools on it as well.

Client Window

Next, to start Kismet proceed to the Linux version of the start menu, and press Auditor.
Now proceed to the wireless /scanning/kismet tools/kismet.

Once you click on Kismet it will ask you for a default location to place the Kismet log files for analyzing later, just press the desktop or temp file.

Now I will show you how to use Kismet. When kismet initially opens you will see a greenish box with numbers and network names (If any are near you) clicking away don't be overwhelmed. (Also I can't show you how to use kismet if you don't have the correct wireless adapter, get an ORINICO Gold Classic Card off EBAY.) The Orninco gold classic card will be automaticly detected by auditor linux.

The Kismet columns will show the wireless networks SSID (Name), Type of device (Access point, gateway) Encryption or no Encryption, an IP range and number of packets. Kismet will pick up hidden networks with SSID broadcast Disabled also, Netstumbler will not.

Now Press H, to bring up the Help Menu. This will give the nuts and bolts on how to use kismet. If you tab down to the network you are auditing and press "C", Kismet will show you all the computers that are using that wireless access point / gateway. This Kismet screen will show you the clients MAC address, Manufacture of Wireless Adapter, IP address range and traffic.

Kismet: Help Menue

Now to get out of that screen press "Q". Tab Down on the Main Kismet Screen to another SSID and press "I". This Kismet window will show detailed information about the wireless network. The Kismet detail screen will show the type of network (Infrastructrure / Adhoc), signal strength, channel, encryption type, and much more.

Kismet will also give you sound alerts when new wireless networks are discovered or security alerts or suspicious clients are in range. Suspicious clients would be people like you who are using Kismet or Networkstumbler. Unlike you these could be Wardrivers looking for venerable networks to hack into.

Kismet Alert Page

You can prevent War drivers from discovering your wireless network by performing a proper site survey which will help limit signal bleed off to unneeded areas. You should write down the suspicious MAC address and keep an eye on your access logs. If the War Drivers are really stupid just look out your window and look for cars with weird antennas.HA HA HA.

Kismet is more than just a tool to discover wireless networks; it can be used in conjunction with other tools to crack WEP/WPA. Many websites will claim that WEP can be cracked in less that five minutes. This is only half the truth because it could take many hours,days,months to gather enough packets to crack. Good luck and have fun learning the more advanced applications of kismet.

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The Independent Computer Consultant - Earn More by Working Less

As an Independent Computer Consultant, naturally you're hoping to earn as much income as possible while maintaining a very satisfied and loyal client base.

The problem faced by the vast majority of independent computer consultants today however is that they still base their income on the number of hours they're able to bill in a day, week or month. How can this model possibly provide either a reliable income or a happy customer?

If you're billing by the hour, how can you possibly count on revenues being steady on an ongoing basis, when the need for your services is so volatile? By providing "reactive" support, you're basically waiting for things to break to be able to keep yourself busy. If things aren't breaking, your clients will be reluctant to pay additional hourly charges for you to just "check things out" and make sure everything is running ok.

If you have only a few clients, they're going to have to each provide a significant amount of hours to meet your financial requirements. In a time when small business owners are trying to reduce expenses wherever possible, squeezing them for the hours you need to survive will be challenging and will not help client satisfaction.

If you're able to land many clients, where it should be easy for you to maintain a busy schedule, you can be sure that more often than not, you'll have more fires to put out than you can handle at one time and customer satisfaction will again suffer. Plus, from personal experience, I can assure you that you'll be putting in more working hours than you would ever want to.

Fortunately, there's an easy solution for today's Independent Computer Consultant. Stop billing by the hour and charge flat, monthly fees for a proactive maintenance plan, with which you can provide round-the-clock monitoring, remote computer support and on-site service (for which I personally charge an additional hourly fee).

Billing your clients a flat, monthly rate can provide you with a stable income that you can rely on, while requiring you to work far less hours to do so.

If you use a reliable monitoring application (which can be done very inexpensively), you'll be able to identify potential problems early and reduce the unexpected emergencies that keep the hourly-rate consultant so busy (and their clients so unhappy).

A bulk of the daily service requests are minor end user issues, which if addressed remotely can often be resolve very quickly. The daily support requests from a full client list of about 4 or 5 small business clients (40-50 end-users) can be supported remotely in about 1-2 hours a day, including monitoring their system logs.

On-site support can be provided for this handful of clients in about 2 hours a week each. This is a number most small business owners find acceptable, fair and manageable. You can charge an additional hourly rate for these on-site hours and supplement your base-rate income nicely.

Because you're working proactively, your clients will have fewer problems and higher productivity. Your remote support will increase your response time dramatically, also improving your clients productivity. And they'll see you less often. All these things will contribute to INCREASING customer satisfaction.

If you structure your base, maintenance plan fees properly, a small client base of four small business customers can provide an Independent computer consultant with a full-time income, while requiring you to work about 10-12 hours a week.

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Computer Repair Shop Business Development Tips

If you are starting a computer repair shop, you may have questions about how you can get it off the ground. And if you own an existing computer repair shop, you're probably constantly on the look-out for new clients. Either way, business development is often an afterthought for many computer repair shops. This oversight can be a huge, business-threatening mistake.

Yes, you will need to have computer skills and basic certifications that allow you to work well with your clients' systems. But what else will you need to build a computer repair shop that will attract steady, high-paying clients and last far into the future?

The following 3 tips can help you develop a viable business development plan for your computer repair shop.

Write Down Your Business Plan. Write down a clear business plan that takes into account your goals for your computer repair shop. You also need to decide which problems you will solve and how you will handle day-to-day operations. You need to make important decisions such as whether or not you will sell parts, or just do the repair work. What will your hourly rate be? Will you offer on-going service agreements? You need to set clear parameters for your computer repair shop before a client even enters it. This way, you can stay consistent, be professional and achieve your revenue goals.


Think about Marketing and How You Will Get Clients. What are the common characteristics and problems of your target prospects, customers and clients? Once you know this, you can easily develop a marketing plan that will speak to these potential clients and their points of pain. Think about which strategies you will use and what your main marketing message will be. You need to diversify and track several strategies at once to find the ones that generate the best results. If you have a specialty or work with a specific industry, you can use this to design a very personalized marketing campaign that will help your computer repair shop stand out from the crowd.


Don't Forget About Your People Skills. Even though running a computer repair shop involves a lot of technical work and skills, you need to think about how you can build and add value to relationships. Most successful computer repair shops have very strong technical skills. But what will set you apart is if you can be phenomenal on the repair side and the sales and relationship-management side. The best technicians have good people skills that really help get through major projects and retain clients for many years. In a situation where you are installing a network or doing very complex projects, you will need to coordinate with many vendors and subcontractors. A lot can go wrong if you are not good at account management and communicating with others to get the job done.

In this article, we looked at 3 simple business development tips to help you grow your computer repair shop.

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Computer Repair Basics - Troubleshooting an Internet Connection That Isn't Working

As people rely on the internet more and more for completing tasks in their daily lives, having a computer that's unable to connect to the internet can be very frustrating. Often the solution is very simple, and the following steps can be used to troubleshoot the problem yourself prior to calling a computer repair technician to troubleshoot it.

Start by locating the DSL or cable modem and/or router. This is the small black or sometimes white box that connects the computer to your internet service provider. If you have a cable modem there will often be 2 boxes: one which is the cable-modem itself, and the other which is the router. DSL subscribers will often have only one. Next-- power off the modem and the router (if there is one) by disconnecting the thin black power cable that is connected to it. After about 30 seconds plug the power back in, wait for a few minutes and then see if the computer's internet connection has been restored.

If the internet connection still isn't work you may want to call your internet service provider to see if they are experiencing an outage in your area. If so you can simply wait for the internet connection to be restored when your internet provider is done working on it. If there is no outage then you will need to continue troubleshooting.

If your internet connection still isn't working then you will need to look at the back of the computer where the network cable plugs in to it. The network cable is a thin cord with what's called an RJ45 jack on the end of it (an RJ45 jack looks like an oversized telephone jack). On the back of the computer where the RJ45 jack on the end of the network cable plugs into the computer there will be what's known as a "link light". The link light is a very small rectangular green or amber-colored light that lights up when it sees a connection. Unplug the network cable from the back of the computer and plug it back in, watching to see if the light goes from off to on again when the cable is plugged back in. If you plug the cable back in and nothing changes then it's possible that you have a bad network cable, which is easily replaced. If you do have a link light on the back of the computer then you know the problem isn't the network cable.

At this point troubleshooting gets more complicated so you will need to make a decision whether to call a computer repair service center and have them send a technician to check out your network, or to continue troubleshooting the problem yourself.

The next step is to open what's called a Command Prompt to see if you can "ping" the router. To open a Command Prompt in Windows XP go to the Start menu and select the "run" item. A small box will then come up asking you to type the name of the program that you want to run. Type "cmd" (without quotes) into the box and then press enter. One Windows 7 or Vista, click on the Start menu and type the letters "cmd" (without quotes) and press enter. A black box with a blinking cursor will then pop up, which is the Command Prompt.

In the Command Prompt window type "ipconfig" (again without quotes) and press enter. The computer's internet configuration will then be displayed on the screen. One of the lines will say "Default Gateway..." followed by a number separated by periods (192.168.1.100 or something similar). The number that you see on the Default Gateway line is the network address of your router. You will then need to type the word "ping" followed by a space and then the numeric Default Gateway address exactly as it appears, and then press enter. For example if my Default Gateway address is displaying as 192.168.1.1 I would type the following into the command prompt window.

ping 192.168.1.1

By pinging the default gateway you are attempting to contact your router and asking it for a response. After pressing enter you will get a series of messages that say either "Reply" or "Timeout". If you are getting Reply messages then it is likely that the problem is with your internet service providers' equipment and they will be responsible for fixing it. If you are getting Timeout messages then there is either a software problem on your PC or your router has gone bad and needs to be replaced.

If at this point your internet connection still isn't working then you may want to contact a computer repair service center and ask them to have a computer network technician look further into the problem.

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The Beauty of Computer Made Cards

I admit that the store bought cards are beautiful, sometimes funny and easy to buy. I also concede that most of the amateur efforts at card making are woefully sad looking. The low cost of a computer made card is a plus for the frugal minded but may make us look cheap if it doesn't please the recipient.

The beauty of a home made card is that by its very nature it shows that an individual effort was made to create a special message for a special person. No casual purchase of a grocery store card will give the right impression. Now if you can make a card just as beautiful as a commercially produced version, then you are far ahead in the meaningful department.

One way to decorate your personally made card is to use a computer enhanced photograph that you have taken. It can be a photo that shows your love in a special relationship or a picture of something that brings that love to mind. Any cute or meaningful picture can be the subject of the cover of your card. Most picture editing software contain filters that emulate an impressionist painting or a Rembrandt on canvas or wood. Edges can be beveled or faded to dark or even made to simulate an unfinished pastel. It can be shaped to fit a horizontal or vertical one fold card and overprinted with your main message. Most card making software allow the importing of personal photos to enhance your cards. Two I can think of are CardShop and PrintShop.

Inside you can print a favorite poem or even one you have made up yourself. Personal names and intimate items in flowing computer script can be a part of your poem, something that you would never find in a commercial offering. Since you compose this literature yourself, there is no doubt for whom it was meant and they can be sure of its sincerity. The right side can be reserved for personal wishes and sending of love in your own writing. This is one card that will be saved forever.

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How to Write a Business Proposal in Response to a Request For Proposal (RFP) Or Quote (RFQ)

Here's the situation: a potential client asks you for a proposal for services or products in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Quote (RFQ), but where do you start? If you have never written a business proposal before, this can be a daunting task. However, by using a logical document format, you can develop a quality proposal that will maximise the chances of it being accepted. Then you'll discover that you can repeat the same formula for any subsequent proposals. 

This article recommends and details the minimum content areas that you should address in a business proposal. In this case, we assume that there is no formal document structure requested by your client - so it is for you to decide on the form of the proposal. 

Your Aim

Before you start writing any proposal, you must consider your aim - to make a sale of your goods and or services. Two of the major issues considered by your client in deciding whether to accept your proposal are whether, in their opinion, you understand their business needs; and that you can deliver what you promise. You must continually refer to these two fundamental questions when you write your proposal. Referring back to these issues also helps you with developing the content of your proposal.

Proposal Contents

Any business proposal should contain the following areas:


Scope of Work - this requires you to provide an overview of your services or products that will meet their business needs. The client's needs are obtained from a Brief that may range from a formal written document through to a verbal conversation. You need to provide the client with the confidence that you understand their business needs and demonstrate how your products or services meet them.

Project Approach - in this section, you need to provide some explanation about how you are going to approach the work. This builds more confidence for your client, as they read what you are doing (Scope of Work), along with evidence that you have actually thought about and planned the work.

Past Experience - you should provide details of previous engagements in which you have delivered similar products or services. It is also helpful to include personal references, should the client wish to verify them. The purpose of this is to give the client some measure of how mature and experienced you are in delivering the services or products you are offering. 

Project Team - you should always detail the specific people you intend to use during the engagement, along with their background, skills and experience. It is also useful to include a resumé or CV for each person. You should also mention who will be the main point of contact in your organisation for this project.

Timeline and Milestones - this section should illustrate the tasks or products to be provided, each with a corresponding planned delivery date. For larger engagements, milestones can be used to serve as control checkpoints for the client or payment points for you (further discussed below). The timeline can be presented in tabular form, or if more complex, you can use a Gantt chart.

Progress Reports and Meetings - to foster good communications and to maintain a healthy relationship with the client, you should suggest the forms and frequency of progress reports and meetings. Examples of this could include providing weekly email updates, formal written reports, or monthly face-to-face meetings.

Resources and Materials Provided by the Client - if you need the client to provide you with any facilities or resources for your use or access, you need to state them here. Examples could be provision of a computer workstation or access to their computer systems whilst you are working on their site, or access to the client's key staff at certain points of the engagement.

Assumptions - if there are any other assumptions that you have made in preparing your proposal, you should include them here. The point of this is to minimise any misunderstandings you may have with the client after they give you the approval to proceed with the engagement.  For example, you will not be happy if your client asks for a task that you assumed was outside the scope of the project, but never stated.

Cost and Payment Schedule - the cost of your proposal can be expressed either in a lump sum or on a time and materials basis. You will need to provide visibility of your hourly rates if you are charging on a time and materials basis. If it is appropriate, or if the client desires, you can suggest to be paid according to certain project deliverables that are stated in the Timelines and Milestones section. In this case, you can align the relevant Milestones against appropriate payment amounts. If the engagement is on a time and materials basis, then you can align payments with deliverables or request that payments be made periodically such as fortnightly or monthly.

Terms of Agreement - if you have any contract terms that you wish to apply to the agreement, they should be included here. These could include anything from ownership of IP through to payment terms. You can use the services of a lawyer to help you develop these terms if required.

The above areas are the recommended minimum contents of any business proposal in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Quote (RFQ). Used systematically, this can guide can help you to develop and refine the format of your proposals. It allows you to breakdown the task of proposal writing into relevant sections, allowing you to focus on the all-important technical content. 

When writing a proposal, always remember that you are trying to provide a prospective client with the confidence that you know your products and services, and are experienced in delivering them.  Writing your proposals using this format will help you to develop quality proposals and maximise the chances of them being accepted.

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Crawling in Open Source, Part 1

Introduction

In this article I will give you a short introduction to crawling in general and then move on to Apache Nutch, its history, and architecture, and explanations of its core processing steps and MapReduce functions at a very technical level. After reading this article readers should be somewhat familiar with the basic crawling concepts and core MapReduce jobs in Nutch.

What is a web crawler?

A Web Crawler is a computer program that usually discovers and downloads content from the web via an HTTP protocol. The discovery process of a crawler is usually simple and straightforward. A crawler is first given a set of URLs, often called seeds. Next the crawler goes and downloads the content from those URLs and then extracts hyperlinks or URLs from the downloaded content. This is exactly the same thing that happens in the real world when a human is interfacing with a web browser and clicks on links from a homepage, and pages that follow, one after another.

When a web crawler discovers new URLs to follow, it then goes to fetch the content from those URLs - just like a normal browser fetches the content when links on a web page are clicked. The download part is even simpler. In the simplified case of HTTP, a network connection to the host is opened, an HTTP request is sent, an HTTP response is read from the wire and then the network connection is closed. A crawler might also support other means of getting the content, making it capable of finding and fetching content from various different places like local or shared file systems, ftp servers, mail boxes etc.

Crawler use cases

Generally speaking, crawlers are used to find and bring in the content that interests you. Often the reason is that you want to make that information searchable by indexing it. The use case and context for crawling can vary greatly depending on the task at hand. For example the most popular web search engines, like Google and Yahoo, deploy a web crawler that primarily finds content that is publicly available via the web. The main challenge for such a generic web crawler is obviously scalability. The crawler architecture needs to be efficient because the amount of content to crawl is enormous and growing all the time at ever increasing speeds. Another example, of a completely different kind of use case, is a price comparison site where users are presented with products and their price information from various online shops.

To gather such information one could implement a crawler that continuously re-crawls content from a predefined set of web sites, and is mainly interested in just a few specific URLs from those sites. A crawler in an enterprise search context possesses yet another set of features important for that context. Usually, an enterprise crawler needs to understand and extract information from various different document formats and access those documents from many different places like mail boxes, CRM systems, and content management systems. Understanding many different document formats plays an important role. And there are many other examples of crawling needs that lie in between these examples that each require a slightly different set of requirements for the crawler to fulfill.

Essential crawler components

There are a few features or characteristics that are very important for a crawler. The most important single feature every crawler should contain is a sense of politeness. Since crawling content from web sites uses resources from the target server, like network bandwidth and processor time, it is mandatory to limit the frequency a crawler accesses particular content or else the target server would soon become inaccessible to real users. Owners of a website may also want to expose only some part of the available content to web crawlers. For such cases there exists a method called Robots Exclusion Standard that gives the owner of a web site the means to control what and how often something is fetched from the server. A polite crawler respects such rules. Politeness is not just following the rules, but respecting a site's resources even when such rules are not explicitly specified by limiting the frequency of your crawler's visits. The most common components of a crawler include a queue, fetcher, extractor and content repository.

The queue contains URLs to be fetched. It may be a simple memory based, first in, first out queue, but usually it's more advanced and consists of host based queues, a way to prioritize fetching of more important URLs, an ability to store parts or all of the data structures on disk and so on. The fetcher is a component that does the actual work of getting a single piece of content, for example one single HTML page. The extractor is a component responsible for finding new URLs to fetch, for example by extracting that information from an HTML page. The newly discovered URLs are then normalized and queued to be fetched. The content repository is a place where you store the content. Later the content is processed and finally indexed. I am not going to go into more detail about crawler architectures and implementation details, but will instead take a closer look at one open source java crawler implementation: Apache Nutch.

Apache Nutch

Nutch was originally implemented by Doug Cutting and Michael Cafarella et al. in around 2002. The goal was to make Nutch a web scale crawler and search application capable of fetching billions of URLs per month, maintain an index of these pages and allow searching of that index 1000 times per second. The original design was proven to scale up to 100 million documents but became impractical with problems of maintenance at such a scale. During 2004, after the incubation process, Nutch became part of Apache. Soon after Google published its MapReduce paper in 2004, the Nutch architecture was rewritten to take advantage of MapReduce, and a new data storage system called NutchDistributedFileSystem (NDFS) was implemented.

This new architecture allowed Nutch to be run on a large cluster of machines, making the architecture scalable both in processing power and data storage. Later both the MapReduce execution framework and NDFS were promoted to a top level Apache project called Apache Hadoop. Hadoop solves much of the maintenance issues Nutch had in the pre-MapReduce era. After setting up a Hadoop cluster you can control Nutch crawling from one single machine despite the size of the cluster you are running Nutch on. Nutch as it exists today is still pretty much an application that helps you to build a generic web search engine. It supports fetching content with various protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and local file system. Nutch can also extract textual content from several document formats like HTML, RSS, ATOM, PDF, ms formats (doc, excel, ppt), etc right out of the box. Nutch is not for everyone as some quite low level skills are still required to run a crawl and maintain the indexes.

Apache Nutch Internals

Running Nutch consists of executing several commands from the shell in sequence. Those commands each launch one or more MapReduce jobs that are executed by Hadoop. Next I will walk you through some of the most important commands and how they are constructed as MapReduce jobs and tasks. I'll use Python-like pseudocode to describe the functions in simplified examples for illustration purposes, but this should still capture the most essential aspects of each job. Before going into the individual commands,the core terms and components that I will refer to later in this article need to be explained. The Crawl Database is a data store where Nutch stores every URL, together with the metadata that it knows about. In Hadoop terms it's a Sequence file (meaning all records are stored in sequential manner) consisting of tuples of URL and CrawlDatum. Many other data structures in Nutch are of similar structure and no relational databases are used. The rationale behind this kind of data structure is scalability.

The model of simple, flat data storage works well in a distributed environment. Each node gets a one or more split of the whole data and operates on that (The Map phase of MapReduce). Data can be stored inside the Hadoop Distributed File System so nodes can access the splits from the nearest host that contains a replica of it. Operations (like inserts, deletes and updates) in Crawl Database and other data are processed in batch mode. Here is an example of the contents of crawldb: The Fetch List is a data structure (SequenceFile, URL->Crawldatum) that contains the URL, crawldatum tuples that are going to be fetched in one batch, usually the Fetch list contents are a subset of CrawlDB that was created by the generate command.

FetchList is stored inside Segment. Segment is basically a folder containing all the data related to one fetching batch. Besides the Fetch List, the fetched content itself will be stored there in addition to the extracted plain text version of the content, anchor texts and URLs of outlinks, protocol and document level metadata etc. The Link Database is a data structure (Sequence file, URL -> Inlinks) that contains all inverted links. In the parsing phase Nutch can extract outlinks from a document and store them in format source url -> target_url,anchor_text. In the process of inversion we invert the order and combine all instances making the data records in Link Database look like: targetURL -> anchortext[] text so we can use that information later when individual documents are indexed.

Inject

The Inject command in Nutch has one responsibility: inject more URLs into Crawl Database. Normally you should collect a set of URLs to add and then process them in one batch to keep the time of a single insert small.

Generate

The Generate command in Nutch is used to generate a list of URLs to fetch from Crawl Database URLs with the highest scores are preferred.

Fetch

Fetcher is responsible for fetching content from URLs and writing them to disk. It also optionally parses the content. URLs are read from a Fetch List generated by Generator.

Parse

Parser reads raw fetched content, parses it and stores the results.

Invert links

Inverts link information so we can use anchor texts from other documents that point to a document together with the rest of the document data.

Final words

I have now gone through the core MapReduce jobs in Nutch that are related to crawling. There are also many other data processing jobs in Nutch like indexing, page scoring calculation, removing duplicate content from index etc. The best way to get familiar with the remaining algorithms to look at the following resources (the link is in in references). In the next article of this series I will take a look at other open source crawlers.

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Internal Error 2711 Fix - How To Repair Internal Error 2711 On Your PC

Internal Error 2711 is a problem caused by the installation program for a piece of software you have being corrupted or damaged. The most likely occurrence of this error will be when you install Office XP, but can show for a whole number of different programs & software tools that you can install onto your system. The good news is that in order to fix the error, you just need to use a few simple tools & tweaks to ensure that Windows will run as smoothly and effectively as possible again.

The error itself will generally show in this format:

* Internal Error 2711: The specified Feature name name not found in Feature Table.

The actual cause of the problem is all down to how your computer installs software on your PC. Each time you install a program, Windows basically needs to place all the files, settings and options that program requires onto your computer, through using an "Installer" program. Although installer programs generally work very well to place the necessary files & settings required onto your system, the unfortunate fact is that errors can often beset the process, leading to the likes of the 2711 message showing. The "Internal Error" that you see basically means that the installer has a specific error inside the installation process for your system, preventing your computer from running correctly.

The way to fix Internal Error 2711 is actually quite simple - it's a two step process which can be done by first downloading a piece of software called the "Windows Installer Cleanup Utility" to fix any part of the error that's causing a problem, and then repairing the registry of your PC with a registry cleaner.

Step 1 to fixing this is to use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to fix the errors that Windows Installer may have on your system. This software has been produced by Microsoft and is freely available from their website. It will basically work to fix any problems / errors that your computer may have inside which are causing the Internal 2711 error to show on your system. You download download the cleanup utility from the Microsoft website, install it and let it run.

Step 2 to fix the Internal Error 2711 is to use a registry cleaner tool to fix any registry errors your computer has. A registry cleaner is a software program designed to scan through the registry and repair any problems that are inside - the registry being a large database of information, settings and options for your system. The registry database is actually one of the most important parts of Windows which most people don't even know about - it's where the likes of your desktop wallpaper & latest emails are kept. Unfortunately, the registry is also a big cause of errors for your system and need to be repaired to ensure your computer is able to run as smoothly and effectively as possible. To do this, you should download an run a registry cleaner tool to fix any of the registry problems which may be causing the 2711 error on your PC.

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The Sure Bet - Horse Racing Computer Software

Since the early 1970's, computers have revolutionized the way things are done on a day to day basis.  The computer has taken difficult tasks and has made them easier to do, but also does them in less time than it would have normally taken. Over the years, computers have dominated our day to day lives and businesses. 

Now, computers and their software programs have transcended from the business world into the realm of online gambling especially horse race betting.

The term horse racing computer software has two very distinct meanings.  The first is a computer program that is educational and used to simulate horse races or events for the jockeys, trainers, and owners.  The other definition includes using computer software to actually bet on horse racing online as a means to make money.

This just goes to show you how much technology has changed our world. Even in a traditional sport like horse racing, computers have made the sport easier to access, more popular, and brought it to the 21st Century.

Horse Racing Computer Software for Training of Horses

One of the definitions of horse racing computer software is a piece of programming that can be used in the racing horses. This could refer to the various types of software which are used in improving the racing performance of horses primarily by the owners and horse jockeys. This type of software is used to develop specific training regiments for the horses physical development by their trainers.  This type of software is also used to prepare pre-race strategies simulating a variety of conditions that might occur at the track on race day.  Just like any others sport, the more information the owners, jockeys, and trainers have, the better prepared them will be for competition! Gone are the days of just having a fast horse (this still doesn't hurt though).

Horse Racing Computer Software for Online Gaming

Gaming use is the other interpretation for the term horse racing computer software. This can also be interpreted to mean certain types of software that allow people to enjoy horse racing through their own computer in the comfort of their homes. This enjoyment comes through online betting  ensuring a successful money making day at the track!

This type of computer software provides people a chance to enjoy the thrill of the race without even leaving their homes. Often, this type of horse racing computer software comes with a program that gives you all of the information you need to make the best, well educated, decision as to which horse(s) to bet on.  The computer software programs are filled will all different statistics that allow the person to make a well educated decision on which horses to place bets. Online gaming is becoming a very popular way to make money online.  People have made money playing online poker, and this is spreading into the sport of horse racing.

There are many types of horse racing computer software programs available on the market today.  It is important that if you chose to use a horse racing computer program for actual online betting, you need to research the different types of programs available.  I have reviewed the top 4 horse racing computer software programs that are available online.

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Create a Custom Office by Using Computer Desk Plans

Every home office needs a computer desk, but you may be highly disappointed with the desks you find in the stores. It's time to head out to your workshop and build your own custom desk. With the proper set of computer desk plans, you will be able to build a desk which makes those store units look really cheap, and inferior.

Your hardest job may be choosing the computer desk plans you wish to use. You can choose from a very simple desk, to the very intricate design of a roll top desk. One thing which should stay constant in your mind while choosing your plans is to choose complete computer desk plans.

A set of good plans is going to take into consideration many things including air circulation for keeping your computer cool. Too often you will see computers put inside of a desk without proper circulation reducing the life of the PC and all of its components. This is only one of the areas where high quality PC desk plans will keep you on the right track.

Another area often overlooked when building a PC desk is adequate room for the keyboard and mouse. Most people remember to add a convenient drawer for the keyboard, but then you end up with the mouse up on the top of the desk. Most people prefer to have the mouse right beside their keyboard. Keep this in mind when choosing your computer desk plans. A professional woodworker will likely have considered this factor in their plans.

Not everyone has a full size desktop computer. Laptops have become the preferred computer of most users due to their small size, and portability. This does not negate the need for a desk, but does complicate the design of your desk a little bit. If you are looking for computer desk plans for your laptop, then it is important to keep in mind the needs of a laptop user. You may want the tabletop to be a little lower than a traditional desk, since the keyboard will not be in a drawer. Leave enough room for using an external mouse, since most laptop users love to use a full size mouse when they are sitting at their desk. Power needs to be easy to reach for recharging the laptop, while keeping the cords out of the way, and easy to disconnect when they want to take the laptop away from the desk.

This brings us back to making sure to choose the proper plans for any kind of computer. Top craftsmen understand how people use their projects because they have built many projects for clients, and themselves. Their computer desk plans will also inform you clearly of all the important parts, hardware, lumber, and tools you will need to complete the project.

Your home office is going to be great to look at, and a pleasure to use with the custom desk you have created using your carefully selected plans. If you choose the wrong plans, it may be the room you dread working in. Make sure you choose high quality computer desk plans, and you'll save yourself unnecessary work and frustrations.

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How to Repair a Windows Installer Package Error 1721

To repair a Windows installer package error 1721 it takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of skill. Without all of these, the repair can become a real headache. Just like many other computer troubles, there are not too many people that know how to perform this repair successfully. It's really a delicate operation and without the skills you could seriously damage your computer. That goes for anyone else that doesn't have any background in this type of repair. Unless they're qualified, no one should even attempt it.

Why You Shouldn't Try Repairing The Windows Installer Package Error 1721 yourself.

As with any other repair that needs to be performed on your computer there are pitfalls that you need to watch out for along the way. Moving or deleting files that aren't supposed to be moved or deleted can result in a worse situation than the original. Many people are offered help by well-intentioned individuals, but most wouldn't have a clue on how to repair a Windows installer package error 1721.

If there is a crucial mistake made your computer could suffer irreversible damage, or worse, become totally disable for good. It's nice of them to offer, but it's not recommended that you let anyone who isn't qualified to attempt a repair of a Windows installer package 1721 error. If you don't know what you're doing it could spell disaster for your computer. Many people depend on the computer for a variety of reasons and being without one can really hurt. It's just not worth taking the risk.

You could call on the services of a professional that is schooled in doing this type of repair, but that could get real expensive. You may even have to disconnect your system and in order to drop it off at their shop. Not many professional computer experts make house calls anymore. This can be a real inconvenience, and who knows when they'll be done repairing it? There is a better way to have this repair done that to spend lots of money.

The Registry Cleaner

Never heard of one? Lots of folks haven't. A registry cleaner is the best kept secret available on the market. This software can scan your computers registry and find out what's causing the problem, and then give some options on how to repair A Windows installer package error 1721. And it won't just pick up on this one problem.
A registry cleaner will thoroughly scan every inch of your computers registry and search for anything that isn't right. Damaged files, missing entries, you name it a registry cleaner will find it and make you aware of it.

The benefits to using a registry cleaner is that there's no huge cost involved so there won't be a strain put on your finances, and you don't have to transport your computer anywhere.

You can fix the problem all by yourself in the comforts of your own home.

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How to Start a Home Based Computer Repair Business

In this day and age of technology, skilled computer repair technicians are always required. Businesses and individuals alike are always in need of repairs, troubleshooting, computer upgrades, and other technology-related advice and assistance, and if you are proficient at working on computer hardware or installing computer software, you can make a nice amount of money operating your own business out of your house.

One of the reasons computer repair makes for a great home business is that you need very little setup on your end. You'll need your tools (a basic screwdriver for the most part, unless you are working on hard drives or other, more advanced parts) and some form of organizing your orders and invoices, and that's about it. You don't even really need a home office or work area if you do most of your work at your clients' homes. If you do bring PCs or other equipment to your home to work, all you really need is a large table and some good lighting.

While many people have picked up computer related skills by simply working on computers, you will probably want to pick up a few certifications. If you're on top of the technology field, you will most likely already know everything these certification tests ask. However, having a Microsoft certification or A+ certification will make your business look that much more professional and will give your clients a since of trust. Also, you can get certified through computer companies to work as an authorized repair service for their products, which can bring in more clients.

There are a few other things you'll want to think about before starting your home based computer repair business. The first is what you will work on. Will you simply handle the CPU unit itself? If so, all you'll need to worry about is working on hard drivers, motherboards, CD drives, and the like. However, if you want more business, you might also work on peripheral devices like printers, monitors, scanners, or faxes. While this will bring in more work, it also means that you will need access to a distributor or other source for parts, plus you'll need to know or learn how to service various brands of devices.

The main concern in working on computers is finding a great source for parts. You don't want to always be buying the top of the line hard drives or printer parts, but at the same time, the technology industry is one in which buying the most generic, cheap part isn't always the best idea. You'll want your clients to know that anything they have you repair is going to last, yet you'll also want to get your parts at a reasonable price so your services are affordable. With this in mind, you might buy your parts off the internet, from a reliable computer store, or even purchase used computers from people you know or from your clients when they upgrade. Just because a computer is used doesn't mean its parts are worthless.

Once you have a nice inventory of parts or a reliable source to purchase them from and your certifications and home based business paperwork in order, all you need are customers. Advertising in your local paper is one good way of getting business, as is putting up flyer's at local colleges (be sure to get permission first, of course). You might even put an ad in the college newspaper since students are very computer-dependent. If you can offer them a discount, you'll have a nearly unlimited customer base. Computer repair businesses also gain a good number of customers from word of mouth. Always leave your clients a few extra business cards to pass along to friends and family who might need your help.

While that's obviously a simplified approach to starting your home computer repair business, it does serve as an outline of the things you'll need to get your business off the ground. If done properly and advertised well, you'll find yourself with more CPUs, printers, and monitors to fix than you ever imagined.

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Getting Started With Exchange 2010

As most know Exchange 2010 is the latest version of Microsoft's email server. I wanted to write a short description of the software and outline its features.

Like its predecessor Exchange 2010 requires that you run it on an x64 platform. 32-bit processing is surely but slowly becoming a thing of the past. In 2010 however you must also be running Windows 2008 SP2 or 2008 R2. One of the major decisions you'll have to make is whether to select the standard or enterprise edition. This basically boils down to how many stores you need. Standard supports 5 stores per server as to where Enterprise you can do 50+. As far as the client side CAL's are concerned you must purchase the 2008 enterprise CAL's if you wish to do unified messaging. There is not however a limitation in the software. It is simply a licensing issue. Which means you'll still have the ability to access unified messaging but it will not be licensed correctly. Another feature Microsoft has decided to keep is the JET EDB database. It has been rumored in the past that Microsoft would start using SQL server to house the Exchange database. This is not the case.

If you ever worked with recovery storage groups in Exchange 2003 or 2007 you will no longer find those in 2010. As well you will not be able to find routing groups. All of the Exchange 2010's routing is done through active directory sites and services. So you must make sure that you have properly configured your sites before moving forward with Exchange. It is essential to Exchange 2010 functioning properly. As with Exchange 2007 Microsoft still is trying to de-emphasize public folders. Their goal is to eventually replace these with their Sharepoint product.

Another major feature of Exchange 2007 and 2010 is their ability to reject email at the gateway. The Edge transport server allows you to configure ADAM and active directory lightweight services to query AD. This allows you to get a list of valid email address and push them out to the border of your network. If the edge server detects that someone is trying to send email to the inside of your organization and the user does not exist it is dropped immediately. This saves on memory and processing power internally so that you don't have to deal with spam.

Additionally with Exchange 2007 and 2010 you get the ability to create UNC direct file access paths. This way in OWA when a user needs a file on a network share they can grab it without needing a cumbersome VPN client. Outlook anywhere also remains widely the same in 2007 and 2010. It basically encapsulates your RPC packets into https packets. This allows you to traverse your firewall without opening any additional ports. Therefore giving users access to their email from Outlook wherever they may travel.

One of the greatest new features of Exchange 2010 in my opinion is database availability groups or DAG. This is essentially the same thing as CCR in Exchange 2007. Anyone who has tried to configure CCR, LCR, or SCR in Exchange 2007 knows that it can be quite the process. Microsoft simplified this with DAG's in 2010. It allows you to keep 16 copies of a users mailbox for redundancy and disaster recovery. It does this through a process called log shipping. Where 1MB files are created and then played into the database. This allows you to keep a backup of your server at another physical location for disaster recovery or have two Exchange servers running next to each other.

Another nice feature in 2010 is the fact that the client access server or CAS redirects your client to their database server that houses their mailbox. You no longer need to specify the location of your server in Outlook. The CAS parses AD and redirects them automatically. Therefore there is no hard coding. This makes the transition for fail over a lot easier.

As most of you know who have used Exchange 2007 the GUI is simply a front end to Microsofts command line utility called EMS or Exchange Mangement Shell. Anything you do in the GUI is converted to a command and executed against your server. I would personally say you have about 90 percent functionality in the GUI as opposed to EMS. However, EMS definitely makes the process a lot easier if you need to apply a setting to multiple objects at the same time.

As with Exchange 2007 you still have the same five roles edge transport, hub transport, client access server, mailbox, and unified messaging. Inside of these five roles only the edge transport server must be installed separately from the rest of the servers. Everything else can be ran on one box. Although this is not recommend for performance reasons. The reason why the edge server is standalone is it was meant to sit in your DMZ or on the border of your network. Absorbing the hits so your internal servers are not affected. It has features such as safelist aggregation where Outlook client rules are brought outside to it so that it can apply those rules before the message ever enters your internal network.

The hub server still is the same as Exchange 2007 it routes your messages internally and holds compliance rules. You can also run a command against it to install antispam feature set. This way if you don't have an edge transport server you can use it to receive outside mail directly. Although this is not recommended by Microsoft.

The CAS server or client access server is meant to interface with your internal and external clients. As stated before it automatically redirects your Outlook clients so that you don't need to hardcode their mailbox server. It also accepts connections from smart phones, OWA, etc. It is basically your clients interface to your Exchange infrastructure.

If you wish to monitor your Exchange 2010 infrastructure Microsoft has made a plugin for their SCOM or system center operations manager. This is Microsoft's MOM replacement that allows you to monitor your servers.

In Exchange 2010 you will no longer see SCR, LCR, or CCR. They have been superseded by DAG or database availability groups. This makes configuring database replication a lot smoother. DAG's also allow for your data to reside across multiple servers. You can also have multiple DAG's. This is a great feature because if half of your users are in one DAG group and it goes down the other half are not even affected. Other benefits are reduced restore time since you're not restoring all of your users' data only the ones in that DAG. You can also have separate exchange policies for different DAG's. So if your management is in one and your regular users are in another you can change the rules that apply to them. This is a great way to mitigate risk by distributing your load.

As far as the enterprise and standard software go they are both installed from the same media. It is just different license keys that you input that determine what version you are installing. It is also upgradable. You can go from trial to standard to enterprise. However, you cannot downgrade backwards from enterprise to standard or standard to trial.

In order to install Exchange 2010 your domain and forest functional level must be at 2003. Also each site which contains Exchange 2010 must also contain a 2003SP2 domain controller or 2008 domain controller. We recommend you have your domain running 2008R2 domain controllers however.

Exchange still uses EAS or exchange active sync for mobile devices. This way your contacts, calendar, email, etc. are all tightly integrated with your Windows mobile devices.

One common misconception that people have is Exchange enterprise must be installed on server enterprise software. Or that server enterprise software cannot have Exchange standard installed on it. Both of these are fallacies.

When you begin your Exchange installation you should give serious consideration to how you configure your arrays. Exchange is a very read/write intensive application. Therefore you should separate your OS, log files, and database all on separate arrays. If this is not possible it is then recommended that you at least put yoru OS and log files on one array and your database files on another. The reason for this is simple. The log files are write intensive and the database files are read intensive. Separate these two out can speed up your disk I/O.

Memory requirements in Exchange 2010 have pretty much gone unchanged. Start your server with 2GB of memory and then 5MB for every mailbox user. I would also personally recommend to have a minimum of 4GB. Memory is cheap enough these days that the benefit of having more of it out way the cost.

Although the databases in Exchange can grow very large we do not recommend that you go over 100GB. This can become cumbersome to work with and decrease performance on your server.

If you wish to remotely manage your Exchange server you can install the management tools. They will install on Vista SP2 and higher or server 2008 SP2 or higher. This way you do not have to remotely login to your Exchange server to make all of your changes.

As far as your site layout goes you should also plan on having a global catalog server in every location that contains a mailbox server. This is recommended by Microsoft and will reduce WAN traffic.

Exchange has also setup a new permissions setup which they refer to as RBAC or role based access control. From this you get 5 roles to manage your exchange infrastructure. They are Organization management, view only organization management, recipient management, records management, and GAL synchronization management.

Another thing you should consider before installing Exchange 2010 is to make sure your domain is setup properly. You can use tools such as NETDIAG and DCDIAG to verify this. In order to install Exchange 2010 you're going to need to be a member of domain admins, enterprise admins, and schema admins. You will also want to add connect Microsoft.com and download.microsoft.com to your trusted sites list in IE. Other pieces of software that must be installed are.NET 3.5, Windows remote management 2.0, powershell v2, 2007 office converter Microsoft filter packs. If you are installing the mailbox role you must also have AD services remote management tools.

Before starting the install you must prepare your schema by running setup /ps if it fails delete the contents of c:windowstemp, copy the files from your CD to your hard drive and rerun setup /ps. You must then run setup /prepareAD /OrganizationName:MyCompany where "MyCompany" can be replaced by your organization name.

You must then prepare the prerequisites by running the following commands.

ServerManagerCMD -install RSAT-ADDS ServerManagerCMD -install Web-Server ServerManagerCMD -install Web-ISAPI-Ext ServerManagerCMD -install Web-Metabase ServerManagerCMD -install Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console ServerManagerCMD -install Web-Basic-Auth ServerManagerCMD -install Web-Digest-Auth ServerManagerCMD -install Web-Windows-Auth ServerManagerCMD -install Web-Dyn-Compression ServerManagerCMD -install Net-http-Activation ServerManagerCMD -install RPC-over-http-Proxy Once this is complete reboot your server. You are now ready to run Setup.com /mode:install /roles:H,C,M the H,C,M install hub cas and mailbox roles.

Once your install is complete run the Exchange BPA or best practice analyzer.

In order to install the Edge server you'll want to make sure you're running 2008 standard with SP2. You'll need.NET 3.5, remote management 2.0, powershell v2, AD LDS (can be installed via servermanagerCMD -i ADLDS). For the edge server to work in a DMZ you'll need to open ports 50389-50636. Then run new-EdgeSubscription -filename "c:tempEdgeSubscriptionInfo.xml" Copy that generated file to your hub server you can import it in the GUI and run start-edgeSubscription from EMS. You can test this once it is imported to verify it is working properly by using test-EdgeSubscription from EMS.

I would personally recommend using a RBL provider to stop spam from entering your organization. One example of this is SpamHaus. This queries the connecting server to a black list of IP's and blocks communication if it is found on the list. This one feature can drastically cut down on spam.

Another item you have to address is purchasing a SAN certificate for your Exchange server. Exchange has moved to a secure by default mentality. You will find connecting to OWA or using active sync become very painful if you try to issue your own SSL certificates.

Another security improvement in Exchange 2007 and 2010 is that all intercommunication is secure and encrypted. TLS is used for all server to server communication internally. RPC is used for your Outlook clients to communicate with your servers. SSL is configured for all external client communication including, OWA, activesync, etc.

Opportunistic TLS is a new feature where your Exchange server will no long try to send via SMTP by default. It will first send a STARTTLS command to use TLS to encrypt external SMTP communication with other servers. If the other server however does not support this it will revert to insecure communications.

Still included in Exchange 2010 is the ability to use a journaling mailbox to track all of your emails. This is required by some organizations. Keep in mind that this feature can increase your processor and memory usage by 25 percent. So you should make sure your server has plenty of resources before turning on this feature.

One of the requirements as previously stated is that Exchange 2010 must be running active directory 2003. Even though 2008 is recommended if you are running Cisco Unified Messaging 4.2(1) or lower it is NOT compatible with active directory 2008.

When you upgrade your active directory infrastructure it is recommended that you create a virtual machine using Microsoft Hyper-v or Vmware. Make the virtual machine an additional domain controller and make it a global catalog. This way if your upgrade takes turn for the worst you have data that is intact if you have to downgrade. Do not forget to unplug it from the network before doing the upgrade. If you need to revert back you can use NTDSUTIL to seize the roles.

If for whatever reason you need to create a scratch installation of a domain you can always use the ADMT utility to move users, groups, computers, service accounts, and trusts.

To migrate from 2003 Exchange to 2010 the overview is as follows. First you must be running Exchange 2003 with service pack 2. Your active directory domain and forest functional levels must be 2003 and at least one global catalog has to be 2003 server with SP2. Instal AD LDIFDE tools on 2008 to upgrade your schema. Upgrade your Exchange Schema. Transfer OWA, activesync, and Outlook anywhere to the CAS server. Install/upgrade hub server. Transfer the mail flow to the hub transport server. Install mailbox servers and DAG if required. Move your public folder replicas using pfmigrat.wsf or PFRecursive.PS1. Move your mailboxes. Rehome OAB. Rehome public folder hierarchy. Transfer public folder replicas. Delete 2003 public and private stores. Delete routing group connectors. Delete RUS using ADSIEdit. Uninstall Exchange 2003.

To migrate from 2007 Exchange to 2010 the process is a little less. Make sure your Exchange 2007 server is running SP2. Make sure your domain and forest is at 2003 functional level. Global catalog server is at 2003 SP2. Use AD LDIFDE tools to upgrade your schema. Prepare schema. CAS server. Transfer OWA. Install hub transport. Transfer mail to hub transport. Use AddReplicatoPFRecursive.Ps1 to move your public folder replications. Move your mailboxes. Rehome OAB. Transfer public folder replica. Delete public and private stores. Uninstall Exchange 2007.

With Exchange 2010 or 2007 you want to make your co-existence time as small as possible. The longer you intermingle different versions the more problems you are asking for.

If you are running Exchange 5.5 unfortunately there is no direct upgrade at this point. You must first upgrade to Exchange 2003 SP2 then to 2010. As far as Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise, or Senmail goes the recommend path is to install a clean environment and then work on importing your data using tools. There is no upgrade path.

Database Availability Groups or DAG's are a very important new feature of Exchange 2010. It gives you the ability to maintain 16 copies of users' mailboxes. You can also set different databases to fail over to different servers and specify in what priority. The requirements for DAG are Windows Server 2008 enterprise, two nics in your mailboxes servers, Exchange 2010 Enterprise, a file share witness. We recommend you put this on your hub transport server. But technically it can be on any file server. It is very easy to setup as you create a share and then Exchange manages and handles the permissions.

Steps to create a DAG, Add members, and verify the DAG

New-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Name ExchangeDAG -WitnessServer ExchangeHT -WitnessDirectory "c:FSW" -DatabaseAvailabilityGroupIPAddresses 172.16.4.5 --Verbose

Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity ExchangeDAG -MailboxServer ExchangeMB -Verbose

Add-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupServer -Identity ExchangeDAG -MailboxServer ExchangeMB2 -Verbose

Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup -Identity ExchangeDAG -Status

To see your network settings run

Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroupNetwork -identity ExchangeDAG

We can then add database copies by doing the following

Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity ExchangeMB -MailboxServer ExchangeMB2

Then check the status

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus

To test the health

Test-ReplicationHealth

Exchange 2010 consulting

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