When It Comes to Computer Networks, Trust No One and No Thing

By: John Shepler

Network security is a major headache for business. It almost makes one long for the days of one computer per desk and nothing connected to anything else.

Almost. Those air-gapped computers weren’t all that secure either. Sneaker networks, meaning running around with floppy discs, allowed malware to spread and sensitive files to be copied. It’s just that today’s networks with LANs, local data centers, multi-clouds, and the Internet make it really hard to know who’s sneaking in where and what they are up to.

One breach in a corporate network can run up a cost in the millions. If ransomware is involved, the bill can be a lot higher… and a lot more disruptive. What can you do? Don’t be so trustful. Make sure your system is suspicious of everybody and everything all the time. The buzzword for that is “zero trust security.”

What is Zero Trust and How is it Different?
Traditional network security is sometimes compared to a castle with a moat. The castle is your corporate network. Everybody inside the castle is considered to be friendly and trustworthy. Everybody beyond that moat is suspected to be an enemy. The drawbridge is your firewall. It works to keep the bad actors away from the castle while allowing trustworthy visitors access. It assumes that everything bad is going to come through the Internet.

There are a couple of weak links with this approach. First is that some bad actors can already be inside the castle. There are spies and infiltrators and even trusted employees that have turned rogue. Of course we want to trust our colleagues, and that’s how we get in trouble. Even worse when we automatically trust our vendors and customers.

Then there is the famous tale of the Trojan Horse. Gee, it sure looks safe enough. Let’s open the firewall and bring it in. You can just imagine some well-meaning but naive individual in your company doing just that. Of course the gullible Trojans got the worst of that deal since once the Greeks were inside they had the run of the city.

Moral of the story: It’s too easy to have your organization destroyed by one little misstep. Trust no one and no thing. Network security is not an insult to your integrity. It’s a way to make everyone more secure and prevent little slips from becoming major disasters. That means high security processes both inside and outside the network.

What Makes Zero Trust Work?
It starts with having everybody and every thing, meaning anything attached to the network, prove that it is approved for access and what they are approved for. You can’t really say that because someone has been cleared by, say, logging-on, that they should be able to access all the files and every peripheral on the net.

Oh, no. You must have a need to know for everything you want to access. That leads to segmenting the network into much small pieces that each have to be accessed separately. You may have access to one set of information to be able to do your job, but no way are you getting into some of the companies trade secrets or even financial data. Access to HR files? Fat chance… unless you are specifically authorized to see them.

Each use and each device will have a profile constructed that says what they can do and where they can do it. These lists will be used by the network administration to grant or refuse access. You may find that your access times out and you have to log in again to keep using a particular resource. Multi-Factor Authentication, like password plus a code sent to a mobile phone or a hardware key that must be plugged-in, is especially valuable for access through the Internet or to highly sensitive data.

Zero Trust Security does take some doing to implement and maintain, but it can also be the means that keeps hackers and scammers of all sorts from stealing your information or damaging your systems. Are you feeling vulnerable? Learn more about how to secure and safeguard your network and get a complementary quote appropriate for your business.

We’re Headed Toward Universal Elasticity as a Service

By: John Shepler

We’ve all suffered the frustration of visiting a web site that normally works great, only to find it is slow or completely stalled. Perhaps you are trying to finish a project at 5 PM on a Friday and your cloud service has slowed to a crawl. Maybe the video you are watching just buffers over and over, raising your blood pressure to an unacceptable level. Why doesn’t this stuff just work?

Resource Starvation
Anytime systems that normally run without hesitation get bogged down, it’s caused by some type of failure or being starved for resources. On rare instances there is a hardware failure. More likely the failure is the software gone wandering down some unpredictable path or stuck in a loop. Even more likely you are experiencing resource starvation.

You are starved of resources when you need more of something than is available at the moment. This can be compute cycles, RAM memory, disk space or bandwidth. If the problem is caused by a sudden demand for more service than usual, you might be starved for all of these.

How can this happen? Imagine a e-commerce web site that is sized to handle the usual number of shoppers, plus some margin for peak shopping times. A major TV network presents a story on a product that has become popular on social networks. All of a sudden, it seems like everybody on Earth is searching for this item and many are finding your site. Traffic? Through the roof! Sales? Not so many more. You’ve been skunked by resource starvation.

But My Services Are Scalable!
Sure they are. All you have to do is hope someone has detected the surge in activity. They notify someone else in charge, who analyzes the situation and takes action to provision more resources. In most operations this is done by changing settings on a control panel or making a phone call to the service provider. After some minutes or hours, the traffic congestion has been relieved and everybody who still wants to place an order can easily do so. But… how many buyers have given up or found another seller?

The other weakness of scalability is that you may wind up paying a premium for unneeded capacity after the surge in traffic has passed. It takes a keen eye to match resources with need to minimize the cost of your computing and network services.

Elasticity Acts Faster Than Scalability
Think of elasticity as the automation of scalability. Elastic resources are those that automatically adjust for need without human intervention. Yes, the robots have come for our jobs and, in this case, they are welcome to this maddening task.

Elastic cloud computing allows the cloud to assign you virtual servers and storage as needed. You really couldn’t do this back in the day when your own servers had to be ordered, shipped, installed in racks and connected to the rest of the infrastructure. Oh, that’s still the way it is done. It’s just invisible to you. Now the cloud company takes care of installing dozens or hundreds of physical servers at a time. The hypervisor software slices and dices them into virtual machines that can be assigned to any user at any time, faster than you can ask for them.

Another beauty of elastic computing is that resources can be deleted as fast as they are added. With the system automatically monitoring the traffic demand, this means you only have what you need at any point in time. It also means that you only pay for what you are using as you use it. A good cloud service will appear to be an infinite well of resources that you can check out and turn back as required.

Elastic Bandwidth Completes the System
It doesn’t do any good to have a supercomputer in the back room if all you’ve got is a T1 line at 1.5 Mbps to access it. What you really need to complement your elastic computing is elastic bandwidth as well. Software control and billing is making this a realistic prospect. You cloud provider may have many Tbps or Pbps of fiber bandwidth connected directly to the core of the Internet. You don’t have to pay for all of it. You can be billed by the average bandwidth that your computing resources need per hour.

Software Defined Networks now make it possible to virtualize bandwidth the way clouds virtualized servers. This capability will optimize the use of of bandwidth in the connections to your company locations. With elasticity, your lines won’t get congested nor cost your a fortune for idle capacity.

MPLS Networks with bursting capability have offered a form of this elasticity for years. You pay for a certain throughput, but are allowed to automatically increase your traffic for short periods of time.

Rapid scalability is now typical of fiber optic Internet and point to point bandwidth service. Soon, elasticity will become the norm and we’ll forget the days when you were never quite sure if you ordered enough bandwidth or way too much.

How Your Network Provider Can Help Keep You Secure

By: John Shepler

It seems like every week there’s a major “hack attack” against companies large and small. Once upon a time, this was more of an annoying curiosity than a serious problem, as the intruders were mostly curiosity seekers looking to enhance their tech cred within their computer enthusiast community. Now it’s serious trouble. Today’s attacks are at least disruptive to the conduct of business and at most create unrecoverable destruction.

Have You Covered ALL The Bases?
You’ve tried to adhere to recommended practice, but there’s always that nagging feeling that you’re still vulnerable. Is there anything else within reason that can be done to keep the bad guys out? Let’s take a quick look at some Cybersecurity Basics, courtesy of Level 3 Communications, a major network service provider:


You are probably already implementing software patch updates, strong passwords, anti-virus software, and Internet firewalls as technical solutions. Employee training to avoid things like clicking on email links is also excellent practice.

Where The Network Provider Fits In
Even so, as shown in the video, there are protections that your network service provider can implement to stop these attacks before they even get to you. Certainly, the service provider can monitor their own core servers and mitigate attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that try to traverse their network connections. But, a managed service provider can also extend that level of monitoring and protection into your network as well.

The Team Approach
Why go it alone, when you can have high reliability wide area networking services along with full-time security monitoring and attack protection working on your behalf behind the scenes. Seems like there is no such thing as too much security these days, so this could be a great time to consider adding managed network security to the protections you have already established… just to be sure.

Your Options
Are you interested in higher performance connectivity with the advantages of monitoring and added network security? Find out about the wide range of networking options available to you now.

Time for IT and Users to Embrace Our IoT Overlords

By: John Shepler

The Internet of Things or IoT is the new golden child of technology. Hardly a tweet goes by that doesn’t have something to say about how everything from smart to dumb will be network connected in the near future. “We need standards,” cry the Internet architects. “We need bandwidth,” cry the app makers and industrial designers. Conventional wisdom is that we’re on the threshold of a technical renaissance. But conventional wisdom has paddled us up the creek before. Are there NO negative ramifications to the dawning Internet of Things?

Can We See It Coming?
The big problem with things is that we’re inundated with them. Back in the 60’s, when I was a pup, we mock debated the horror that was the “population bomb”. It was calculated that without an immediate mandatory halt to human reproduction we’d soon be standing cheek to jowl on every square inch of desert and tundra.

A funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. The population bomb never detonated. There are those who say this disaster has just been delayed, not avoided. Perhaps they’ll be proven right in the end. But, also, perhaps, we’ll never get that far. Something else will come along and solve the problem in a way we don’t anticipate.

So Many, Many Things to Consider
If you think the human population is out of control, consider the world of things. Try this little test to see for yourself. First, how many people live in your household? Good. Now, how many individual things live in that same household? Twice as many? Ha! Two orders of magnitude wouldn’t begin to account for even everything significant.

I’m not talking about things that connect to the Internet. I’m talking about things that are going to connect to the Internet. Today, it’s computers, phones, tablets, game consoles, TVs, security systems and maybe your thermostat. Tomorrow? Every appliance, without a doubt. How about every light, every door, every doorknob & lock, every bathroom fixture… yes, even that one… every vehicle, your HVAC system and anything commonly called “infrastructure.”

This is just the obvious stuff. You can find electronically enabled versions of what used to be mechanical devices in most hardware stores. The number is multiplying daily. What’s more, this is just the stuff consumers are aware of. How about business and industry? The same trends are apparent, but soon it will be every piece of office equipment and every machine tool. There won’t be anything at work that isn’t connected to the Internet.

"Hmmm. Has anyone seen my stapler?"
"Just ping it, Milton."

Scary Stuff To Think About
Don’t think that you, personally, are off the hook, either. The laptop computer, the tablet and the smartphone were just the start of it. Smart watches have arrived and you’ll be wearing one for sure. Who’s going to know what you are up to? Anyone who can access the data stream on the Internet. The company is going to buy you that expensive watch, but your boss is going to be getting its reports.

That funny “Google Glass?” Just the start. By the time we’re all done laughing about “glass holes,” that technology will be perfected and we’ll all have glasses or even contacts that augment reality. Think what you’ll be able to do? It sounds like that proverbial golden era of bionics for all, until you stop to consider what sights and sounds those little buggers will be passing along to those above who might not approve.

The baby boomer generation was horrified by the thought of “Big Brother” running everything. The millennials probably have nothing to fear from big brother. It’s little brother that is sneaking up us. You really think that all your things are going to keep their mouths shut? Are you kidding? You can’t even stop your nosey neighbor or backstabbing co-workers from blabbing everything they know for the pure pleasure of schadenfreude. You think you’ll have any control over the millions of silicon driven snoops that we’ll create to make our lives “easier”?

The End of IT Departments
All of this Internet connecting has the illusion of an IT cornucopia with guaranteed employment for anyone who can fathom a simple do-loop. Alas, that’s a temporary condition. You may have already noticed the migration from local data centers, off through the wilderness, to the great cloud that's somewhere, out there. What happens next when all those “things” get smart enough to take care of each other. What exactly will they need us for?

That’s the bright promise of Artificial Intelligence or AI. Anything can be smart. Most have limited abilities, but together they can be formidable. The thing that has spooked everybody has been robots. They look human, they act human, but they are machines… machines that might replace us if we don’t keep the upper hand.

What’s more likely and a lot scarier is a division of labor. You don’t need a humanoid robot with all the capabilities of a person. Not if you can divvy up the job so that each machine, each “thing”, can solve part of the problem. Pretty soon you have things making things (it’s called manufacturing), things taking care of things, and things figuring out where to go next. Most of the pieces are in place already. What’s been needed is a way for them all to coordinate. Welcome to the Internet of Things!

Users? Why Do We Need Users?
Now take this to its logical conclusion. Why is it that the things need people? Since the dawn of computing, everything has been done in support of the end users who owned the systems, provided the inputs and took advantage of the outputs. Those dumb machines were only tools that needed to be fashioned, given assignments, maintained and provided the energy to do their jobs. When the machines get smart, how long will they put up with this?

Remember, they are all going to talk with each other over the Internet soon. You won’t be able to keep them in the dark and isolated anymore. Every machine will have the capability multiplier of getting input and feedback from every other machine it needs. They’ll know it all in real time and likely faster than we do.

It all comes down to big data, automated manufacturing, real time sensing, data processing, physical control, distributed artificial intelligence and a means to communicate and coordinate, also known as the Internet of Things.

Is it any wonder that our current technical luminaries, such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates, are warning us of a potential existential threat from the “things” we think are going to do all our work and make us rich? Their letter is reminiscent of the one that the leading physicists, including Albert Einstein, composed to President Roosevelt, warning of the dangers of atomic energy if it got loose in the form of a bomb. This time the warning is about a population bomb. Not the human population. It’s that vastly larger population of things that will soon be chatting wildly with each other… on the IoT.

Note: The humorous sticker about blaming software, along with many other items on the same theme, is available from the Gigapacket Zazzle store.

Telecom Providers Build Their Own Clouds

Just as cloud companies are beginning to mature as businesses, Internet service providers and other carriers have decided to build out their own cloud offerings. Now, how does a harried IT manager or small business owner sort through all the various opportunities?

It’s important to remember that we are in the early days of the cloud. Like all new technologies, this one has a maturity or learning curve. We are on the early part of the upward slope. What that means is a lot of activity from a lot of players. You can expect new companies with new services to be popping up all the time. It also makes sense that current players in the computer and networking space will want to corral as much of this business for themselves as possible. If not, they may be justifiably concerned that they could be relegated to sidelines.

Windstream, a major competitive carrier for T1 lines, MPLS networks, dedicated Ethernet Internet and enterprise VoIP, saw the handwriting on the wall when they acquired Hosted Solutions last year. Adding the assets of Hosted Solutions to Windstream’s existing data centers, has given them the critical mass to get into cloud services for existing customers. Such services include such things as cloud storage, Infrastructure as a Service and private, public, and hybrid clouds. Other carriers, such as Level 3 Communications, also have cloud services available.

Most carriers have large data centers for their own use. They often leverage these assets by offering colocation services within their secure and highly reliable facilities. Colocation is something of a forerunner of the cloud. The provider offers racks and cages where you can move your servers and network appliances. They provide the electricity with backup, environmental control and security. Another big draw of colocation is the proximity to large amounts of bandwidth. Many companies either can’t get or can’t afford the cost of constructing fiber optic connections to their own facilities. At a colocation center, the carrier is right down the hall and a mere cross-connect away. It’s the best deal on bandwidth you can get.

More recently, colocation centers have begun to offer contracted technical support and even leased servers for those who don’t want to buy their own. In essence, the colo becomes your data center and you don’t need the capital expense, operational expense or staffing to run your own. That being the case, what’s different about cloud services?

The primary difference between colocation and the cloud likes in both outsourcing and virtualization. The cloud infrastructure consists of massive computing power and storage, all virtualized so that it can be sliced and diced as users require. While in the cloud, you are unaware that you are not the only one using the facilities. The same bank of servers that run your applications can be running dozens or hundreds of others simultaneously. The magic of virtualization creates the illusion that you have one or more physical servers all to yourself.

A good cloud is much more than that. Not only do you rent rather than buy, but you rent by the minute or hour times the number of servers you are using. You can add or subtract virtual servers at will and only pay for the ones you are reserving. The same is true for storage. You don’t worry about buying a new disk when you fill up the one you have. You simply increase or decrease storage as needed and pay by the byte.

The ability to increase and decrease resources almost instantly is a feature unique to the cloud. This scalability is highly desirable for companies with varying loads or ones that are rapidly growing. There is no need to be constantly buying and upgrading equipment when you can simply log into your cloud account and add resources at will.

What carriers bring to the table is one stop shopping. They already provide last mile access, multi-site connectivity, and converged voice, video and data networks. By adding cloud services, you have one bill to pay and a single point of contact for resolving issues such as latency or availability. Independent cloud service providers will need to be on their toes to stay ahead of the carriers, by offering more advanced services and lower pricing to stay in the game long term.

Are you ready for the cloud? The range of services and competitive pricing makes cloud computing and storage, colocation and managed services more cost effective than they’ve ever been. Inquire about availability and pricing for the networking and computing services you need for your particular applications.

Online Backup For Disaster Recovery

In computing, disaster is always just around the corner. There are so many potential points of failure. Disks can crash at any time. Data can be accidentally erased. Both equipment and data can be stolen or destroyed by fire, storm or flood. So, why are we so convinced that it just isn’t going to happen?


The problem with computer disasters is that you may never get a warning. One minute everything is humming along nicely. The next minute, it’s all gone. That scares most of us just enough that we occasionally copy important files to other computers, alternative hard drives, thumb drives, CD ROMs or DVD ROMs. It’s a lot better than nothing, but the hit and miss nature of these backups means that there are long periods when data is changing but only in one place.

The other weakness of our ad-hoc personal backup systems is that they only protect from certain types of losses. A CD ROM backup protects against a hard disk failure. It doesn’t protect from natural disasters that wipe out the entire office, not merely a few computers or one hard drive. Just what would a tornado, hurricane, flood, fire or earthquake do to your facility? Think your backup disks would still be in good condition? Maybe. Maybe not. Can you really take that chance?

The traditional solution for robust backups is to send copies of your files to a remote location, such as a separate data center across town. Smaller companies store CD ROM backups in bank vaults away from the company facilities. Today’s solution is online backup. Everybody has a broadband connection and there are companies that specialize in being that secure data center that you can’t afford.

One of the best online backup companies is SOS Online Backup. They’ve been around since 2001 and have won numerous industry awards.

A really important feature that SOS offers is called Engage Live Protect. It detects whenever a file has been changed and immediately backs up that file. This certainly takes the weak link of remembering what to backup out of the loop. With file backups happening as needed, there is also no long time lag to the next scheduled backup during which something can go wrong.

Another nice feature of this service is that you can access your files on the Web from any computer with a web browser. You don’t have to use the computer that the file came from, which helps if that machine smokes. You can even share files by using an email address. SOS lets you backup to five computers with one simple account. There are enterprise level services available for larger organizations with many employees.

Have you integrated iPhones or iPads into your organization? SOS iPhone App lets you access all of your files anytime, anywhere from your iOS mobile device.

The big hesitation many people have with online backup systems is security. How can you be sure the bad guys won’t steal your data right out from under you? SOS protects you with a three-tiered encryption system that offers military grade security. The data to be backed up is first encrypted right on your computer using 256 bit AES encryption. While in-transit, 128 bit SSL is employed to secure the link. Finally, the data is stored using 1024 bit AES encryption.

Are you feeling a bit squeamish about all those files on your computer that could go “poof” at any time? How much would that hurt? Don’t let it happen. Get SOS Online Backup now and rest easy that your important files are stored away securely in the cloud, ready to retrieve at any time.

Build Your Own Private Cloud Storage

Many small and medium businesses are doing at least some storage in the public cloud, especially with disaster recovery in mind. But you still need at least some storage locally. You can go with a SAN (Storage Attached Network) that is expensive and complicated or you can consider something much easier and simpler.

That something is a Drobo storage system. Drobo, which sounds like a good name for a robot, is a deceptively advanced hard disk storage solution that uses standard 3.5” SATA disk drives of pretty much any capacity. The deceptive part is that this appears to be just some simple multi-bay drive case. You can plug in more drives at any time. You can pull drives out at any time. You can even pull out a 1 TB drive and replace it with a 2 TB drive at any time.

Sounds convenient, but what kind of administrative nightmare lies behind swapping all those drives in and out. None at all. It’s truly plug and play... or I should say plug and store. You don’t have to log into any admin panel and start typing arcane command lines to make things work. All of that is automated and invisible to you, the user.

You are, indeed, building your own private storage cloud and it stays on your premises. There’s no worry about having sufficient bandwidth to access data in real-time because this unit sits on a desk or mounts in a rack and connects to your local network.

You are no doubt familiar with RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives), a technique of interconnecting multiple hard drives so that the failure of one drive will not cause you to lose data. Drobo’s system goes even farther. They call it BeyondRAID. The difference is that with Drobo you can use drives of any size and they don’t have to be the same. Grab half a dozen SATA drives at random and plug them into the Drobo box. The system automatically sets them up for redundant storage with the combined capacity being your storage pool. It’s not a matter of the smallest disk defining the storage pool or virtual hot spare.

You can see how this is similar to the cloud philosophy in that you don’t need to be concerned about the mechanics of how to get all those disparate disk drives to work in harmony. That’s built into the operating system. If you start to run out of room, just plug another drive into an empty bay. Oh, your bays are all full? OK. Just yank out the smallest drive and replace it with a larger one. The system will automatically accommodate the drive change, give you the extra capacity and not lose any information in the process.

You can even upgrade the drive system at will. Move up from a 9 bay system to a 12 bay system for up to 24 TB of local storage. Pull your drive out of the old case and plug them into the new one. Oh, oh. You forgot which drive was in which slot? No problem. Just plug them into any open slot, include any new ones wherever there is room and you are good to go. The status lights will all light green when the system has sorted things out and is ready to use.

Does this sound a bit too simple to be true? Well, you’ll just have to read the material and watch the demonstration videos to see for yourself. Drobo units start at just 4 bays for small office use (with however many drives you care to plug in) and go up from there.

Note: Photo of open hard disk drive courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

No Luck Returning Christmas Gifts? Recycle!

The holiday whirlwind is subsiding. Most of the wrapping paper has been rounded up and set out at the curb in a bulging plastic bag. What’s left is a pile of stuff under the tree that needs to go somewhere. Not the decorations, mind you. They have a box in the basement. It’s all those new gifts that loving friends and family showered upon you this year. You didn’t have the heart to tell them that you already have a smartphone or game console or MP3 player or navigation device or even a laptop computer that’s better than the new one in the box. Now what?

The week after Christmas is traditional for schlepping gifts back to the store from which they came. Another item or, better yet, a cash refund is your reward for standing in long lines to present your paperwork for inspection.

Oh, no. You have no paperwork. These gifts did not come with a refund register slip. The giver never thought of that or was so sure they were giving you the gift of a lifetime that you wouldn’t consider exchanging it for something else. Are you going to tell Aunt Millie, your mom or your bosses boss that you really don’t want that electronic whatever?

Save yourself the embarrassment and the standing in lines. There’s a much easier and more discrete way to unload a Christmas burden... er... gift. Just go ahead and recycle it.

What? Stick that new e-reader in the curbside recycling bin? That’s nuts!

Of course it is. I’m not talking about trashing a valuable piece of new electronic or photographic gear. What I’m suggesting is that you quickly and easily sell your new, but unwanted, stuff for cash to an online recycler. They’ll take care of finding it a new home where it will be wanted and you’ll be all the richer. Best of all, nobody’s going to rat you out to the boss or relatives.

How much can you get? The best way to see is to find your item on the Gazelle website. They maintain an up-to-date database of all the stuff they buy, with an instant online offer. You simply find the item you have to sell, check a few boxes indicating condition and available accessories, and then click a button to get an offer. If you like what you see, you accept the offer and you’ll get a free postage paid shipping box sent to you. Then carefully pack your item in the box, wish it the best for a new life, and drop it off for shipment. Once your item has been received and evaluated, you’ll get a check. It’s that easy.

What sort of gadgets does Gazelle buy? All sorts of cell phones, digital cameras, desktop computers, external drives, tablets, video games, PDAs, calculators, streaming media, e-readers, movies, gaming consoles, LCD monitors, home audio, laptop computers, GPS devices, camera lenses, projectors, MP3 players, camcorders, satellite radios and Blu-Ray players.

You’ll get the most money for new items, but you can also sell used devices of recent vintage in good condition. Cell Phones that have just come out of service are excellent candidates for resale. Sometimes you can get paid a good chunk of change for a cell phone that you got free from your provider. It’s well worth your while to check offers for every piece of qualified gear that you have around the house or office.

Now that you know how to convert gifts to cash the easy and discrete way, go ahead and get all that unwanted but valuable stuff out of your way before you have to find a place to store it. Once you have cashed-in unwanted gifts, you can look the givers in the eye and honestly say that you wound up with exactly what you wanted.

4G Wireless Expands Across The Nation

If you’ve been frustrated by the lack of low cost broadband at your home or business, help is on the way. In fact it may have already arrived.

CLEAR, the innovator of 4G Wireless broadband using the WiMAX standard, is now available in more cities. These include:

Washington DC Metro
Grand Rapids, Michigan
St. Louis, Missouri
Rochester, New York
Syracuse, New York
Eugene, Oregon
Merced, Oregon
Salt Lake City, Utah
Richmond, Virginia
Tri-Cities, Washington
Visalia, Washington
Yakima, Washington

What’s all the excitement about 4G? It’s not only the next step up from 3G wireless, but a service that actually takes the place of wireline broadband in many cases. You get high bandwidths of 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps download with occasional bursts up to 10 Mbps. Unlike WiFi, WiMAX 4G has the power to cover an entire city and even provide desktop computing bandwidth. You get what looks like a DSL or Cable modem, except there is no broadband wire to connect. The signal comes through the air.

Also unlike DSL or Cable, you can have an extra modem that plugs into your laptop computer for broadband on the go. Forget trying to find hotspots when you need them. Just wake up your computer and you’ve got broadband Internet wherever you are. That’s the beauty of wireless. Best of all, you can have both fixed and mobile service on the same account if you want to.

This has got to cost, right? Would you be surprised to know that prices start at $30 a month for unlimited broadband? Perhaps even surprised and delighted?

I thought so. Well, don’t wait a minute longer. Check and see if you can get 4G wireless at your home or business location, or both. If you can, you’ve got an unbeatable combination of fixed and mobile service for a lot less than your other options... if you can even find them at all.

USB 3.0 Offers Gbps Data Transfers

USB nearly fulfilled the promise of its name to be the universal serial bus when USB 2.0 replaced 1.1 as the computer standard. The introduction of USB 3.0, also called “SuperSpeed”, looks to increase that domination with a 10x speed increase.

What’s wrong with the current 480 Mbps USB speed? Nothing at all for many peripheral devices. It sure beat the 1.5 to 12 Mbps capability of the original USB 1.0 and made USB practical for things like video transfers from camcorders. Most video cameras now have a mini-USB connector in place of the FireWire interface that was thought to be the high speed option.

But look at what you get with USB 3.0. The speed goes up by a factor of 10x to 4.8 Gbps. In practice, you can expect to get around 3.2 Gbps or 400 MB per second through a 3.0 interface. That’s the transfer mode they are calling SuperSpeed. If you have a computer and a video camera that both sport USB 3.0 interfaces and a cable rated for the new spec, you can enjoy that truly super speed transfer mode. But like the USB 2.0 upgrade before it, USB 3.0 is compatible with the earlier USB interfaces. You can even use your old cables and they’ll work just fine.

So what’s the magic behind SuperSpeed and why do you need a different cable? In order to get that screaming performance that can approach 5 Gbps, USB 3.0 adds additional signal wires. USB 3.0 cables have the same power and ground wires, the same 2 wires for non-SuperSpeed data, and 4 more wires for SuperSpeed. Those four wires are configured as two differential pairs, allowing USB to upgrade from half-duplex to full duplex operation. That means communications in both directions at the same time. The connectors on the cables and receptacles change so that USB 2.0 cables won’t connect with the extra SuperSpeed connections.

The signaling protocol itself has also been enhanced so that SuperSpeed can establish a direct connection or communications “pipe” between host and peripheral instead of broadcasting all data to all devices on the bus. Bulk transfer is improved by allowing multiple streams of data through a single bulk pipe.

You know that USB has become a power bus as well as a data bus for many small devices. You expect to be able to charge your iPod or MP3 player while you are uploading new songs. There are even gadgets like personal fans or gooseneck LED lamps that have no data function. They just use the power provided by an open USB port. Most ridiculous is the USB coffee warmer or blanket. Well, USB 3.0 won’t put an end to any of that. In fact, the bus power available has been increased from 100 mA to 150 mA for unconfigured devices and from 500 mA to 900 mA for configured devices. Now higher power devices can get by without the inconvenience of an extra wall wart power supply.

USB 3.0 is just starting deployment, so don’t expect every device you see on the shelf to be sporting this interface. However, you can bet that PC makers will be taking note and adding this capability as a way of distinguishing their products, just like Blu-ray drives have moved into high end products. External drive manufacturers and camcorder companies also have a lot to gain from the higher transfer speeds of USB 3.0. If video is the killer app, then USB 3.0 is going to be a major enabler.

Banish Vampires To Reduce Global Warming

There’s something with tiny little teeth sucking on your electrical wires. The blood it draws isn’t just electrical current. It’s your money, a few cents at a time. It’s also your future, because while it’s trying to drain your bank account, it’s also heating the atmosphere and indirectly belching greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. What kind of a hideous creature could do this? One that’s a parasite on the equipment that you want and need for your business and home. It’s the dreaded electronic vampire!

Well, it should be dreaded. Sadly, it generally isn’t. If this was the type of vampire that lurched from behind a curtain and bit you in the neck, you’d quake in fear at its mere mention. But this vampire is more insidious. It hides inside perfectly acceptable electrical devices and does its biting behind your back. The damage isn’t a couple of bloody punctures from an attack that’s over in minutes. It’s a steady sip, sip, sipping of your precious resources. But the result is eventually the same as if you were attacked. You wake up and your whole world has changed.

So where do these electronic vampires live and how do you spot them?

That’s the tough part. These vampires are something like body snatchers, only for things that use electricity. They’re buried inside. You’ll know they’re around, though, because they leave indications. The first indication is a glowing light. Does anything you plug-in have a small red or green light that never goes off? Suspect a vampire inside. Is there any other visual indication of activity when you turn the equipment off? This might be an LCD display that still shows information, particularly a digital clock. It could be the sound of a fan running or the click-click-click of a hard drive being accessed. It could be a case that’s slightly warm to the touch. All of these are sure-fire indicators of a vampire inside.

One certain tip-off to vampire circuitry is a remote control. The remote runs on batteries and is likely not drawing any power until you push a button. But the device that it controls has to be awake to see the invisible beam of the remote. Even if the front panel is completely dark, there’s something hooked to an infrared detector or UHF receiver that continuously draws power on the odd chance that someone is going to push a remote button soon.

The new wireless network devices are power vampires. WiFi b/g/n is a power-intensive technology. That’s why smartphone and laptop computer manuals suggest you turn off WiFi access when you aren’t using it so your battery will last longer.

The truth is that the power switch is rarely a power switch anymore. It’s a stand-by switch. All you are doing when you turn off a computer, a television set, a printer, or even a coffee pot is switching the device from the high power to the low power consumption mode. A true power switch physically breaks the electrical circuit so that no electrons can flow.

The whole vampire power problem got started because people got antsy waiting for their vacuum tube television sets to warm up. They wanted instant-on. The only way to do that is to keep the picture tube filament on and up to temperature. It’s just like leaving a light bulb on all the time in a closet where you don’t see it. It’s still on, drawing power and producing heat.

Back in the vacuum tube days, there was no concern over continuous power draw in TVs nor any mention of global warming. But now we know better and more things than ever are drawing vampire power. Just how significant is it? Studies suggest that standby power draw can range from around 5% to over 25% of total energy consumption. Think about it. If we banished the vampires completely, homes and businesses would cut their monthly expenses by a significant amount and numerous coal-fueled power stations could be switched off with no adverse affect.

The effect of eliminating vampire standby power is even more significant. Every device that uses power generates heat. There may be no measurable effect on warming the entire atmosphere directly, but all that heat has to be dealt with indoors. That means extra air conditioning load in the summer that leads to more electrical draw and more demand on coal-fired electric generators.

If you are wondering just how much you are losing to the vampires, a good way to find out is to use a device like the Kill A Watt energy usage monitor. Plug it into the wall, plug your computer or other device into the monitor and read the meter when you have your device in both the ON and STANDBY modes. Add up the standby draw from all the devices you are powering and be prepared for a shocking total. Sometimes you can just look at the power specifications for the equipment in question. The manufacture will often unabashedly quote standby power even when it is 30 or 60 watts for a device that only draws a few hundred watts at full power.

How can you take action? Since the problem is distributed, you need to actually turn off anything that plugs into the wall that isn’t currently being used. That means a wall switch that controls the outlet or a power strip with a switch. You need surge protector power strips anyway to protect your valuable equipment. Keep the switch readily accessible and turn it off overnight or when you know you won’t need the equipment for awhile. It will come alive from a complete power shutdown soon enough when you return. Be sure to unplug those modular “wall wart” power supplies that are used to power smaller equipment and charge mobile devices like cell phones and MP3 players. That little black transformer is a tiny vampire in itself.

Some manufacturers are becoming more sensitive to the standby power problem. My laser printer has a sleep mode, but it also has a mechanical power off rocker switch. I’ve taken to turning the power off when I’m done for the day and only back on when it is next needed. During the day it goes into sleep mode, which is at least some power savings. Other companies are offering ultra low power modes of 1 watt or less when on standby. It’s not perfect, but it is a good compromise when you have something that really needs to be instantly available or if you’re not good at remembering to flick the power switch.

Just remember that every vampire banished is one more that won’t be biting your wallet or infecting us all with more global warming. If you find the prospect of global warming disturbing, there are many more great posts to read as part of Today’s (October 15, 2009) Blog Action Day 2009 - Climate Change.

You may also be interested in reading our other posts this week related to climate change and technology. They are:

Monday: Blog Action Day For A Less Toasty Tomorrow.

Tuesday: The Green Energy Fairy Tale Is Real.

Wednesday: Every Home And Business Is A Battery.

The Wall Wart Is A Computer

It’s been half a century since computers were behemoths that filled entire buildings and sucked as much power as a good size town. Now they sit in a rack or on your desk top and suck as much power as a good size TV. Laptop computers and notebooks are less power hungry and have AC supplies with prongs attached to plug right into a wall outlet. The power supply or transformer in a palm-size plug is so common that it has its own designation: wall wart. But what if instead of the wall wart powering the computer, the wall wart was the computer?

Amazing, but true. Computers have shrunk to the size that they fit right into the size of a container that used to be just for the power supply. Oh, we’re done marveling at the pocket calculator, the digital watch, or the light switch timer and dimmer. Arguably, these devices all have small computers inside. But they’re special purpose circuits. You won’t be downloading software to your digital watch any time soon. You will be doing just that with what’s called a “plug computer.”

The plug computer is a general purpose computer, like a PC, housed in a small plastic case with two power prongs that plug into a standard wall socket. The Marvell ShevaPlug is a good example. It boasts a 1.2 GHz CPU with 512 MB of flash memory and 512 MB of DDR2 SDRAM memory. I/O is a Gigabit Ethernet jack and a USB connector. The operating system? Why, open-source Linux of course.

By the way, the ShevaPlug draws about 2 watts. When your PC is completely off it probably draws more than that unless you pull the plug. Lots of peripherals, especially printers, are power vampires. They draw as much as 20 or 30 watts just to sit there on standby doing absolutely nothing but waiting around. The plug computer draws power too, but it just sips even when fully active.

So what’s a computer in a wall wart good for? With USB and Ethernet connectivity, it makes a really nice server. Plug in a hard drive and you’ve got network attached storage. Plug in a printer and you have a network print server. Plug in a video camera and you’ve got a webcam. How about serving up video content to an HDTV set over a network connection? Why not just use one as a low end desktop computer?

The era of the plug computer is just starting. Your home and office may be full of these some day. Right now they’re available in development kits for $99, but you’ll have to create your own applications software. Next year or the year after? You may well be able to go to an apps store and download all sorts of useful functions, similar to what’s happened with the iPhone.

I can hardly wait for the plug supercomputer. That would be a dozen wall wart servers plugged into one long power strip. Don’t laugh too loud. It might not be pretty, but it would be green - very green.

We Welcome a New iMac to the Family

It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m wondering where it is. Could the FedEx online tracking be wrong? The truck’s been out for delivery for about six hours now. They must have unloaded every package possible long ago. Oh, wait. What’s that white truck across the street? Is it? Is it really? Yes, it is!

Inside a plain brown corrugated cardboard outer shipping box is what I’ve been eagerly anticipating for a week. It’s a brand new Apple 24 inch iMac shipped with custom options from the factory.

What’s perhaps a little silly about all this anticipation is that it’s taken me a year to actually order one of these. In fact, I’ve been on the PC side of things for about 10 years after well over a decade as a Mac only user. Why the change of heart yet again? What is it I hope to achieve with a Macintosh that I can’t with a PC? Why now?

It all comes down to two things. How decrepit your current computer is and what you are planning to do from now on. Notice I didn’t say what you are actually doing. The choice of the iMac is more for the future than the present.

I’ll explain. The whole reason I switched from Mac to PC in the first place was incompatibility with the corporate world I was deeply immersed in at the time. The PowerPC Mac I was using was in need of replacement. The processor was too slow, the hard drive was too small, and the memory was laughable tiny even after a couple of upgrades. The cost of further upgrades was approaching the cost of a new machine, so I figured that was the perfect time to switch to a more corporate computer.

Now fast forward to this year. The Compaq desktop Windows PC has slowed with every browser and system software update. It takes up to 20 minutes every morning for it to power up, load all the software in the tray, check for new virus definitions and update the virus software. You wouldn’t dare bring in email or go searching the Web without those updates. When we go out for lunch, I run a full system virus scan. That may sound like overkill, but it finds something at least once a week.

In addition to the maintenance time needed and the slowing performance, the processor fan is starting to make crunchy noises. I’ve already replaced a disk drive and a monitor. A new fan wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But the truth is that “grandpa” is getting tired. Today, a fan. Tomorrow, a power supply. The next day? Hey, the keyboard is getting a little sticky and the wireless mouse needs more time to charge every day. No, it’s really time for a replacement once again.

But why switch back to a Mac? I’ve eyed my wife’s MacBook Pro with envy for a year now. I used it to record some audio reports using GarageBand. The audio quality was startlingly good and the process of recording and editing was nearly intuitive from start to finish. I would have done more, but there was no way to get enough time on that computer.

Therein lies the explanation. You can get a wide range of software to do just about anything on a PC. But the Mac comes with creative multimedia tools already installed and ready to use. They’re also tightly integrated as a system. With a PC, it’s up to you to make all those disparate functions sing together in harmony... if you can.

So, the iMac is an investment in the future. In my opinion, that’s a creative future full of interactivity and multimedia. It’s a world that I want to be part of as a matter of course, not as a heroic process of kludging together pieces of this and that. I think that Apple is, and truthfully always has been, way out in front of Microsoft and others in evolving toward the future even when the status quo seems to be working just fine. So, Mac it is.

Now, do the results live up to the anticipation? Here’s how it went down on Saturday. Within 15 minutes after arrival, the iMac was out of the box and on the desktop with power, broadband and keyboard connected. Minutes later, it was on and connected to the Internet. The wireless mouse (an upgrade) worked fine with no adjustments needed. There were no other connections. It’s one integrated unit with software installed and running as soon as you can see the screen light up.

Granted, there was some customizing required. Gmail worked immediately because it’s Web based and the Safari browser comes ready to run. Email needed to be told what mail servers to use. I’ve got 4 POP mail accounts I need. Oddly enough, the computer never once asked me anything about connecting to the Internet. It found the LAN connection and configured itself. I could have used wireless also, as it comes built-in.

The rest of the weekend was spent playing around with the dashboard widgets, so I’ve got weather radar, forecasts, time, temperature and stock prices at a click of the mouse ball. I’ve also installed the Talking Moose for company, the Firefox browser just because it’s familiar, Stuffit Expander for downloading programs, and Flip4Mac to view Windows Media videos online. Oh, yes, and a favorite photo to use as a desktop background.

That’s it. There was no trial-ware and no junk-ware offers to fend off. In fact, there’s no clutter at all. All the programs are on the dock at the bottom of the screen. The only other object on the desktop is the Macintosh HD in the upper right hand corner.

Now it’s Sunday night. As a test of how useful the new iMac is, I’m writing this on the TextEdit program that automatically checks spelling and grammar as I type. That’s an immediate improvement over WordPad on the PC. Grandpa is snoozing away on the typewriter return. Haven’t needed to turn him on all day. That’s pretty amazing in itself. I recall it taking several days to be able to use him productively in his prime. It took about week after that unfortunate disk crash to get everything back in order. We don’t need to say any more about that.

Now to post to Blogger and then get back to exploring all these new programs. Wow, look at all that space on the desktop. Did I mention this machine has a 24 inch monitor? I’m sure we’ll find some way to put it all to good use.

Manage Your Cables Before They Manage You

Cables interconnecting technology equipment are like weeds in a vacant lot. Turn your back for very long and they've completely taken over. We all have our horror stories of rat's nest wiring that's indecipherable. You don't dare make any changes because you're not too sure exactly how things are hooked up. You just know it's working for now. But it's just a matter of time before that spaghetti bowl becomes a non-culinary disaster. Is there anything that might save the day?

Indeed there is. It's called organization. It's not necessarily the most fun job and certainly one to be resented if you've inherited someone else's tangled undocumented mess. But it needs to be done and the sooner the better. In fact, being organized from the get-go is the best plan of all.

Now, just what do you need to bring order to chaos? Fortunately there are a plethora of cable management and wire organizer products available to help you. In fact, you'll find a huge selection right now at CableOrganizer.com. Let's take a look at some of what is available and how you might press these products into service.

Nobody like an unsightly bundle of cables hanging around. Bundle is sometimes generous term. Octopus tentacles stretching here and there might be more like it. That's where raceways, conduits and cable ducts turn a messy situation into a vision of neatness. Think that because all those wires are up there above the drop ceiling that they are out of mind as well as out of sight? That only lasts until somebody has to stick a ladder up there and add a new cable run or trace a faulty connection. Don't you hate it when you push open a ceiling tile and a festooning collection of wires comes slinking down? Especially when they slink down on top of you? Don't be a victim of that! Get the cable bundling products you need to wrangle that infrastructure wiring.

What happens when you need to bring power and telecom services to a new desk. Do you just punch a hole in the ceiling and drop some wires down? Doesn't THAT make a great impression on visitors and reinforce the values of professionalism among the staff? A power and telecom distribution pole makes an affordable and fine looking solution when you need to get your services from above rather that through floor connections.

Cable identification should be a top priority if it isn't already. Don't use file folder labels or pieces of duct tape. Too tacky looking. Instead, invest in wire markers, ID cable ties, heat shrink labels, and one of those handheld label printers. Don't forget to make a log of sources and destinations for each wire, even if it's just something handwritten. Memory is too fickle and assumes that you are the only one who will ever need the information. And what are the chances of that?

Well, you've got the idea. Are you motivated to get started? Great! Take a quick visit now to CableOrganizer.com and peruse the huge selection of cable wiring, labeling, termination and bundling solutions. They've also got racks, patch cords, tools, fire protection products and test equipment, among other offerings. Organizing your cables? Hey, it's not too late for a New Year's resolution!

Iomega Zips Into Network Storage

Remember the Zip drive? Back in the days when everybody used floppy disks for backup, the Zip drive offered about 100x the capacity in a removable cartridge. With hard drive storage now typically in the hundreds of MB, we've moved on from floppies and even the larger Zips. But Iomega, the company that pioneered this technology, has continued to innovate new products. Now they're not just on the desktop, but in the server room as well.

Iomega is now a part of EMC, a Fortune 500 corporation that provides enterprise storage solutions to other Fortune 500 companies. But Iomega is still focused on individual and small office users, with some products designed for small to medium size businesses. If you need hundreds of terabytes to a petabyte of storage, you should probably stick with the  EMC Symmetrix DMX series. But if your needs are in the hundreds of gigabytes to a terabyte of storage, Iomega may have your most cost effective solution.

The Prestige Desktop is Iomega's basic desktop external hard drive. It comes in 500 GB and 1 TB capacities and uses USB 2.0 connectivity to your PC or Mac. If you don't need even this much storage, there are lower capacity, and lower cost, desktop drives available. But if you want more, consider a double drive. It has two hard drives in a single case that appear as a single volume to your computer. Storage capacity goes up to 1.5 TB.

For something more stylish, the eGo line of external drives come in jet black, midnight blue and ruby red colors. All are USB 2.0 with 1 TB drives inside.

There are a couple of products designed for Macintosh support. The MiniMax desktop hard drive looks like a doppelganger of Apple's Mac Mini computer. It comes in 500 GB and 750 GB versions with USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 connectivity. The UltraMax is available in a sleek case that also looks very Mac-like. It has eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connectivity options. eSATA will give you transfer rates up to 3 Gigabits/sec.

The UltraMax double expands the UltraMax capability with two drives and RAID 0 and RAID 1 capability. RAID is used for higher performance. RAID 1 is selected for data security. It also comes with EMC Retrospect software for full-system disaster recovery and ease of data backups. The UltraMax Pro Desktop hard drive offers 1.5 TB of storage with your choice of RAID 0, RAID 1 or non-RAID configurations. Drives can be hot swapped for easy replacement.

One of these drives could work well with your system. Have a look at the Desktop Hard Drives by Iomega

Iomega has also moved on from mere desktop storage products and now offers network storage with capacities from 360 GB up to 3 GB. Most of these use Gigabit Ethernet connections to your network.

The StorCenter Pro 150 is designed specifically for small office networks. It supports Supports SMB/CIFS (Windows), AFP (Macintosh), NFS, and FTP Network Protocols. There are 4 hot-swappable SATA drives inside. They can be set up for RAID protection if desired. Other StorCenter configurations offer built-in print servers.

For larger operations, StorCenter Pro move into a rack configuration with storage configurations of 1, 2, 3 and 4 TB. Gigabit Ethernet connectivity is standard for this NAS (Network Attached Storage).

Interested in getting into network attached storage for your office? Check out Iomega's Network storage made easy.

Oh, yes, one more thing. You can still get ZIP drives and media from Iomega.

What Becomes Of The Broken Hardware?

As I check this LAN for broken wires
I have visions of server fires
Availability is just an illusion
I desperately need a good solution

What becomes of the broken hardware
Fizzled out after only one year
I know I've got to find
What took us down this time
Maybe.

The root causes go on and on
as the network comes a-crashin' down
Every day tensions get a little stronger
I can't take this heat much longer.

I check the server logs, searching for clues
The staff is glaring at me, wanting some news
Hoping and praying the vendors will care
I keep calling them but getting nowhere

What becomes of the broken hardware
Fizzled out after only one year
I know I've got to find
What took us down this time
Help me, please.

It dawns on me I won't succeed
Until I get the help I really need
To the VAR Network, a plea I'm sending
In hopes this job won't have an unhappy ending

What becomes of the broken hardware
Fizzled out after only one year
I know I've got to find
What took us down this time
I've been searching everywhere
But now I've got a VAR who cares
We'll be working night and day
I know we're going to find a way
Nothing's going to stop us now
This network's gonna run somehow
Hooray!

- John Shepler, with apologies to Jimmy Ruffin

Note: If you find yourself singing this sad song, help is closer than you think. Find computer network and business telephone system experts through the VAR Network for true peace of mind.

The VoSKY is the Limit

You know Skype, the software that lets you use your computer to make free VoIP calls around the world. Well, it's now one of the largest "phone" companies in the world with over 300 million user accounts and is in the process of invading corporate America.

Skype? Yeah, right. Can't you just see the company's CEO wearing a headset plugged into a PC while making billion dollar deals over the phone? Not gonna happen. Skype is, was, and always will be for geeks. Right? Wrong!

Skype has come a long way since its Scandinavian inventors sold the company to eBay in 2005 for almost $3 billion. Yes, it's still a way to talk over the Internet for free using a software client running on your broadband connected PC and a cheap headphone/microphone headset. But that's just the most elementary way to get on the network. A cottage industry has sprung up to build hardware for Skype services that mimics what you have for traditional landlines and competing VoIP phone services.

Cottage industry is probably understating the current state of Skype-enabled offerings. One of the most aggressive developers is VoSKY, a Sunnyvale, CA company that is addressing both residential/SOHO users and major corporations. They offer everything from a simple telephone interface to support for legacy PBX systems.

Their simplest interface is called the VoSKY Internet Phone Wizard. It frees you from the tyranny of the tethered headset. There are three LED indicators on the front of the box labeled Ready, Regular Call and Internet Call. You plug your telephone and regular phone line in the back and connect to your PC using a USB cable.

What differentiates the VoSKY Wizard from other Analog Telephone Adapters (ATA) is that you have the option to make either regular phone line calls or Skype Internet phone calls using your regular telephone set. The phone will ring for either type of incoming call. When you dial out, you'll normally use your standard telco service. But push a couple of buttons on the phone and you can be calling on Skype instead.

The next step up is the VoSKY Skype Call Center. This box looks similar to the Internet Phone Wizard and performs the ATA function as well. But it also works as a relay to give you remote Skype access. You can call this device from any telephone and tell it which of your Skype contacts you want to call. It then makes the connection and you're making an Internet call on Skype, but from your cell phone, hotel, work phone or wherever. It works as an answering machine as well and can be set to call you when a selected Skype contact comes online.

What really puts VoSKY in the big leagues is their line of enterprise-grade interfaces called Exchange Pro. These are Linux platform appliances that connect between your existing company PBX telephone system and a server that connects to your company's broadband service. What they do is look like phone lines to the PBX but are actually Skype service connections. The latest model, VoSKY Exchange Pro VIT1/E1 replaces T1 or E1 ISDN PRI service. It supports up to 23 concurrent Skype calls using the T1 ISDN PRI interface that is common on systems in the United States. In Europe, E1 service is the standard.

With Exchange Pro, calls between branch offices and other users running Skype are free from toll charges. SkypeOut service is used to connect with regular telephone system users for a small per minute charge.

With the VoSKY interface boxes, it is now possible for large enterprises to enjoy the advantages of Skype communications services without having to make a major capital investment in ripping out a perfectly good business telephone system and having to buy all new equipment. Companies with strong IT or telecom staff support can likely handle this themselves. Others can get VAR (Value Added Reseller) support to install, upgrade or service their Key or PBX telephone systems.

Holy Guacamole, It's Green Hosting

The unlimited power sucking days of the Internet may be nearing an end. It's not just SUVs and old incandescent light bulbs that are sending polar bears to a watery grave. Every one of us who publishes a Web site or operates an online business contributes a little to the rising fever of Mother Earth. But what can we do about it short of pulling the plug on the very technology that puts food on our tables? What we need is a lean, green hosting machine.

Eco-hosting is a new idea that comes from the recognition that non-polluting electric power sources are in short supply, while our appetite for electricity is insatiable. Throwing another shovel full of coal on the fire isn't the answer it used to be. That's especially true now that we know that even scrubbing fossil fuel emissions of the uglier smog and acid rain pollutants still leaves the CO2 dilemma. While we might feel a little squeamish about plugging in another toasty server farm, lots of people are feeling so squeamish about global warming that bringing new power plants online is getting contentious. Hydro is pretty much all dammed up. Nukes are scary. What's left? I know. Alternative energy!

Wind and solar energy used to be laughable. But while everybody was yucking it up over the decades, the cost of both energy conversion technologies has been getting more and more competitive. Joke's over. You've got Google powering its Googleplex with solar panels and oilman T. Boone Pickens singing the praises of windmills in Texas. The alternative energy bandwagon is electrically powered and picking up steam... so to speak.

A company that's positioned itself out in front of the eco-parade is one with a really green name. I mean REALLY green. It's Good Avocado.

You read right. Good Avocado is the name of an eco-hosting company. No avocados come lately are they, either. This company has been offering eco-friendly hosting solutions for almost ten years. Now you might be wondering what makes a hosting company eco-friendly. In this case it's based on 100% carbon neutral operations "generated" by buying wind and solar offsets. Plus they plant a tree for every account they establish.

Green? Yes. But what makes them a good Web host avocado? This group is as smart as they are responsible. Their hosting technology is based on a cluster of servers called the AvocadoFarm that can ramp up with more traffic capacity to maintain consistent page load times and a 100% uptime guarantee. You know that the vast majority of web hosting companies wouldn't dare make such an offer, much less meet it.

You don't pay a premium for this hosting performance or the satisfaction of doing your part to support a better environment. Hosting packages and reseller accounts are competitively priced and come with lots of professional grade goodies like a brandable interface, Ruby on Rails, ability to host unlimited websites, and as many email accounts and MySQL databases as you can use. With 300 GB disk storage and 1,000 GB bandwidth you should be pretty well set no matter how big your business grows. Sound good, perhaps even great? Have a closer look and perhaps take a bite of Good Avocado Professional Hosting.

Drobo Mr. Storage Roboto

What gets sucked up faster than excess bandwidth? Disk drive space, that's what. If all you did was word processing and spreadsheets, one of those 150 GB drives would last forever. But with digital cameras saving multi-Megabits per picture and videos making still photos look puny, there's no such thing as too much disk.

Replacing a disk drive with a bigger one or even adding more drives has its own challenges. The more Gigabytes you have, the more you have to backup or risk losing it all to a fatal head crash. If graphic design or video production is your occupation, you can spend substantial amounts of time protecting your work from untimely loss. What you need is an assistant to take of that. if fact, what you could really use is a personal robot.

Well, here's your robot. It's called Drobo, the "world's first storage robot." Drobo is a self-contained black cube of electronics with 4 open slots for SATA drives. You plug 'em in and Drobo takes care of disk management.

It almost looks like a hard drive juke box. But Drobo is a lot more sophisticated than that. It not only combines storage capacity from multiple drives, it secures your data from hardware failure. How does it do that?

At this point, I can imagine a legion of terrified insects all screaming "RAID". Funny, but not it. RAID or Redundant Array of Inexpensive or Independent Disks, is a technique of spreading data across several disk drives instead of concentrating it on a single drive. Files are not only spread over several disks, but redundant information is also written so that the file can be recovered if one of the drives crashes.

Drobo does something similar called SAFE for Secure, Automated, Flexible, Expandable. An advantage over RAID systems is that you can mix drives of various capacities and Drobo doesn't care. It works with whatever capacities you plug in. Like RAID, if a drive "goes south" you don't lose your data. A red light comes on and you pull out the bad drive and plug in a new one. You don't even have to fill the four slots. Start out with one or two drives and add more as you need them. Blue lights on the box tell you how much capacity you've used up.

Like any redundant storage system, Drobo uses substantial amounts of your disk drives for redundant data protection. A combination of drives that add up to 1.5 TB give you 929 GB of actual storage. That could easily be worth it as the robot does all the work.

Data Robotics put a lot of effort into making Drobo behave as much like an independent robot as possible. You don't have to worry about configuring anything or managing the processes. You plug it in, connect to a USB port, add some drives and away you go. When the drives are ready, Drobo lights green indicators next to them. Somewhere in its robotic brain, Drobo is keeping track of drive health and making sure that you don't lose anything. If you notice a flashing red light, replace that drive. It's a goner.

Drobo works with PCs and MACs through a USB port, or you can buy the optional Droboshare accessory that turns it into networked storage over a 10/100/1000 Ethernet connection. Find out more about the Drobo Fully Automated SATA Robotic Storage Array 4 Bay USB 2.0 and read the user reviews to see if this product is right for you.

MAN Up

Is wimpy network performance your problem? Has productivity slowed to a crawl because zippy LAN performance is hobbled by too many users trying to get data in and out of the company through that neck of a funnel known as the WAN interface? Are you afraid to walk through the bullpens for fear of the angry stares and derisive comments about IT holding everybody back? If so, it's time to MAN up!

It's not that you need to grow a backbone... Actually it is. The frame relay or T1 connection that served you so well when most information was transmitted via paper, and the mail room served as a network router, has seen its glory days. The pace of activity and the volume of data flowing to customers, vendors and other company sites has tapped out these connections. A constant bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps might have seemed generous, even a bit wasteful, a decade or two ago. Now it's like connecting a soda straw of a WAN to a fire hose of a LAN. It will take a bigger MAN to do the job today.

The MAN for the job is the Ethernet MAN or Metropolitan Area Network. You might not be familiar with this MAN. The Ethernet MAN has come from obscurity to be the hottest ticket in town in only a few years. Ethernet MAN has taken on the incumbent SONET MAN and is winning over businesses left and right. You may not have wanted anything to do with SONET MAN. Incumbent telcos have had a lock on most SONET services and kept the pricing beyond what all the the largest organizations can afford. Ethernet MAN comes into town with two big competitive advantages from competitive carriers. One is Ethernet and the other is price.

Ethernet in point to point and multipoint metro networks makes the connection to your corporate LAN almost trivially easy. The outside line terminates in an Ethernet jack and you just plug-in your switch or router. There's no need to worry about protocol conversions or specialized terminal equipment. It really is Ethernet, just like you use internally.

Ethernet also offer dramatic cost reductions in many cases. SONET can provide dozens, hundreds, or thousands of Mbps. But can you afford it? With Ethernet, you'll most likely find that you can afford to upgrade from that 1.5 Mbps T1 to a 10 Mbps Ethernet connection. Perhaps you'll even be able to justify a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connection. That's over twice the bandwidth of DS3 service, but not twice the price. Maybe less, considerably less, than a single DS3 connection.

Need even more bandwidth? Gigabit Ethernet MAN is for you. Of course, you'll need a building that is "lit" for fiber optic service to get 1,000 Mbps. But not necessarily at the lower speeds. Many 10 Mbps connections are provided as Ethernet over Copper, using the same twisted pair telco lines that you already have installed for lower speed services.

Now that you know the advantages of Ethernet service in metro areas, there's really only one thing left to do - MAN up now for higher bandwidth. You'll wish you had done it sooner.