it's all garbage.
Honestly, email is the biggest load of garbage I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. Yet, we rely on it, every single day, on our smartphones and computers, to communicated with colleagues and coworkers, bosses and subordinates.
There is a better way, but that's completely irrelevant, since the entire market is so ingrained in this concept of email that it's no longer worthy of any discussion. So put away your high hopes of a wave-like interface for communication. Email is horrible, and it's not going anywhere. With email being so prevelant, it's impossible to keep up. Users get bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands of new messages every day, many are never deleted, instead left to waste in the enterprise server's inbox, unopened, unread, unloved, and irrelevant.
Aside from the growing problems of users inboxes being too bloated with unread messages, you have costs on costs on costs.
What's nice is that Microsoft has made it pretty easy, buy Windows Server, buy Exchange, voila, a nice, simple, easy solution. works, add your users, give them mailboxes, and set quotas based on how many people you have, and how much disk space there is on the server. done.
Cost: 1xServer, 1xOS, 1xExchange.
If you want to add mobile access, tick a box to enable Activesync, voila, now iPhone, Android and (last but not least) Windows Phone (formerly Windows Mobile) can now obtain any and all Exchange content. What's more, they can enjoy instant delivery with push notifications. Users can access their Exchange calendar, contacts, email and more, all sync'd with the server, and to their enterprise outlook. ... Wonderful!
Cost: whatever you want to spend on a mobile phone.
Now let's add... let's say, 5 blackberry users. We want full integration of the system, so BES is the way to go. and let's say, just for kicks, that the server we previously purchased is powerful enough to run BES along side Exchange, etc. So no new hardware here, besides the phones. Well, That's great, the Blackberry users have full exchange sync and can access their stuff.
Cost: BES (not cheap, look it up) plus a licence for every blackberry device, and, obviously, the phones.
.... okayyy, what the...
so it's going to cost me how much to just get blackberries working? okay, what if we go hosted?
Well, no server cost, no cost for base exchange or BES, so that's good right?
I have to pay an amount for every email account, but that's okay, I suppose, and for every email account I have access to it from iPhone, Android and Windows Phone, as expected.... but what about blackberry, I have to pay DOUBLE for BES ACCESS? are you joking?
just to have a blackberry?
I'm sorry, but I will continue to rage hard about this, Blackberry isn't special, their system isn't significantly better than Android, or Windows Phone. this is unjust, and the market is realizing that.
I've never really been on the "RIM is dying!" train, but I think I'll have to jump, because with this, as an IT professional, I would never suggest for any organization to buy into this. avoid it at all costs. Unless a company REQUIRES blackberry for some SPECIFIC reason, that no other platform and fulfill, there is no reason to buy it, or use it.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
SOPA/PIPA
Today is SOPA awareness day. The day were many sites are "blacking out" to show their support of stopping the bills, commonly known as SOPA, and PIPA (or Stop Online Privacy Act, and Protect IP Act).
I'll start by saying I support the Anti-SOPA/Anti-PIPA movements; and I want to move quickly into HOW this affects us. Everyone knows about the screening of sites for privacy, what will be their criteria etc, what they can do, etc. but I see, more and more, people saying something along the lines of "I don't care, I don't live in the U.S.A."; I have news for those people: You're going to be very unhappy if this bill passes.
Here's why. The bills don't target US based websites, they target any websites. Those sites can be closed at any time for any reason... well, how? They revoke your DNS entry. What does that mean?
DNS, or Domain Name System, for those that don't know, translates something 'human-readable' into something a computer can work with. You see, the internet is not made up of google's and yahoo's, it's made up of 10.12.111.233's and 172.18.222.32's. That's how computers see the internet. These fancy names we've made up are called Domain Names; the Domain Name System (or DNS) was created to make reaching a site, easier than typing in (up to) 12 numbers that you would have to memorize for each site.
DNS basically is the internet equivilent of the yellow pages. You want to get an oil change at mr.lube, look in the yellow pages, and find the phone number for Mr. Lube. hey, there's an address too. In this analogy (which is fairly accurate), SOPA/PIPA type legislation would basically blast Mr. Lube from the Yellow pages, so you couldn't look them up if you wanted an oil change (all because they didn't pay their contribution to the RIAA's profit margin because they were caught playing Britney Spears in their customer waiting area).
Sure, if you have the phone number (or in SOPA/PIPA's case, IP Address) memorized, you can still call them, and if you know their address, you can still drop in for an oil change, but you can no longer find that information from the yellow pages.
Well, on the internet, the name you type in, EG GOOGLE.COM is the name of the place you want to go, the IP address returned, is the "phone number" to connect to that location. Without the DNS "yellowpages" on the internet, there would never be a connection. Simple as that.
So how does all this work? simple. DNS works backwards, which is to say, the last item comes first in terms of registration. so ".com", ".net", ".org", ".gov", etc. are all what are known as "Top Level Domains" or TLD's for short. so what SOPA will boil down to, is what DNS registrations they can revoke. Well that's simple, any TLD's where the company that owns that TLD is in the United States will be vulnerable.
Sorry to tell you this, but all the common ones you love so much, are owned by the states. That means all ".com" websites, and ".net" and ".org"... all vulnerable to SOPA. and since the distribution system for DNS all stems from the TLD servers, which is dictated by the central servers (all of them are America-based), nothing is safe. We're talking about the potential that an entire TLD is reposessed due to SOPA. That's right, poof, all of the .cn addresses, now property of SOPA. or .ca, or .uk, or whatever. GONE, like that.
Sure, the sites will still be there, and the pages will still be able to be accessed.... but NONE OF THAT MATTERS, because YOU WONT BE ABLE TO REACH THEM.
So pull your head out of the sands of "I don't live in America, it's not my problem", and realize, THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM TOO! Do whatever you can about it, even if that means yelling at your american friends, to yell at their elected representatives, DO IT, DO IT NOW! or you, me, this blog, google, youtube, and the internet as we know it, will simply cease to exist.
... Here's some links to get you started and help you out:
http://americancensorship.org/
http://fightforthefuture.org/
http://demandprogress.org/
http://www.fsf.org/
Joining in the protest today:
http://sopastrike.com/on-strike/
I'll start by saying I support the Anti-SOPA/Anti-PIPA movements; and I want to move quickly into HOW this affects us. Everyone knows about the screening of sites for privacy, what will be their criteria etc, what they can do, etc. but I see, more and more, people saying something along the lines of "I don't care, I don't live in the U.S.A."; I have news for those people: You're going to be very unhappy if this bill passes.
Here's why. The bills don't target US based websites, they target any websites. Those sites can be closed at any time for any reason... well, how? They revoke your DNS entry. What does that mean?
DNS, or Domain Name System, for those that don't know, translates something 'human-readable' into something a computer can work with. You see, the internet is not made up of google's and yahoo's, it's made up of 10.12.111.233's and 172.18.222.32's. That's how computers see the internet. These fancy names we've made up are called Domain Names; the Domain Name System (or DNS) was created to make reaching a site, easier than typing in (up to) 12 numbers that you would have to memorize for each site.
DNS basically is the internet equivilent of the yellow pages. You want to get an oil change at mr.lube, look in the yellow pages, and find the phone number for Mr. Lube. hey, there's an address too. In this analogy (which is fairly accurate), SOPA/PIPA type legislation would basically blast Mr. Lube from the Yellow pages, so you couldn't look them up if you wanted an oil change (all because they didn't pay their contribution to the RIAA's profit margin because they were caught playing Britney Spears in their customer waiting area).
Sure, if you have the phone number (or in SOPA/PIPA's case, IP Address) memorized, you can still call them, and if you know their address, you can still drop in for an oil change, but you can no longer find that information from the yellow pages.
Well, on the internet, the name you type in, EG GOOGLE.COM is the name of the place you want to go, the IP address returned, is the "phone number" to connect to that location. Without the DNS "yellowpages" on the internet, there would never be a connection. Simple as that.
So how does all this work? simple. DNS works backwards, which is to say, the last item comes first in terms of registration. so ".com", ".net", ".org", ".gov", etc. are all what are known as "Top Level Domains" or TLD's for short. so what SOPA will boil down to, is what DNS registrations they can revoke. Well that's simple, any TLD's where the company that owns that TLD is in the United States will be vulnerable.
Sorry to tell you this, but all the common ones you love so much, are owned by the states. That means all ".com" websites, and ".net" and ".org"... all vulnerable to SOPA. and since the distribution system for DNS all stems from the TLD servers, which is dictated by the central servers (all of them are America-based), nothing is safe. We're talking about the potential that an entire TLD is reposessed due to SOPA. That's right, poof, all of the .cn addresses, now property of SOPA. or .ca, or .uk, or whatever. GONE, like that.
Sure, the sites will still be there, and the pages will still be able to be accessed.... but NONE OF THAT MATTERS, because YOU WONT BE ABLE TO REACH THEM.
So pull your head out of the sands of "I don't live in America, it's not my problem", and realize, THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM TOO! Do whatever you can about it, even if that means yelling at your american friends, to yell at their elected representatives, DO IT, DO IT NOW! or you, me, this blog, google, youtube, and the internet as we know it, will simply cease to exist.
... Here's some links to get you started and help you out:
http://americancensorship.org/
http://fightforthefuture.org/
http://demandprogress.org/
http://www.fsf.org/
Joining in the protest today:
http://sopastrike.com/on-strike/
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
MIMO the best thing ever?
I've just been studying wireless a lot in the last little while and I was considering how MIMO could be one of the best innovations since 802.11a.
For those that don't know, MIMO, or Multi-in, Multi-out (to paraphrase), is a transceiver method that uses multiple radios for a single line to enhance throughput and clarity of signal, being able to be fine tuned to even make reflections and phase shifting due to environmental disturbances, helpful to your wifi signal.
That being said, a lot of newer, mid to high end wireless b/g/n and a/b/g/n cards are coming out with multiple radio chains. The 802.11n standard supports up to 4x4 radio chains, but I have yet to see anything utilize that. Most commercial grade hardware has a max of 3x3 radio chains, which is to say 3 full transceivers in a single card. A good example of this would be the Intel 4965, 5300, and 6300 cards; all of which, I believe, are 3x3 radio chains for a/b/g/n wireless at 2.4ghz and 5ghz. The maximum rates differ, but that's another matter entirely.
My thought is, how useful is this? I mean that. It's beyond what I thought could be useful, but it really depends on what the hardware, driver, and software is capable of. I havn't checked into this, but if you have 3 almost entirely independent radio chains on a single card, would that not mean that you could, in theory, develop a WDS where roaming is entirely seamless? Having all wifi distribution traffic go through a single vlan to a central server that switches the 802.11 traffic into the 802.3 backbone? Then the question becomes, would you be able to separate a single radio chain for roaming and connection discovery? It could have the new connection, to a new AP, with better signal, fully authenticated before the previous (poorer signaled) connection is interrupted. Furthermore, you could simply configure it for a layer 2 notification, to now send all layer 2 packets destined for this layer3 address through this route instead (maybe by a gratuitous ARP or a ping type packet to the WDS Server?) - Meaning no more interruptions while roaming between nodes....
That is, provided the wireless nodes in your network support it.
Furthermore, network troubleshooting and analysis would be further simplified. Considering that you require 2 full channels on either side of the centre channel in order to not interfere with neighbouring networks, that interference could work in your favour when doing network analysis. With a 4x4 radio chain, you could potentially configure each radio chain to listen to a different channel, and catch all overlapping channel traffic too, getting a much faster, much clearer picture of the entire topology of the area that updates more frequently with less work on the hardware side.
I mean, the possibilities here are awesome. No more frequency hopping and incessant probing to try and find your AP.
Of course, the beamforming and everything else included in the 802.11n specification are also nice; and yes, they rely on the MIMO underpinnings to work, but that type of benefit, I believe, would be second to this... at least from a network adminstration point of view.
That's just my thoughts on it. I might be way off base or key, but I find this to be rather exciting. I know they're already working on the next standard, so we'll see.
For those that don't know, MIMO, or Multi-in, Multi-out (to paraphrase), is a transceiver method that uses multiple radios for a single line to enhance throughput and clarity of signal, being able to be fine tuned to even make reflections and phase shifting due to environmental disturbances, helpful to your wifi signal.
That being said, a lot of newer, mid to high end wireless b/g/n and a/b/g/n cards are coming out with multiple radio chains. The 802.11n standard supports up to 4x4 radio chains, but I have yet to see anything utilize that. Most commercial grade hardware has a max of 3x3 radio chains, which is to say 3 full transceivers in a single card. A good example of this would be the Intel 4965, 5300, and 6300 cards; all of which, I believe, are 3x3 radio chains for a/b/g/n wireless at 2.4ghz and 5ghz. The maximum rates differ, but that's another matter entirely.
My thought is, how useful is this? I mean that. It's beyond what I thought could be useful, but it really depends on what the hardware, driver, and software is capable of. I havn't checked into this, but if you have 3 almost entirely independent radio chains on a single card, would that not mean that you could, in theory, develop a WDS where roaming is entirely seamless? Having all wifi distribution traffic go through a single vlan to a central server that switches the 802.11 traffic into the 802.3 backbone? Then the question becomes, would you be able to separate a single radio chain for roaming and connection discovery? It could have the new connection, to a new AP, with better signal, fully authenticated before the previous (poorer signaled) connection is interrupted. Furthermore, you could simply configure it for a layer 2 notification, to now send all layer 2 packets destined for this layer3 address through this route instead (maybe by a gratuitous ARP or a ping type packet to the WDS Server?) - Meaning no more interruptions while roaming between nodes....
That is, provided the wireless nodes in your network support it.
Furthermore, network troubleshooting and analysis would be further simplified. Considering that you require 2 full channels on either side of the centre channel in order to not interfere with neighbouring networks, that interference could work in your favour when doing network analysis. With a 4x4 radio chain, you could potentially configure each radio chain to listen to a different channel, and catch all overlapping channel traffic too, getting a much faster, much clearer picture of the entire topology of the area that updates more frequently with less work on the hardware side.
I mean, the possibilities here are awesome. No more frequency hopping and incessant probing to try and find your AP.
Of course, the beamforming and everything else included in the 802.11n specification are also nice; and yes, they rely on the MIMO underpinnings to work, but that type of benefit, I believe, would be second to this... at least from a network adminstration point of view.
That's just my thoughts on it. I might be way off base or key, but I find this to be rather exciting. I know they're already working on the next standard, so we'll see.
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