Home Network Storage System

Do You Use a Home Network Storage System?

YesNo - but am definitely considering itNo - not considering or don't need itN/A - what's network storage?

Network storage allows you to conveniently save and restore data across devices on a local network. Originally a high-end feature only businesses could afford, network storage systems are now also readily available for personal and home use. Types of network storage products include NAS drives and server software like FreeNAS.

Participate in our poll (see above and right) to see where some of our other readers stand on evaluating or using network storage systems.

What is Windows 7 DirectAccess?

DirectAccess is a new feature of Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. DirectAccess eliminates the need for users to set up a separate VPN connection as all of the required support is integrated into the operating system. It is designed for remote client access to corporate servers and networks over the Internet.

Those with computers running operating systems other than Windows 7 cannot use DirectAccess, of course.

PC Components

Introduction to PC Components

Here you will learn computer hardware tutorials introduction, basic pc components, networking devices, ram, vga, monitor and printer etc. Computer hardware is the physical part of the computer including the digital circuits inside the computer as opposed to the software that carry out the computing instructions. The hardware of a computer is unlikely to change frequently unless due to the crash or for upgrading them. The devices that is capable of storing, executing system instructions and controlling other logical outputs.

Hardware comprises all of the physical part of the computer such as Monitor, CPU, motherboard, ram, CD-Rom, printer, scanner, hard disk, flash drive (AKA pen drive), processor, pci buses, floppy disk, power supply, VGA card, sound card, network interface card, peripherals, joystick, mouse, keyboard, foot pedal, computer fan, camera, headset and others

On the other hard software is a logical part of a computer and is used to carry out the instructions, storing, executing and developing other software programs. A typical PC consists of a case or chassis in the desktop or tower case and these components.

Motherboard
• CPU
• Computer Fan
• RAM
• BIOS
• Digital Circuitry
• Computer Fan
• PCI Slots

PC Buses
• PCI
• USB
• Hyper-transport
• AGP
• ISA
• EISA
• VLB

Media
• CD-Rom
• DVD-Rom
• Combo box
• Joystick
• BD-Rom drive

Internal storage
• Hard disk (ATA & SATA)
• Data array controller
• Floppy disk

Other Peripheral Devices
• Mouse
• Modems
• Digital Camera
• Sound, Video Cards
• Printer

Output Devices
• Printer
• Scanner
• Monitor
• Speakers
• Headset
• Video output devices

CPU (Central Processing Unit): CPU or central processing unit relates to a specific or processor. The performance of the computer is determined by the CPU chip (processor speed) and the other computer circuitry. Currently, the Pentium chip (processor) is the most popular even though there are other chips available in the market today such as AMD, Motorola and others. The clocks speed becomes most important factor in determining the performance of a computer. The motherboard contains the hardware circuitry and connections that allow the different hardware components of the PC to interact and communicate with each other. Most computer software is being developed for the latest processors so it would be difficult to use the older systems.

Hard Disk Drives – Disk drive is the mechanism to run the disks. All disks need a drive to get the information, read it and put it back to the disks. Hard disk is used to store the data permanently. Often the terms disk and drive used to describe the same thing but it should be clear that a disk is a storage device.

Modem – A modem is used for the modulation and demodulation of the data that is transferred through the modem and the telephone lines. Modem translates the data from digital to analog from analog to digital. Because on the telephone lines data can travel in the form of the analog signals and in the computer data transmits in the form of digital signals. Modems are measured by the speed which is called baud rate. The typical baud rate is 56Kb.

Keyboard – The keyboard is used to type something or input information to the computer. There are different designs and models of the keyboards in the market. The most common layout of the keyboard is QWERTY layout. A standard keyboard has 101 keys and embedded keys.

Video cards - Video cards allow computer to display video, graphics and animation. Some video cards allow computers to display television. A video card with a digital video camera allows users to produce live video. A high speed broadband internet connection is required to watch the videos on net.

Network cards: Network interface cards allow PCs to connect with each other and communicate. Every network computer is required to have a NIC card. NIC cards are required both in wired and wireless networking.

Cables: There are two broad types of cables internal cables, which are embedded on the mother board circuit that performs the communication between the devices and CPU. The other types of the cables are the network cables like coaxial cable, CAT 5, Ethernet cables. These cables are used for the communication purposes between the devices or computers.

Memory – Memory is the one of the important piece of the hardware. Sometimes memory chip memory is confused with the hard disk memory. Sometimes unallocated space of the hard disk is used as virtual memory also known as page file. This type of memory is a temporary memory and is used actual memory is less and requires some additional memory to perform a specific task.

RAM (Random Access Memory) RAM is a memory that is being used by the computer to store the information temporarily. For example when some work is performed on some applications that work is temporarily stored in the RAM. More RAM in the computer more faster computer works. Today at least requirement of a modern PC is 64 RAM. RAM is in the form of a chip and different vendors have developed the RAM of different capacities.

Mouse – Every modern computer requires a mouse for faster operations. Generally a mouse has two buttons left and right to perform different functions. One type of the mouse has a round ball under the bottom. Another type of the mouse use optical system to track the movement of the mouse.

Monitors – The monitor is used to display the information on the screen. All the activities of a computer, functions and tasks are seen on the computer screen and this is called outputting information. Monitors come in many sizes and shapes, monochrome or full colors. Today most computers use LCD screens. It is light weight and consumes less power as compared to the monitors.

Printers – The printer takes the information from the PC and transfers it to the paper of different sizes, which are placed in the printer device. There are three basic types of a printer such as dot matrix, inkjet and laser.

Scanners - Scanners allow you to transfer pictures and photographs to your computer. A scanner is used to scan the images and pictures. You can then send the image to someone, modify it or take a print out of it. With optical character recognition software you can convert printed documents into the text that you can use in the word processor.
Digital camera- You can take the digital photographs with the digital cameras. The images are stored on the memory chip of the digital cameras and you can transfer them to your computer with the USB drive.

Case – Case or casing covers the whole computer’s circuitry. There are two types of casings desktop and tower casing. There is room inside the casing to add or remove components. Cases come in many sizes like desktop, mini, midi and tower. There are some additional empty slots inside the cases such as IDE, USB, ASI, PCI and firewire slots.

Cards – Cards are the hardware components that are added to the computer to increase their functionalities and capabilities.

Sound cards produce the sound like music and voice. The older cars were 8, 16 and then 32 bits.
Color cards allow computers to produce colors. Initially there were 2, 4 and then 16 bits. The main types of the graphic cards are EGA, VGA and SGA. The 32 cards are the standard to display almost billions of the colors on the monitor

FIREWALL

Basically, a firewall is a barrier to keep destructive forces away
from one's property. In fact, that's why it's called a firewall. Its job
is similar to a physical firewall that keeps a fire from spreading
from one area to the next.

Firewall is simply a program or hardware device that filters the
information coming through the Internet connection into private
network or computer system . If an incoming packet of information
is flagged by the filters, it is not allowed through.

With a firewall in place, the landscape is much different. A
company will place a firewall at every connection to the Internet
(for example, at every T1 line coming into the company). The
firewall can implement security rules. For example, one of the security rules inside the company
might be:

Out of the 500 computers inside this company, only one of them is permitted to receive public
FTP traffic. FTP connections only to that one computer are allowed and prevent them on all
others.
A company can set up rules like this for FTP servers, Web servers, Telnet servers and so on. In
addition, the company can control how employees connect to Web sites, whether files are
allowed to leave the company over the network and so on. A firewall gives a company
tremendous control over how people use the network.

Firewalls use one or more of three methods to control traffic flowing in and out of the network:
• Packet filtering - Packets (small chunks of data) are analyzed against a set of filters.
Packets that make it through the filters are sent to the requesting system and all others
are discarded.
• Proxy service - Information from the Internet is retrieved by the firewall and then sent
to the requesting system and vice versa.
• Stateful inspection - A newer method that doesn't examine the contents of each packet
but instead compares certain key parts of the packet to a database of trusted
information. Information traveling from inside the firewall to the outside is monitored
for specific defining characteristics, and then incoming information is compared to these
characteristics. If the comparison yields a reasonable match, the information is allowed
through. Otherwise it is discarded.



Making the Firewall Fit:
Firewalls are customizable. This means that the user can add or remove filters based on several
conditions. Some of these are:
• IP addresses - Each machine on the Internet is assigned a unique address called an IP
address . IP addresses are 32-bit numbers, normally expressed as four "octets" in a
"dotted decimal number." A typical IP address looks like this: 216.27.61.137. For
example, if a certain IP address outside the company is reading too many files from a
server, the firewall can block all traffic to or from that IP address.
• Domain names - Since it is hard to remember the string of numbers that make up an IP
address and because IP addresses sometimes need to change, all servers on the Internet
also have human-readable names, called domain names . For example, it is easier for
most users to remember www.howstuffworks.com than it is to remember 216.27.61.137.
A company might block all access to certain domain names, or allow access only to
specific domain names.
• Protocols - The protocol is the pre-defined way that someone who wants to use a
service talks with that service. The "someone" could be a person, but more often it is a
computer program like a Web browser. Protocols are often text, and simply describe
how the client and server will have their conversation. The http in the Web's protocol.

Some common protocols that you can set firewall filters for include:
o IP (Internet Protocol) - the main delivery system for information over the
Internet
o TCP (Transport Control Protocol) - used to break apart and rebuild information
that travels over the Internet
o HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) - used for Web pages
o FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - used to download and upload files
o UDP (User Datagram Protocol) - used for information that requires no response,
such as streaming audio and video
o ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) - used by a router to exchange the
information with other routers
o SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) - used to send text-based information (email)
o SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) - used to collect system
information from a remote computer
o Telnet - used to perform commands on a remote computer

Networking hardware

Networking hardware typically refers to equipment facilitating the use of a computer network. Typically, this includes routers, switches, hubs, gateways, access points, network interface cards, Networking cables, network bridges, modems, ISDN adapters, firewalls and other related hardware.

The most common kind of networking hardware today is copper-based Ethernet adapters, helped largely by its standard inclusion on most modern computer systems. Wireless networking has become increasingly popular, however, especially for portable and handheld devices.

Other hardware prevalent within computer networking is datacenter equipment (such as file servers, database servers and storage areas), network services (such as DNS, DHCP, email etc) as well as other specific network devices such as content delivery.

Other diverse devices which may be considered Networking hardware include mobile phones, PDAs and even modern coffee machines. As technology grows and IP-based networks are integrated into building infrastructure and household utilities, network hardware becomes an ambiguous statement owing to the increasing number of 'network capable' endpoints.

List of Networking hardware vendors

Networking hardware typically refers to equipment facilitating the use of a computer network. Typically, this includes routers, switches, access points, network interface cards and other related hardware. This is a comprehensive list of all vendors who produce Network Hardware vendors.

Routers
The largest Routing Vendors in the world by revenue, according to Gartner Dataquest.

Switches
The largest Switch vendors in the world by revenue and portcount, according to Gartner Dataquest and swith is intelligent device.

Wireless

Atheros

Cisco

D-Link

Linksys

Proxim

Tall Umbrella

Tropos

Xirrus

ZyXEL

Network interface cards
Cisco
D-Link
Intel
Realtek