Business Continuity - Program Development and Policies

Standards, Program Development, Policies, Guidelines, and Procedures are the foundation of Business Continuity and are needed to ensure that an organization is working without stopping in case of an adverse event. In my last post i discussed a bit about standards. Lets dig a bit more and learn more.

Program Development:

Program Management is an ongoing process to make sure that necessary steps are regularly taken in order to identify disasters, emergencies, threats and accidents. It also involves:

• Thorough assessment of the possible effects of adverse events
• Developing plans and recovery strategies
• Ensure readiness through plan testing and personnel training

Policies:

Policies are the road-map deputed by the management of an organization that will always be followed according to a preset design plan, and supporting all business functions within an organization.

BCM Plan:

BCM Plan is a set of documents, instructions, and procedures which enable a business to respond to disasters, emergencies, accidents and threats without any hindrance or stoppage in its key operations. BCM plan is also known as business resumption plan, disaster recovery plan, or recovery plan.

BCM Planning:

BCM Planning is the task of identifying, developing, acquiring, documenting, and testing procedures and resources that will ensure continuity of an organization's key operations in the event of a disaster, accident, threat or emergency. It includes:

• Business Recovery Planning in order to ensure continued operation in the aftermath of a disaster
• Risk Mitigation Planning in order to mitigate against the risk should an unfortunate event occur

That's it for today folks. I will discuss Business Guidelines in upcoming post. Stay in touch and keep on visiting the Microcom IT's blog

What is Business Continuity - Introduction

"Business Continuity is the activity performed by an organization to ensure that critical business functions will be available to customers, suppliers, regulators, and other entities that must have access to those functions." This include system backups, project management, help desk and change control. Business Continuity is a set of activities performed daily basis to maintain consistency of service, and recoverability.

Standards, Program Development, Policies, Guidelines and Procedures are the foundation of Business Continuity and needed to ensure that an organization is working without stopping in case of an adverse event.

Standards:

In this section i will provide some of the reference numbers for standards developed by different authorities like ISO, IEC, BSI etc.

• On 15 May 2012, ISO published the International Standard ISO 22301:2012, "Societal security -- Business continuity management systems --- Requirements". A second International Standard ISO 22313, "Societal security -- Business continuity management systems – Guidance", is in the Draft International Standard (DIS) phase and is expected to be published in late 2012 or early 2013.
• Produced by the British Standards Institution (BSI), BS 25999 is a business continuity management (BCM) standard in two parts. The first, “BS 25999-1:2006 Business Continuity Management. Code of Practice”, takes the form of general guidance and seeks to establish processes, principles and terminology for business continuity Management.
• Published by the National Fire Protection Association NFPA 1600: Standard on Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs.
• Published by Standards Australia HB 292-2006 : A practitioners guide to business continuity management HB 293-2006 : Executive guide to business continuity management In 2010
• Standards Australia introduced their Standard AS/NZS 5050 that connects far more closely with traditional risk management practices. This interpretation is designed to be used in conjunction with AS/NZS 31000 covering risk management. You can read more about risk management on this blog.

Many businesses which have spent lots of money on creating an IT infrastructure that gives them good performance and reasonable reliability often forget business continuity planning. Business continuity planning is an essential part of an organization’s need to maintain operations should unforeseen circumstances occur. In the event of such a situation if business continuity planning had not been considered the result would be major outage with all systems offline. You would be correct in assuming that this kind of scenario could ruin the reputation of an organization or at worse lead to its collapse.

It is for this reason that businesses that require an added level of assurance of continuity of their operations must devise a robust plan for their organization. At Microcom IT we assist our clients by formulating a concise plan and assist with improving the existing structure to accommodate the added measures. If you have thought about these possibilities and do not have any measures in place, it is still not too late. Contact our specialist team to find out how we can help.

Potential Risk Treatments

When a risk have been identified and thoroughly assessed, all techniques to manage and mitigate the risk fall into one or more of the following categories:

• Risk Avoidance
• Risk Reduction
• Risk Sharing
• Risk Retention

Risk Avoidance:

Risk Avoidance includes not performing any activity that could carry risk. For example you should not buy a property or business in order to avoid the legal liability that may come with it. You should not ride a bike in order to avoid road accident. Avoidance may seem the most feasible solution to all risks, but mostly you do not gain anything until you risk some thing. Avoiding risk result in losing potential gain that sometime may make the risk worth taking. In short avoiding risk means not to enter a business in order to avoid the risk of losing and also to avoid the possibility of earning profits.

Risk Reduction:

Risk Reduction or also known as Risk Optimization is a method of reducing the impact and severity of loss from occurring. Halon fire suppression systems may mitigate the risk of fire, but the cost is too high which may prohibit it to be implemented as a strategy.

Software development companies reduce risk by developing and delivering software incrementally. They release a beta testing version so that users can use and identify bugs if any. User testing is very helpful to find errors at different stages of development. Early methodologies suffered from the fact that they only delivered software in the final phase of development. Any problems encountered in earlier phases meant costly rework and often jeopardized the whole project.

There is an another method to reduce risk which is outsourcing. A business owner can outsource manufacturing and customer support to another company which lets him to concentrate more on business development rather than taking care of manufacturing process or to find a physical location for a call center.

Risk Sharing:

"Sharing with another party the burden of loss or the benefit of gain, from a risk, and the measures to reduce a risk." The concept of risk sharing is widely misunderstood. If the insurance company go bankrupt or end up in court, the original risk is likely to still revert to the first party. The purchase of an insurance contract is often described as a "transfer of risk". However, technically speaking, the buyer of the contract generally retains legal responsibility for the losses "transferred", meaning that insurance may be described more accurately as a post-event compensatory mechanism. For example, a personal injuries insurance policy does not transfer the risk of a car accident to the insurance company. The risk still lies with the policy holder namely the person who has been in the accident. The insurance policy simply provides that if an accident (the event) occurs involving the policy holder then some compensation may be payable to the policy holder that is commensurate to the suffering/damage.

Risk retention pools are technically retaining the risk for the group, but spreading it over the whole group involves transfer among individual members of the group. This is different from traditional insurance, in that no premium is exchanged between members of the group up front, but instead losses are assessed to all members of the group.

Risk Retention:

Involves accepting the loss, or benefit of gain, from a risk when it occurs. True self insurance falls in this category. Risk retention is a viable strategy for small risks where the cost of insuring against the risk would be greater over time than the total losses sustained. All risks that are not avoided or transferred are retained by default. This includes risks that are so large or catastrophic that they either cannot be insured against or the premiums would be infeasible. War and natural disasters are examples since most property and risks are not insured against war and natural disaster, so the loss attributed by war and natural disaster is retained by the insured. Also any amounts of potential loss (risk) over the amount insured is retained risk. This may also be acceptable if the chances of a very large loss are rare or if the cost to insure for greater coverage amounts is so great that it would hinder the goals of the organization too much.

That is all for today folks. Keep on visiting the Microcom IT's blog to learn more. I wish you have a very successful day.

Risk Management

The process for identifying, assessing, and prioritizing risks of different kinds is known as Risk Management. When risk factors are being identified, the risk manager can make a plan to reduce, avoid or eliminate the impact of negative elements or events. There are several strategies available to manage risk, depending upon the type of business and the type of risk.

Risk Types:

There are different type of risks that a risk manager plans to mitigate. Common risks are like accidents in the workplace or fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, other natural disasters, fraud, theft, sexual harassment lawsuits. Risks can also relate to business practices, uncertainty in financial markets, failures in projects, credit risks, or the security and storage of data and records.

Goals:

The main goal behind applying risk management practices is to protect businesses from being vulnerable and keeping it viable and reducing financial risks. Risk management also focuses on protecting employees, customers, and general public from accidents and disasters. Risk management practices are also about preserving the physical facilities, data, records, and physical assets a company owns or uses.

Identification and Management:

The process for identifying and managing risk consists of five basic steps. The first step is to identify the risk. The second step is to assess available information about the risk to analyze the level of vulnerability. The third step is to determine the expected consequences of specific threats. The fourth step is to identify ways to reduce those risks. The final step is to prioritize risk reduction measures based on a strategy.

Folks! today you have an introduction to Risk Management. In my next post i am going to discuss some strategies to cope with risks. Keep visiting the Microcom IT blog and do not forget to give your valued feedback in comments.

Off Page/Off Site SEO: Practical Approach with Link Building

Link building in SEO refers to a technique to build inbound links for a website. Inbound links are just like a vote. Through inbound links, search engines can analyze not only the popularity of a website but also its trust worthiness. Trust worthy sites often link to other trust worthy websites while spammy websites do not receive much input from trust worthy websites. Link building is not the only method to judge credibility of a website but it is a very important method. Most SEO pundits consider that search engine algorithms rank a website with respect to the number of quality inbound links and traffic. There are different techniques for link building. Let me explain them one by one.

Reciprocal Link:

Reciprocal link is a link that's mutually shared between two websites. For example if Alexander Solicitors & Advocates is linked to Cheap VPS UK and Cheap VPS UK is linked to Alexander Solicitors & Advocates, it means their both linked reciprocally.

Resource Link:

Resource links are very important and get a lot of attention from search engines. Resource links are suppose to direct visitors to some content which is suppose to be beneficial for the reader. For example if i am writing about Linux hosting, I can direct the reader to Microcom IT's Linux Hosting page by using "Linux Hosting" as anchor text. At this page the reader can know about the Linux hosting service provided by Microcom IT. Alternatively the link can also point to another location where you think the content is more appropriate.

Forum Signature:

Forum signature linking is a technique used to build back links to a website. This is the process of using forum communities that allow outbound hyperlinks in a member's signature. This can be a fast method to build up inbound links to a website and improve the Search Engine Optimization value. It takes a lot of time to build a certain level of profile ranking on a forum before we can put a link into the signature. Secondly, most of the forums do not allow advertising at all or they have a separate section for this purpose where you need a very high forum profile rank for advertising. I would prefer that you use this technique as the last resort.

Directory Posting:

Directory is a link bank which contains many links and categorizes them under the relevant category. Mostly there are three types of directory submissions you can do. One is free submission which does not cost you anything. Second is reciprocal submission which asks you to add their link on your website before you submit your website's link. Third is feature submission for which the directory admin charges you actual money to keep your website link in the feature listings for a certain period of time. With featured submission, your website link will normally be approved within 24 to 48 hours. Otherwise it will take 3 to 7 weeks before the admin reviews your website link and approves it.

Blog Commenting:

Leaving a link in a blogs comment section may get you clicks by readers of the blog if the comment is well-thought-out and pertains to the discussion of the other commentators and the post on the blog. Most blogs provide different options to select for the type of profile such as anonymous or use a name and URL. I prefer the Name and URL. You can use a keyword as the name and the desired website link as URL.

Social Bookmarking:

Social bookmarking is a way of saving and categorizing web pages on the web. Because bookmarks have anchor text and are shared and stored publicly, they are scanned by search engine crawlers and have search engine optimization value.

Stay in touch folks. Hopefully tomorrow there will be a different topic but we will keep on writing on SEO from time to time. May you have a very blessed and successful day.

OnPage/OnSite SEO: Practical Approach with Content Section

Statistics show that my last post regarding choosing Title and Keyword was a success which is a moral booster for me. It seems that the purpose was served and we can move forward. Today i will discuss how you should deal with your website content from an SEO prospective. Content is the most attractive part of a website for a search engine crawler. While writing content for your website you should keep a couple of things in mind.

Content has to be unique and well formatted. Sufficient time should be spent on proof reading to find spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Make sure that content is relevant to your webpage. Websites with unique and relevant content build a superb impression on search engine crawlers and get indexed with less time and effort. While websites with copied content get degraded by search engine crawlers.

When you are writing content for your website, heading tags are the most important elements to consider. Use of heading tags help users, web browsers and search engines know where the major key points of your website are. It makes it easier for search engines to determine the nature of the content. Use "h1" tag for the main heading which has to be chosen carefully. The main heading should reflect what the content is all about. If there is a sub-heading use "h2" tag. This patronage may be misunderstood so let me simplify it. The "h1" tag is the main heading and the "h2" has to be the sub-heading of "h1" and "h3" has to be the sub-heading of the "h2" and so on.

Keyword density is determined by the number of time a certain keyword is used within the content but be very careful with density. Do not use a keyword more than three times in the first paragraph and only once or twice if necessary in subsequent paragraphs. Using a keyword too many times is a Black Hat SEO technique. Sooner or later search engines will detect it and your website will be considered as spam.

Add as much text as possible on your website because websites with sufficient text quickly grab the attention of search engines. Keep your website up to date. Make changes to the content once a week depending on the type or nature of your website. At least keep on feeding your website so search engines can find new changes every time they pays a visit. If search engines find no activity on your website they will increase the time interval between visits. It is very simple, if you lock up someone in a room without water and food they will get weaker and eventually die. The same thing will happen to your website if you don't keep it up to date.

That's it for today. I will discuss link building in the upcoming post. Stay in touch folks and keep paying us a visit. You are welcome to ask any kind of question regarding SEO in the comment section. I will try my level best to respond to your query as soon as possible.

OnPage/OnSite SEO: Practical Approach with Title and Keyword

It is time to avoid reading theory :) and move to practical approach towards Search Engine Optimization. Now we will focus on things which we need to take care of while applying tools and techniques of SEO. This post is for those who want to learn how to do certain things in SEO. So i will write stuff which will be precise and to the point. Lets come to the point and let me share my way of doing SEO with you.

Title and Keyword:

Choosing a title for the page is the most important phase of OnSite SEO. It takes some time to figure out a unique and relevant title which attracts users over the internet. You can start doing it on paper. Use your brain and think hard. If you already have the titles and keywords in place on your website then you need not think about this. But in some cases clients ask you to suggest titles and keywords which you think are better for SEO. Use Google Keyword Tool for title and keyword analysis. It will help you figure out titles and keywords. Use a minimum of three of the most important keywords in the title and start working on the first one. Take Alexander Solicitors & Advocates as an example. Open this website and check its page title. A perfect way to make a title. Its title looks like this "Alexander Solicitors & Advocates | Solicitors in Luton | Bedfordshire | UK". Now the title shows that this website requires SEO with geographic constraint. When a user writes a query, the search engine does not compare it as it is or as a whole sentence instead it matches the words in a query with a match in website title and content.

Now check its keyword tag. Keywords are "Leading Law Firm UK,Top Notch Lawyers Luton,Legal Advisors in Bedfordshire,Solicitors Luton Bedfordshire". You can observe that the title and keywords contain almost all possible and common words that can be used for a legal adviser. This is how you should keep the title and keywords of the website you are working on. Don't use too many keywords as keywords are not focused on that much according to some SEO pundits but in my point of view even when they are not worth much they are still in the game. Anyway, it is debatable and we may debate it another time.

In next post i will explain how to work with content. Stay in touch folks. Have a great day.

Off Site/Off Page SEO: Types and Techniques

Off Site or Off Page SEO is also a crucial part of Search Engine Optimization. Once you finished with On Site SEO, Off Site SEO phase kicks start. Difference between both is OnPage SEO can be put to rest for some time but Off Page SEO has to keep going on. Most of the Off Site SEO techniques focus on link building and spreading the words on World Wide Web. Your intention should be promoting your business and website on all famous and relevant forums over internet. We will introduce you some commonly use legal practices regarding Off Site SEO. Later in coming posts we will discuss both OnSite and Off Site SEO using practical approach because reading theory about anything is different but we do not just want to fill this blog with commonly known theory which can be found on other blogs easily. We wanted our visitors to get actual knowledge and guidelines for implementing these techniques. Lets have a brief look on Off Page SEO methods because it is always better to know before do.

Link Building:

Link building is a very important if you want to improve traffic and page rank of your website. It is every website owner's dream to have as high page rank and traffic as possible. While the algorithm for determining page rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the number of links pointing to your web site. Now, you’ll want to steer clear of link farms and other spam attempts at getting links to your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to. With genuine content especially if you have a blog, you’ll be able to generate links with other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!. Here in this post we are giving you a slight taste of some on commonly used methods but in upcoming posts we will discuss all these things in great detail as already mentioned earlier.

Blogging:

Blogging is a new innovation in cyber world. People can express themselves if they do not have any other forum. But now a day’s use of blogs is getting so common and popular way of sharing your ideas. People from every field of life use and read blogs. Blogging is significant way of letting the world know your existence. Blogs can play a vital role in order to bring traffic to your website and building a back link depository.

Banner and Advertisement Posting:

Blogging is a new innovation in cyber world. People can express themselves if they do not have any other forum. But now a day’s use of blogs is getting so common and popular way of sharing your ideas. People from every field of life use and read blogs. Blogging is significant way of letting the world know your existence. Blogs can play a vital role in order to bring traffic to your website and building a back link depository.

Social Media Promotion:

The year 2011 and 2012, we have observed a significant rise social media usage and sharing. Earlier in 2010, search engines treats the links on social media websites as not of much worth but now search engines especially Google has started incorporating social media weaves in its search results. Simply open Google Search in your browser, type any domain and check the results. Google will show Social Media Sections of your domain if it has any.

Print and Main Stream Media:

Print media and main stream media are the tools of devil. They spread the words more rapidly than any other promotional method. They shouldn’t be ignored. Advertisement is the key of getting fame. So shout out loud. Use both news papers and media advertisements. The more frequently people hear about you the more business you will get. Visit these pages to know about how social media promotion suppose to be done. Microcom IT Facebook, Microcom IT Twitter, Microcom IT Google plus, Microcom IT Linkedin, Cheap VPS UK Facebook, Cheap VPS UK Twitter and Cheap VPS UK Google Plus

OnSite/OnPage SEO: Types and Techniques

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is such a hot topic these days. How do you get your web site within the first page or two of the search engines? How do you increase your Google page rank? First thing comes first, there is no hard and fast rule in SEO as no one knows how crawlers work. Search engines keep this algorithm secret and do change it time to time. So, nothing can be the concrete solution here. It’s always a method of hit and try. However, there are some techniques you can do for your site that will help increase your chances of having good results. These techniques are being categorized in two: "On Site SEO" and "Off Site SEO". Let me explain each one by one.

On Site SEO:

On Site SEO is the kick start point of SEO and the most important one too. Because whatever you do in this phase, matters in the next one too. So be careful and do not over optimize your website Or the hunters like Google Penguin and Panda will hunt your site till a devastating end. Let me show you a brief insight of techniques which we apply during On Site SEO phase.

Website Compatibility:

check of your website to make sure that all famous browsers translate your website properly. Although it is not your job but it would be helpful for you to inform owner of the site if there is some thing wrong with website.

Title Tag:

Near the very top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags, the standard ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is considered the most important of the three. A page title is the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will see when looking at your search engine listing. It’s important to include a keyword or two in the title tag, but don’t go overboard, you don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name, or title of the particular page here, as well.

Meta Tags:

Two types of meta tags are very important when it comes to SEO, the description and the keyword tag. It is becoming debatable whether search engine uses these tags to index a website or not but for the time being even if it is not much effective but it is still in the play. Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence, not a keyword list.

Heading Tags:

When you are writing content of your website, heading tags are the most important elements to consider. Use of heading tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major key points of your website are. It makes it easier for search engine to determine the nature of the content.

Alt Attribute of Images:

Search Engines do knot understand what image is. They read the image like a text. Adding Alt attribute to images will help them understand what type of image it will be. The more relevant attribute is the more quickly it will get indexed.

Title Attribute of Links:

When you move mouse pointer on a link a tiny too tip appears which is title attribute of that link. As a note, you should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a person or more importantly, the search engines about the link. At the very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means “Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet, make the main link text something like “View my web design portfolio”, this will give some value to the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for portfolio’s.

XML Sitemap:

XML sitemaps are used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well. This list of ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search engines properly find and link to all content of your site.

This post is for general understanding regarding types and techniques. Further i will explain how to implement these techniques. The purpose of keeping the pace low is to teach visitor from very basic to advance level. In the upcoming post we will discuss about Off Site SEO. Stay in touch and keep on visiting Microcom IT's Blog.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or commonly called SEO is a process to improve visibility and ranking of a webpage or website on search engine's organic or natural results. The better the ranking and visibility of website, more traffic it will receive from users. That is what making SEO the most important thing after development and launch of a website. Every organization and company is dying to have their website on the first page of search engine. SEO mostly focus on these type of searches: video, image, local and academic. SEO is an internet marketing strategy which keep tracks of how search engine works? What keywords and terms people use to search? and Which search engine is the most famous among their target audience.

Before we dive into the ocean of SEO, there is a bitter fact i want to share with you. SEO techniques looks simple and easy and they are but it does need a creative mind to implement it. Some time after trying almost everything, the result is not what we desire. It is because its not only SEO which matters to bring traffic to website it also the design, content and nature of the website. Business regarding selling and purchasing often receive large traffic caps. Websites, built for entertainment purpose also receive huge traffic caps even with less SEO efforts. But for business websites it is very difficult to bring traffic to them with legal methods as their target market and customers' window is too narrow. Most of the time only concerned people such as their clients, customers or the one who is interested in having their service or product, pay a visit to their website. This is a fact that every businessman and company needs to understand. The best approach for them is to keep their website up and live, spread the word on social media and focus on link building.

Today i will discuss types of SEO and in the coming days i intend to expand this topic to cover other aspects of SEO. Lets dive :) and experience the mystery world of SEO. SEO is divided into two major categories such as White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO.

White Hat SEO:

White Hat SEO focuses on building long lasting effects. An SEO technique is White Hat if it is being accepted by the search engines and is in accordance with their term and conditions. In White Hat prime focus is audience. It enhance Web Usability Everything is built for them not for the search engine. It makes sure that search engine index the same content which an organization or company needs to be there for their audience. Promoting your website without using deceptive techniques is White Hat. This method is slow but its results are durable and long lasting. White Hat keep your website out of harm.

Black Hat SEO:

Black Hat SEO involves all methods and techniques which are disproved by search engines and include deception. Hidden text or div is very common and basic technique in which they use text with the same color as background. or hide a dive or position it off screen. Another method is clocking which means if a human user is requesting a page they provide a different one while for search engine they have a different page. The impact of the Black Hat is quick but it never last long. Once search engine figure out what is going on, it penalize such website by either decreasing its ranking to an extent from where it is impossible to bring that site up or they simply remove the website from their database and block domain address.

Have patience and gain a lot and keep on gaining. Have quickly and then lost completely. It is your decision about which option you want to go with your website.

Computer Network-Network Topology

In networking, Topology is the physical layout of network. It is also known as design and structure of a network. Topology can be depicted as Physical and Logical. Physical Topology represents the placement of the network with its devices and systems and logical represents the flow of data. A topology with its physical structure can be Ring topology but data flow can be Bus topology. In this post we will discuss different types of topologies one by one.

Bas Topology:

In bus topology are systems are connected to the central bus which is network cable and also known as trunk. Data travels in both directions. Each system checks the header of data for destination address. If address does not match, machine simply ignore it. If address is the match, machine accepts data. At both ends of bus, a terminator is connected which terminate signal after a specific time period. If a bus has only two end points, its called linear bus or linear trunk. If bus has more than two end points, it is called distributed bus or distributed trunk.

Star Topology:

In Star topology each host machine is connected to central node which can be a Hub or Switch. Central node is a server and Hosts are the clients. Hub works as a signal repeater. All the traffic on the network passes through central node. Star topology is considered the most easiest and mostly used topology over LAN because it is very simple to add additional nodes.

Ring Topology:

In Ring topology all hosts are connected in such a circular way that they form a ring shape. In Ring topology when a machine sends a data, it travels to each node in the ring until it reaches its destination. Each hosts works as a signal transmitter to keep the signal strong. Each machine checks the data header for destination. If its a match, data is accepted otherwise it is being forwarded to the next host in the ring.

Mesh Topology:

In Mesh topology each node not only accept its own data but it also act as a relay for other nodes which mean it should propagate data on to the network until it reaches its destination. If in a Mesh network all nodes are connected to each other, it is called Full Meshed network. If some nodes connected to more than one nodes then it is called Partial Meshed Network.

Computer Network-Network Scale

Networks are often divided by their purpose, usage, access rights, physical and organizational extent.

Personal Area Network (PAN):

Personal Area Networks is network in which communication occur among computer and other technological devices which are close to a person. The best example for PAN is a Personal computer connection with printer, scanner, PDA's, Fax Machine and Video Game console.

Local Area Network (LAN):

LAN is refer to a network which interconnects computers and network devices within a limited geographical location such as home or an office building. There are number of topologies have been used in LAN such as Bus, Star, Ring and Mesh. We will discuss them in detail in our next post. Ethernet is most widely used protocol over LAN.

Home Area Network (HAN):

HAN is refer to a network which interconnects computers and network devices within a parameters of a house. The main purpose is to access internet most commonly via a broadband connection through a DSL or Cable TV service provider.

Campus Area Network (CAN):

CAN is an interconnection of LANs within a limited geographical location such as university. The main purpose is to access internet most commonly via a broadband connection through a DSL or Cable TV service provider. Network devices such as Switches and routers along with communication media such as Cat5 or fiber optics are used. In case of University, purpose of CAN is to connect different university campuses, departments, library and student hostel.

Backbone Area Network (BAN):

BAN used to tie different pieces of network or sub networks to a limited geographical area such as a building, campus or can be in different building or even over a wide are. Backbone capacity has to be greater than the networks tied to it. A multinational organization which have many locations may have Backbone network to connect all its branches, offices and warehouses.

Metropolitan Area Network (MAN):

MAN is a large network which spans over an entire city.

Enterprise Private Network (EPN):

An enterprise private network is a network built by an enterprise to interconnect various company sites, e.g. production sites, head offices, remote offices, shops, in order to share computer resources.

Wide Area Network (WAN):

Different LANs when are being interconnected over a larger geographical area, they form a Wide Area Network. WAN mostly cover intercontinental distances. Internet is the current and most famous example of Wide Area Network. WAN uses different communication channels such as telephone lines, cable, air waves etc. WAN technologies generally function at the lower three layers of the OSI reference model: the physical layer, the data link layer, and the network layer.

Computer Network-Network Protocols

Network protocols are the sets of rules which govern communication over the network. This works like a stack of protocols in which each protocol uses the one below it. Protocols have signaling, authentication, error detection and correction capabilities. Protocols are of two types in nature, "Connection Oriented" and "connectionless" whether they are on Circuit switching or Packet Switching network. There are many types of network protocols, we will discuss some of them below:

Ethernet:

Ethernet is a family of network protocols mostly used for Local Area Network (LAN). The original 10Base5 Ethernet used coaxial cable as shared medium but later on coaxial cable was replaced with twisted pair and then later fiber optics in conjunction with switches or hubs. Advancement resulted in a periodic increase in data transfer rate from 10 megabits to 100 gigabits per second. Over Ethernet, data packets are divided into small pieces called frame. Each frame contains source address, destination address and error checking data so damaged or lost data can be retransmitted. Ethernet has a sound reputation about its compatibility since its commercial release.

TCP/IP:

TCP/IP, also known as Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and the most popular protocol for wide area networks. TCP/IP is a combination of two networking protocols which are "Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)" and "Internet Protocol (IP)". TCP/IP specifies end-to-end connectivity specifying how data should be formatted, addressed, transmitted, routed and received at the destination. It works on four layer to sort all internet protocols according to the scope of the network. These layers are:

• Link Layer: contains communication technologies for a local area network (LAN).
• Internet Layer (IP): connects local networks to establish inter-networking.
• Transport Layer: responsible for host-to-host communication.
• Application Layer: contains all protocols for specific data communications services on a process-to-process level. For example, HTTP specifies the web browser communication with a web server.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM):

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is a switching technique for telecommunication networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing and encodes data into small, fixed-sized pieces called cells. Here it is different from other network protocols such as TCP/IP and Ethernet who uses variable size packets. ATM uses a combination of both Circuit and Packet switching. This makes ATM a good choice for a network that must handle both traditional and real-time, low-latency content such as voice and video. ATM uses connection oriented model which means a virtual connection must be established between two ends before actual communication took place.

SONET/SDH:

Synchronous Optical Networking and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy are multiplexing protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams over optical fiber. SONET/ SDH was originally standardized for connecting one fiber system to another at the optical level, to form a single international standard for fiber interconnects between telephone networks of different countries. Today it is a widely deployed, mature technology used in implementing high-speed, large-scale IP networks. It combines high bandwidth capacity with efficient link utilization, making it a major building block for accommodating fast-growing IP infrastructure both in the core and at the edge. Due to its protocol neutrality and transport-oriented features, SONET/SDH also was the obvious choice for transporting Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) frames.

Computer Network-Communication Media

Computer Network is a collection of computers and other hardware interconnected with other through communication channels which allow sharing of resources and information. In a computer network each device should be able to send and receive data. There characteristics which classifies a network are communication media, communication protocols, scale and topology.

Communication Media:

Communication Media is used to to interconnect individual hardware within a network such as electric cable, optical fiber and radio waves. In OSI Model, communication media comes at level 1 & 2.

Wired Technology:

The following wired technologies are sorted in order from slowest to fastest.

• Twisted Pair Cable: consist of copper wires that are twisted into pairs. Using two wires twisted together helps to reduce crosstalk and electromagnetic induction. Twisted Pair Cable used for both voice and data transmission. Transmission speed range varies from 2 million to 10 billion bits per second. There are two types of twisted pair cable which are "Shielded Twisted Pair (STP)" and "Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP)"
• Coaxial Cable: Mostly used for cable office buildings, work-sites for LAN and television systems. The cables consist of copper or aluminum wire covered by an insulating layer which is also covered by a conductive layer. This multilayer structure help reducing interference and distortion. Coaxial Cable transmission speed ranges from 200 to 500 million bits per second.
• ITU-T G.hn: Used to create a high-speed (up to 1 Gigabit/s) local area network by using existing home wiring (Coaxial, telephone line, power cable etc).
• Optical Fiber: is a glass fiber uses light pulses to transfer data. OF provides less transmission loss, immunity from electromagnetic radiation, and up to trillions of bits per second. Different colors of lights can be used to increase the number of messages being sent over a fiber optic cable.

Wireless Technology:

• Terrestrial Microwave: Uses earth base transmitters and receivers resembling satellite dishes. It has low ghz range which limits communication to line of sight.
• Communication Satellites: Satellites communicate using microwave radio waves. Earth's atmosphere do not deflected these waves. The satellites are stationed in space and capable of relaying TV, Voice and Data signals.
• Cellular: systems use several radio communications technologies. The systems divide the region covered into multiple geographic areas. Each area has a low-power transmitter or radio relay antenna device to relay calls from one area to the next area.
• Radio and Spread Spectrum Technologies: Wireless LANs use spread spectrum technology to enable communication between multiple devices in a limited area.
• Infrared Communication: Transmission is possible to short distance not more than 10 meters. In most cases source and destination devices are in the line of sight.

Optical Fiber

Many businesses find themselves in a position where their network has grown organically as their company has. The addition of IT components such as server and switches from different vendors are added as and when needed. If not planned correctly the whole management and maintenance can spiral out of control and this can cause a business to incur significant costs and become dependent on 3rd party assistance from a long list of vendors.

Microcom IT tries and keeps it simple whether you are a new business just starting out or an established organization, Microcom’s dedicated team of educated and certified professionals can bring to you solutions which best suit your current and future environment. Microcom can evaluate the existing posture of your network and define the long term goals; we develop robust, scalable and inexpensive solutions that provide infrastructure optimization.

At the most basic level, it is very important that all the network cabling within the building is done to a high standard. There are various things to consider when cabling is installed and this will affect the overall performance of the network when computer systems, servers and printers are added at a later stage.

We provide network cable installation service from small business to large organizations and can do this at very competitive pricing. With our network cabling service you will have the guarantee that your cabling has been done to a professional standard.

What is Virtualization

Virtualization seems to be the buzz word these days and although virtualization technology has been used a lot over the last few years many organization are still not fully aware of the significant benefits that come with it. Virtualization is known for various methods, approaches and techniques of creating a virtual (not actual) layer of virtual hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or network resources.

Let us first have a look at how virtualization technology actually works. At the most basic level you have your server hardware, then on your server hardware you would expect to have an operating system installed. This is where virtualization comes in, virtualization uses a Hypervisor which simply means an extra layer between the server hardware and the operating system where all the business applications are run. This Hypervisor manages all the resources of the server such as memory, disks, network and CPU and controls which virtual machine (your application server) receives how much of those resources and when. The virtual machine is an independent server which runs on top of the Hypervisor and the number of virtual machines you can run on 1 server is limited only by the servers hardware capabilities.

There are some key terms, which you need to know before you go for Virtualization.

Hardware Virtualization:

The term Hardware Virtualization commonly refers to build virtual machine which act like a real machine with an operating system. Here actual machine known as "host machine" is the base machine as hardware virtualizaton took place on it. And virtual machine is known as guest machine. Virtual Machine Manager or the Hypervisor is the software which creates virtual machine on host hardware.

There are three types of Hardware Virtualization.

• Full Virtulization: Complete simulation of target environment.
• Partial Virtulization: Partial simulation of target environment.
• Para-Virtulization: Program of guest machine runs on their own isolated domains and needs modifications to work in this environment.

Snapshotting:

Snapshotting comes handy when you want to start a risky business. This term specially relate to storage devices. Snapshot refers to the state of a virtual machine with its storage devices at an exact point in time. Snapshots can be reverted any time and so as the virtual machine also appear the same when the snapshot is being taken.

Teleportation:

Teleportation or Migration means to move from one host machine to other having its own hypervisor, without and or little disruption in services.

Failover:

An organization can not afford its system to stop completely in case of any failure. Failover means virtual machine keep on working even if the host machine fails. However, virtual machine keep on working from its last known coherent state, in this case.

Microcom IT has been working with virtualisation technology since the early days and is able to provide advice and consultancy services to organisation who are thinking of going virtual. With virtualisation, there are many platforms to choose from and a lot depends on what applications and services you will be running in your organisation. When it comes to selection we can help with selecting the most suitable.

• Microsoft Hyper-V
• VMWare ESX
• Citrix XenServer

Although these are the major technologies that are running within businesses today there are other alternatives available too that enable virtualization for different purposes. Microcom IT Ltd has worked with all three of the above vendors and has implemented solutions for businesses in the UK for a number of years. If you want to find out more, talk to us.

Microcom IT: Leading IT Solution Providers in UK

Microcom IT - like any other organization took its first step with a bunch of handful enthusiastic and career oriented professionals. It was a tough time though we have managed to not only survive but thrive. Initially Microcom IT was limited to London city but then with the passage of time we started getting clients from other cities and counties. Now we have decided to go around the globe to provide what we best known for.

Working with local businesses for a few years Microcom IT Ltd has developed significant knowledge and expertise in the way organizations in the hospitality, financial, logistics, legal and real estate industries operate. As these industries go through their changes we are always there to provide support and assistance with their chosen services.

Our software application development, managed support services and web hosting are the leading products and provide an excellent platform for our clients to operate.

Our reputation is built on our customer satisfaction. Alexander Solicitors & Advocates is a renowned law firm in Luton, Bredforshire and a valued client of Microcom IT. They describe us as "We have been with this company for over six months and we find their service second to none. They have been extremely helpful and have enabled us to stop worrying about our IT and get on with our core business". Highly Recommended! W Nisa, Alexander Solicitors & Advocates.

Purpose of maintaining this blog is to provide technological background and information about all the services Microcom IT is providing for our current and potential clients and customers. If you are small/medium size business any where in the world, then get in touch with us to find out more on how we can help you develop your business into a success.