2.8.1. Windows Firewall – Part 1
By Val Bakh
This article is a high-level introduction to firewalls in general and Windows Firewall (WF) in particular. It provides a simplified, conceptual view of the relevant functionalities and is intended as light-reading material for those who are unfamiliar with firewalls, rather than as an instruction manual for professional IT administrators. It will be easier for you to understand this material if you have access to a computer running Windows 7 or Windows 8 and if you open and review the WF dialog boxes that are discussed here.
By James Hanback
You can pick your Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) router. You can pick your OSPF router ID. And if you don’t pick your router ID, the routing protocol will attempt to do it for you.
By Michael Aldridge
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Cisco's 642-832 TSHOOT exam, part of the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Routing and Switching track, is one of the most unique exams I have ever taken. Not only are there multiple choice and drag-and-drop questions, there are also trouble tickets that you will have to diagnose.
By James Hanback
We live in a hurry-up world.
There's the person behind you in traffic who leans on the horn if your brake lights don't go dark during the nanosecond that the traffic light is transitioning from red to green. There's the one behind you in the self-checkout lane who does the heavy sigh and eye roll bit because you must take the time to dislodge your rewards card from your wallet so you can start scanning your groceries (you knew you should have installed that rewards card app on your smart phone). Oh, and then there's the person who blows past you at the speed of light on a single-lane stretch of highway only to find you puttering up behind them at the next clogged intersection. You no doubt chuckle quietly to yourself as you await the go signal on such an occasion because you know that you've covered the same amount of distance and arrived at a simultaneous point with the speed demon, but at a lower fuel cost.
By James Hanback
Let's see. If you overlay the 802.11a standard with 802.11b standard and subtract the 5-gigahertz (GHz) band, you get an approximate 802.11g standard. Then add back the 5-GHz band, add four multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) streams to get the 802.11n standard. Subtract the 2.4-GHz band, multiply the available MIMO streams by 2, and you get the 802.11ac standard.
By Michael Aldridge
I've taken dozens of certification exams over the past 15 years, and I've created practice exams for most of them. But if I had to choose the one that was the most interesting to take and to create, I would have to choose Cisco's 642-832 TSHOOT exam, part of the Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Routing and Switching track.
By Delana Hallstedt
What makes a solid-state drive faster?
Immobility.
Yep, it’s really as simple as that.
I don’t mean that in a portability sort of way; solid-state drives (SSDs) are quite portable! An SSD doesn’t move on the inside, and this lack of movement is what helps it perform so much faster than other storage devices. Having said that, it really wouldn’t be much of a blog post if I didn’t attempt to paint you some sort of similitude packed with a sampling of picturesque details that will assist you in a greater depth of understanding of just how this all works…right?
By James Hanback
Just when you thought it was safe to pull the curtains back from the windows and let the sun shine in on the bodies of all the defeated zombies of the weak password apocalypse, you find out that they're not really dead. You shored up your devices, your Internet accounts, and maybe even the combination on your locker at the gym with the strongest, most secure mixture of characters you could conceive. Nobody can guess them. Nobody can brute force crack them. You're gold, right?
By Tim Charlton
IP Security (IPSec) Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels are both methods for transferring data across public, intermediary networks, such as the Internet. However, there are considerable differences between the two technologies. Let’s start with a brief overview.