Holidays!

The Holidays are drawing to a close, and the end of very tough year is upon us.  I just wanted to write to all of you and wish you all a very happy new year, and I’m looking forward to seeing what 2010 has in-store for us.  A couple of things I would like to point out to you in regards to 2010:

• I will most likely be changing my focus on digital-stress, from a technical-ish blog, to a more normal and daily lifestyle oriented blog
• I will try to start posting at least once a week…
• I don’t want to have to close this blog, I've enjoyed sharing my time with the 3 or 4 readers I do have.
• I will still post some tech/geek things at random, and I will try to explain it in laymen terms to the best of my
• abilities for you.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

 

Have you ever wondered what Bandwidth is? The best way that bandwidth can be explained is by comparing it to a highway. Thus the more lanes you have, the more traffic (Bandwidth) you can allow through. As we all have seen in the technology industry, information from previous years and predictions for the future, are both telling us that data rates are doubling every 18 months.



Cable Introduction

Applications that have been deployed today with a 1GB backbone are now driving the limits of CAT5e. These limits will continue to be driven to their maximum capacities as media applications such as streaming & on-demand video and audio become daily use. As the demands for more bandwidth are met, this will spawn new products that will benefit from the use of CAT6. Take the mid 90’s for example where CAT5 cabling was introduced, and replaced the CAT3, this happened because CAT5 provided the necessary bandwidth that network applications were benefitting from, and it was also very cost effective.

The Difference Between CAT5e and CAT6

The basic differences between CAT5e and CAT6 are: the increase in data transmission performance, and the enlargement of the available bandwidth (CAT5e - 100MHz, CAT6 - 200MHz).
Why does my business need CAT6 instead of CAT5?
Systems running on CAT6 cabling will have fewer corrupted data packets, as the data is transmitted from one end of the segment to the other. What makes this possible is the immunity that CAT6 cabling has from external noise, if far greater than that of CAT5e.

Will CAT6 become the leader/standard in cabling over CAT5

Absolutely, it’s only a matter of time. Cabling analyst state that 80 -90 percent of their installations are cabled with CAT6, and because CAT6 is backwards compatible with CATE5e requirements, this makes for an easy and sound decision for companies to move to CAT6

Cisco routers for the Win!

I purchased a Cisco Systems Small Business WRV200 Wireless-G VPN router not too long ago, and I have not looked back since. This router provides endless advanced features with yet a simple setup. One of my favorite features of the wireless router is to be able to create static VLANS, for multiple wireless SSIDs! While you can still have a local VLAN for business usage, you can provide FREE Wi-Fi without the worries of bandwidth latency on your private business network.
I think this solution or others like it provide small business owners the ability to accommodate the wireless needs of the general public and its employees who are not more mobile than ever. This solution comes with a very intuitive Web based interface that is very simple to navigate, however the “More Info Pages” left a little more to be desired when reading about the more advanced features of this particular product.

This particular router with an embedded firewall will enable secure, reliable wireless network access to your small enterprise, you will also be able to manage and monitor this device remotely using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol).
This device will also comes with 10 IPSec VPN Tunnels with a through put of 30 Mbps which will provide an easy and secure option for staying connected to your office!

As I mentioned earlier, this device will give you the option to use multiple Service Set Identifiers (SSID’s) and VLANs for traffic separation; you will also have the ability to fine tune Quality of Service (QoS) to enhance the quality of Video or Audio IP data traffic, this came in really handy when I used it for my Vonage VOIP (Voice over IP) service. This device also has support for wireless QoS (Wi-Fi Multimedia [WMM]) and wired QoS (port prioritization), consistent voice and video quality is maintained throughout your business.
In my honest opinion, I believe that you will get your monies worth out of this sweet little device; I’ve enjoyed having mine and I highly recommend it!

Computer Management: FAIL!

Ah nothing like testing my blog postage when things go wrong! Recently my computer decided to blow up and cause a big SNAFU in my life! So since it's recreation, I've had to re-establish my blog connection in my editing program. Things seem to be in a much better working order than they were in the past. One thing I must recommend to all of you computer users, BACKUP YOUR DATA!!! I keep all my important info stored on an external drive. I also map all my users "My documents" folder to the external drive as well. It just makes things a little easier to manage. However this time around, along with mapping the "My Documents" folders, I've also decided to partition my single hard drive into two partitions. This will help in keeping my precious system files and bloated "Program Files" apart on the disc. It actually has improved my system performance as well!

Free the Hops!

So for everyone who reads this blog, I ‘m not sure if you have heard yet, but your dear Governor Bob Riley signed the FTH (Free the Hops) Bill (HB373) on 5/22/2009! Congratulations! I’ve been supporting Free The Hops for the past 3 years, by going to meetings and events to help support the costs of putting the FTH Bill through legislation. So with the advancement of the bill passing, this means that Alabamians will now get a much broader and grown up selection in their choice of beer. So what is Free The Hops you ask?

Free The Hops Alabamians For Specialty Beer (FTH) is a grassroots, non-profit organization whose mission is to help bring the highest quality beers in the world to Alabama (http://www.freethehops.com/)

Wedding Stress…

So, I'm currently working on increasing my blog-o-sphere reputation and posting some info on my current situation. Right now as I type, and you read, Ellie and I just wrapped up another "Wedding" session. We're trying to catch up from our 2 month hiatus. Things are coming together and I have to admit, Ellie has done a great job with this shin-dig. I have to hand it to her, I'm not quite sure how she is capable of managing all the pieces of this massive jig saw puzzle. However, she has managed to keep a calm, cool and collective wit about it.