Next Generation Network

A Next Generation Network (NGN) is a packet-based network able to provide services including Telecommunication Services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies. It offers unrestricted access by users to different service providers. It supports generalized mobility which will allow consistent and ubiquitous provision of services to users.

The NGN is characterized by the following fundamental aspects:

• Packet-based transfer
• Separation of control functions among bearer capabilities, call/session, and application/ service
• Decoupling of service provision from network, and provision of open interfaces
• Support for a wide range of services, applications and mechanisms based on service building blocks (including real time/ streaming/ non-real time services and multi-media)
• Broadband capabilities with end-to-end QoS and transparency
• Interworking with legacy networks via open interfaces
• Generalized mobility
• Unrestricted access by users to different service providers
• A variety of identification schemes which can be resolved to IP addresses for the purposes of routing in IP networks
• Unified service characteristics for the same service as perceived by the user
• Converged services between Fixed/Mobile
• Independence of service-related functions from underlying transport technologies
• Compliant with all Regulatory requirements, for example concerning emergency communications and security/privacy, etc.

A Functional Model for Data Management

ABSTRACT:

This white paper discusses how data management exists to support business objectives. This means business drivers are used to form the data management strategy and tightly link it to corporate goals-be they profit, revenue, customer satisfaction or another goal. Data management is about managing information assets across the entire enterprise. It involves fostering, creating, and maintaining practices that allow the business to optimize data usage regardless of where the data resides and what functional entity needs it.

With this in mind, this white paper will present a data management functional model that describes the data capabilities that best practice collaboration between business and IT should deliver. The data management functional model aids in the planning and delivery of services to any business or development team that requires specialized data knowledge.

Read this white paper to learn more about the data management functional model and the benefits and can provide for your enterprise today.

Nokia 5130 Xpress Music

Nokia 5130 XpressMusic was designed for music lovers with an advanced music player, integrated camera and a host of music sharing options.

Key Features:
Display: 2.0″ QVGA (320×240 pixels) LCD, 256k colors
Video: VGA recording and playback
Music: .mp3 AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, MP3, Midi, WMA, WAMR, MXMF
Imaging: 2 mega pixel camera with 4x digital zoom
Memory: 30MB Internal plus 1GB microSD included
Connectivity: MicroUSB, Bluetooth 2.0
Operating System: Symbian OS Series 40

DDOS attackers continue hitting Twitter, Facebook, GoogleDDOS attackers continue hitting Twitter, Facebook, Google

The distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks that knocked out Twitter for hours and affected other sites like Facebook, Google's Blogger and LiveJournal on Thursday continued all day Friday and may persist throughout the weekend.

In its latest update, posted to a discussion forum of its third-party developers at 11 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time on Friday, Twitter it's still fighting the attacks.

"The DDoS attack is still ongoing, and the intensity has not decreased at all," wrote Chad Etzel, from Twitter's application development platform support team.

This means that Twitter will maintain a set of defensive measures that have allowed it to keep the site up but that also have affected the interaction of third-party applications with the site via its API (application programming interface). "At this point, removing any of those defenses is not an option," Etzel wrote.

The real bad news for developers of affected Twitter applications and for their users? Twitter has no idea when it will be able to switch its application platform back to normal. "There is no ETA on fixing any of this," Etzel wrote, adding that Twitter staff plans to work around the clock this weekend to deal with the DDOS attack.

"Things will continue to be rocky as long as this attack continues. They may get worse, they may get better. That should not be read as 'we don't care about fixing it' or 'we're not going to fix it until everything blows over' but instead as 'we can't promise when things will be back to normal, but in the meantime we are working on fixing ASAP,'" Etzel wrote.

As was the case on Thursday, Twitter wasn't the sole target of the DDOS attacks on Friday. Google's Blogger blog publishing service felt the sting of the attacks on Friday afternoon as well. "A small percentage of Blogger users have experienced error messages this afternoon as the result of what appears to be an ongoing distributed denial of service attack aimed at multiple services across the web," a Google spokesman said via e-mail.

"Google has a variety of systems in place to help counteract these types of attacks, and we believe the majority of affected users can now access their blogs. We're continuing to work to minimize the impact to affected Blogger users. No other Google products have been affected," the spokesman said on Friday afternoon.

Facebook, whose site experienced some performance problems on Thursday due to the attacks, acknowledged on Friday afternoon that the attacks had continued. "The requests from the botnet continue but we have been able to isolate them

and provide normal levels of service to our legitimate users," a Facebook spokesman said via e-mail on Friday afternoon.

According to news reports and information from companies affected, the attacks appear directed at silencing a blogger in the country of Georgia who has been critical of Russia's actions and policies toward that neighboring country.

Booting from USB drive even if it is not supported by BIOS

These days the use of USB disks are increasing day by day.And in its final step now days even installation windows or booting of a system is also performed by using USB disks. But as far this is limited to only motherboard which support booting from USB disks by the system BIOS. Now what to do with non-supporting motherboards? If you are stuck in such a situation where you have a mother board which does not support booting from a USB drive then free boot manager PLoP will be the best solution for you. This simple boot manager can work with your existing bootloader in BIOS as this can be launched from any device i.e floppy or a CD drive. And once launched you can use menus provided to boot your PC with almost any device like USB, CD or even from a Network.

You can download it from the link here in a zip format and follow the instruction included in the archive. Hope this will solve your problem…..

VPN (virtual private network)

A VPN (virtual private network) allows a host (your computer) to communicate over an untrusted network (the Internet) in a secure environment (the VPN). Consider a tunnel that runs through a mountain. The tunnel is pretty safe, but anyone can use it. However, we want a private road that no one else can use. So, we build another tunnel inside the existing tunnel, taking up one of the lanes on the existing tunnel highway (a tunnel inside of a tunnel). The extra tunnel can be likened to a VPN.

Of course, VPNs are done using math and electricity, not cement and roads. For example, Microsoft provides a free VPN client for all of its Windows operating systems. Your network admin could install it on your computer. Then, that same administrator enables VPN capability on the network she manages so that when you remotely connect to the network, you must use a VPN client to connect to the network.

Cisco, and other vendors, sell VPN clients. Cisco’s is not free. They charge over $5,000 for each VPN client you want to install! Yikes. Many people pay the fee though, because Cisco’s product offers robust security.

You use the VPN client your network admin installed on your system by first clicking its icon to start it. After that, you get on the Internet and connect to your company’s IP address (the IP address you have to use to connect to the network). Next, log in to the network while you are safely tucked inside your VPN connection. No one on the Internet can touch your traffic when you’re working inside a VPN. A hacker might see your traffic, but it can’t be understood.

Various popular standards for compressing multimedia data

JPEG
JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. However, what people usually mean when they use the term "JPEG" is the image compression standard they developed. JPEG was developed to compress still images, such as photographs, a single video frame, something scanned into the computer, and so forth. You can run JPEG at any speed that the application requires. For a still picture database, the algorithm doesn't have to be very fast. If you run JPEG fast enough, you can compress motion video -- which means that JPEG would have to run at 50 or 60 fields per second. This is called motion JPEG or M-JPEG. You might want to do this if you were designing a video editing system. Now, M-JPEG running at 60 fields per second is not as efficient as MPEG 2 running at 60 fields per second because MPEG was designed to take advantage of certain aspects of motion video.

Motion JPEG

JPEG compression or decompression that is applied real-time to video. Each field or frame of video is individually processed.

MPEG

MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group. This is an ISO/IEC (International Standards Organization) body that is developing various compression algorithms. MPEG differs from JPEG in that MPEG takes advantage of the redundancy on a frame-to-frame basis of a motion video sequence, whereas JPEG does not.

MPEG 1

MPEG 1 was the first MPEG standard defining the compression format for real-time audio and video. The video resolution is typically 352 x 240 or 352 x 288, although higher resolutions are supported. The maximum bitrate is about 1.5 Mbps. MPEG 1 is used for the Video CD format.

MPEG 2

MPEG 2 extends the MPEG 1 standard to cover a wider range of applications. Higher video resolutions are supported to allow for HDTV applications, both progressive and interlaced video are supported. MPEG 2 is used for the DVD - Video and SVCD formats, and also forms the basis for digital SDTV and HDTV.

MPEG 3

MPEG 3 was originally targeted for HDTV applications. This was incorporated into MPEG 2, so there is no MPEG 3 standard.

MPEG 4

MPEG 4 uses an object-based approach, where scenes are modeled as compositions of objects, both natural and synthetic, with which the user may interact. Visual objects in a scene are described mathematically and given a position in a two- or three-dimensional space. Similarly, audio objects are placed in a sound space. Thus, the video or audio object need only be defined once; the viewer can change his viewing position, and the calculations to update the audio and video are done locally. Classical "rectangular" video, as from a camera, is one of the visual objects defined in the standard. In addition, there is the ability to map images onto computer-generated shapes, and a text-to-speech interface.

MPEG 7
MPEG 7 standardizes the description of multimedia material (referred to as metadata), such as still pictures, audio, and video, regardless if locally stored, in a remote database, or broadcast. Examples are finding a scene in a movie, finding a song in a database, or selecting a broadcast channel. The searcher for an image can use a sketch or a general description. Music can be found using a "query by humming" format.

Welcome Back Cox Communications!

Customers of Cox Communications have been unable to browse The Tech FAQ for the last several weeks due to a technical misunderstanding inside Cox’s Internet abuse department.

Cox claimed that an attack on their webmail servers originated from our .109 IP address. This is quite an amusing claim, as no traffic is allowed to originate from our .109 IP address. That IP address is reserved only for inbound traffic.

Cox never contact us and when we were finally able to reach an engineer at Cox we were told that they had already deleted all logs of the supposed incident.

But, after finally getting past armies of first level “support” personnel, the engineer I finally spoke with was very nice. He removed the block on our network and Cox customers are once again able to browse our extensive library of technical information.

Welcome back Cox Communications!

EASEUS Partition Manager

Partitioning the hard drive is not a task which would be performed on a daily basis. It is commonly executed on procurement of a new hard drive. Some consider it a very risky and intricate process but with EASEUS Partition Manager, your outlook will change.

EASEUS Partition Manager (EASEUS PM) is a disk partition management tool, also an alternative to Partition Magic (currently known as Norton Partition Magic). EASEUS PM Software is available in four different editions; Home, Professional, Server and Unlimited. It’s a handy software designed exclusively to aid you with dicing a hard drive to your requirements and taste.

Features and Functions

• Offers a simple and speedy solution in configuring and administrating the hard disk partitions with a comprehensive control over the creation, deletion, resizing, moving and formatting of partitions
• Supports browsing the detailed information about all hard drives, partitions and file systems too
• Labels can be assigned to each partition and supports hiding or un-hiding of partitions
• Comes supplied with an elite element to resize or move the live partitions by making use of the free space without any loss of data
• Helps shrink the size of an existing partition in order to unite it with the available free space and construct a larger partition
• Gives a detailed and comprehensive set of instructions to aid the user in accomplishing a variety of projected steps
• Well-suited with Win NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista and can serve large disks ranging from 2GB to 1TB
• Incorporates a preference to create a bootable CD, that permits to supervise the partitions before Windows loads (could be needed for certain changes)
• Executes a bad sector test and a call on Windows’ CHDISK utility to mend the defects
• Secures and protects the settings, preventing them from unauthorized changes, by providing password locking capability

The Disadvantages

• The interface and the visuals are not too appealing or attractive, starting from the colors to the fonts used. Looking plainly at its aesthetics (appearance), it equals with the aged look of the previous operating systems
• Lacks any kind of backup preference for cloning the existing data

The Conclusion

The user interface may not be worthy of a reward but it balances for the wide-ranged powerful functionalities and ease of use. So grab a copy of EASEUS Partition Manager to make things simple and reclaim peace of mind.

Visit EASEUS Partition Manager’s website

New Cell Phones

These are the latest and greatest mobile handsets from manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola, and Palm.

Check out these great new cell phones with features like Bluetooth, EVDO, GPS, microSD card slots, and instant messaging.

• Nokia N85
• HTC S740
• Motorola VE75
• Motorola RAZR VE20
• LG KP265
• LG 600G
• UTStarcom Blitz
• Sony Ericsson TM506
• Sony Ericsson T700
• Sharp Sidekick
• Samsung Tocco T919
• Samsung SGH-A237
• Samsung Messager R450
• Samsung M220
• Samsung Knack
• Samsung Cobra M320
• Palm Treo Pro
• O2 XDA Ignito
• Nokia N79
• Nokia 3610
• Nokia 1606
• Motorola Q9
• Motorola MOTOROKR EM30
• Motorola MOTOROKR EM28
• Motorola MOTOROKR EM25
• Motorola Moto ZN200
• LG Invision
• LG HB620T
• iMate Ultimate 8150
• iMate Ultimate 6150
• Casio GZone Boulder

Seven Things IT Professionals Must Know

Our friends at TradePub have teamed with eEye Digital Security to bring you a free eBook titled Seven Things IT Professionals Must Know.

This free eBook is designed to help you gain key insights into IT security problems and find the safest means to protect your technological assets.

Seven Things IT Professionals Must Know details the seven pain points often encountered by IT security professionals and gives practical advice on how to solve them. This eBook is useful for any IT Professional dealing with internal and external attacks.

The eBook, unsurprisingly, covers eEye products and how they can be useful in protecting enterprise resources, network assets, web sites, and applications. However, the information provided can be useful no matter what IT security tools you choose to use.

The book covers core IT security topics such as:

• How to prevent the loss of protected information
• How to resolve network weaknesses
• How to resist system exploitation through vulnerable network ports
• How to protect against harmful spyware attacks
• How to defend against unwanted intruders

It’s a good read and you can’t beat the price.