Computer Networking Fundamentals

A computer network is a collection of two or more computers with communication between them through a medium. The communication medium can be through radio waves, wires, infrared, optical fibers etc.

Computer network is an integral part of our daily lives, with the most important reason being that of communication. The use of computer networking is to share resources like fax machines, printers, modems, files etc., and its other uses are database server, computer server, email, chat, internet etc. The computer to which the resources are attached is called the server and the other computers that access the resource are called clients. In peer-to-peer computer networks there are no servers.

The sharing of fax machines, printers, and modems amongst many computers and users reduce the operational cost. A database on a computer network is a very important application as it stores and runs many important data and jobs. Emails and chats can be used for instantaneous communication and sending of files on a computer network.

The computer networks are classified, depending upon the size, as Local Area Networks (LAN), Wide Area Networks (WAN), Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and Personal Area Networks (PAN). The topology (topology is the way the computer networks and network resources are connected) of the networking can be classified as Bus Network, Ring Network and Star Network.

The networking hardware basically consists of wiring, network cards and a hub. Computer network cards are required so that one computer can understand what the other computer is “talking”. Network cards have a unique MAC address to identify computers on a computer network. Hubs connect all the computers in the network. Hubs can also be used to connect to other hubs to increase the size of the computer network. Two computers can be connected using Ethernet cards or phone lines or power lines for communication, with hardware kits available at roughly a cost of $100.

As the number of computers in an office or a home increases, so do the number of cables, so wireless networking is a viable solution. In wireless networking radio transreceivers or infrared signals are used to communicate between computers and devices. Examples of wireless networking include Wi-fi and Bluetooth technology, though there may be security issues involved in wireless networking. However there definitely is a stronger preference towards wireless networking nowadays among consumers.

Computer networks have added a new dimension to the 21st century. Today the cyber world is much faster and wider than the real world. This has all been made possible due to computer networks. Computer networks have revolutionized business, communication, travel, research, defense, society and almost all human endeavors. The evolution of computer networks has helped the technological revolution take a big leap forward.

Consequences of data loss and Why should Offsite Backup be used

There is a calculated trend in all business corporations and firms: when the enterprise is getting bigger, its support of data increases its complexity, volume and value. The larger your enterprise is, the more significant your data files become. The traditional tape backup can no longer produce in-depth data information about all the important features of your business. That’s why many people get acknowledged to a more adequate file protection. A secure offsite backup system can be the possible solution. Business owners and offices managers have got it straight: if the business is to flourish, precise data information storage should be used.

Offsite backup systems offer something, which no other data store can do: they protect to the greatest extent all your files. But why should they do that, you may ask. Imagine you are a business owner. You have your own office computer, which is crammed up with all the valuable info. Well, what if the computer gets stolen, or a short-cut puts it out of practice? What will happen to your enterprise?  If you are still not convinced enough to the rational extent, let’s consider the following statistic data. 1 in every 4 computer users suffers a critical data loss every year. Last years over 500,000 were stolen. Disk and other hardware failures are so numerous that major disk and computer manufacturers/resellers are reducing their warranties to 12 months. Over 25% of data loss is a result of computer program errors, software viruses and natural disasters (factors completely out of your control). 50% of businesses that lose their data never open their doors again. Of those businesses that do manage to stay open, 90% end up failing within two years. Data loss will cost business an estimated £12 Billion this year. 

Still not believing? Consider the following fact: computer experts say that once data is lost, it can no longer be recovered to the full. Some data that contains pieces of valuable information will be forever lost in the digital space, with no hope of getting it back. Disaster recovery planning (DV) often fails to extract the lost files in the similar way as they were before the disaster struck. This happens because of the various regulations and compliance, which occur during the recovery process. 

Data loss can happen to anyone, no matter how good the tape protection system is. There is no tape backup that can comprise all the valuable information without omitting some precious stuff. Text documents, financial records, contact records, address books, email messages and databases that you have created on your computer or servers may disappear forever unless you take a serious action to prevent it. The lost files are hard to recover, and it takes a lot of precious time and nerve-racking to recover even to the approximate extent the ruined system as it was before the disaster. The value of data highly exceed the mere cost of your computer or server, as you have to pay a great amount of money for reproducing the whole information as it was before the crack down. So, the most reasonable thing to do, if you don’t want to spend a lot of money afterwards, is to re-ensure your system using secure online backups. 

Even though that is the sacred truth, most people avoid taking backup precautions. They leave their data files unprotected, and thus expose their business on the danger of bankrupt. Why do people do it? Because of laziness, because they don’t want to spend additional money, or just because they think that would never happen to them. Is it so hard to take some pre-consideration and backup your data? Sooner or later, everyone gets a strike in their unprotected file systems. Then it is too late to split hairs over the lost information.

Companies must be prepared for data storage and backup compliance

Companies must account and deal for new legislation governing how information is stored on IT systems.

The EU is shortly to adopt many of the recommendations on corporate governance set out by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, UK firms are to be expected to deal with and manage explicit guidelines on how to store email and other documents on their IT systems.  IT managers should consider the necessary procedures and technologies needed for compliance now, in order ensure technology is able to deal with the new legislation.

Regulations regarding data storage at the moment are fairly lax, but there will be a huge increase in the amount of data than must be held over the next 18 months to two years.

Email archiving, the increased use of expencive write-once read-many media, information lifecycle management and content-aware storage as a few of the technologies which firms should consider for the future, though in some cases companies will simply need to improve the way they manage existing systems.

It is anticipated that new legislations will demand that an organizations’ archiving solutions must guarantee that the information they hold has not been changed, and keep it for a specific period of time before automatically deleting it.

A survey of 493 companies in the UK has shown that compliance with regulations has a high or fairly significant impact on the data storage strategies of 87% of the organisations surveyed. Back-up and recovery was also very important to the data protection strategy of 93% of organisations.

78% of organisations future storage strategy is set to include Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape technology. This may be due to the highly affordable and flexible nature of this new technology. For example, recent deployments of disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) solutions by various companies have, on average, reduced the backup window by more than 70%, from fifteen hours to less than four, yielding significant time and cost savings in tape management.

Interestingly, product features were far more important than the brand of the product, with 82% of organisations making a decision based on product features. When it came to the decision of choosing a specialist storage supplier or a general IT provider for storage solutions there was a very slight preference for specialised storage suppliers (51%) over general IT providers (49%). 

This survey shows that compliance with regulations is a key driver in companies' storage security policy and that we are likely to see more companies deploying Disk to Disk to Tape technology in the future.

All the above is fine if you are a corporate, you have an annual IT budget of £500,000 and numerous members of staff who can plan and complete such a system.  Is it very easy to talk about SANs, NAS’s Virtual Tape Libaries.  Organisations of this nature already have a very stable and flexible infrastructure, where it is comparably easier to implement such a system.

What about the 1000’s of smaller companies such as solicitors, accountants, medical practices and manufactures etc, which may have only 2 servers on site, but still have the same reliance on data and have to adhere to the same legislations?  Backup to tape is an option, however, there is an upfront cost and a requirement for a trusted member of staff to take the tapes off site every night and store in a safe place.  Can you guarantee your backup has worked, and do you really trust your long term data on magnetic media?  Another option is to archive your data onto optical devices, however the cost is even more prohibitive than tape and you still need to take the disk offsite.

No doubt your data is growing quickly; recently enforced legislations makes sure of this, so why not employ a backup and archival solution which has no upfront cost, is fully automated, secure and regardless of disaster will ensure your data is always available, Offsite Backup