PPPoA (Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM) is a network protocol that encloses PPP frames into AAL5 and is primarily used with DSL and DOCSIS Internet providers. The PPPoA standard offers classic PPP features, including compression, encryption, and authentication support. When used for encapsulation on ATM networks, the protocol can reduce overhead by just over 0.5% when compared to the PPPoE standard, while supporting the VC-MUX and LLC based encapsulation types. PPPoA and PPPoE: A Comparison Both PPPoE (Point to Point over Ethernet) and PPPoA allow an Internet Service Provider to provide Read More

A coaxial cable can be spliced with a minimal set of tools, but some of them are specialized. They can be found at a local hardware store. Purchase the following: Two F connectors A barrel connector A pair of diagonal pliers A coaxial cable stripper (preferably) or a knife. A knife is not recommended. A coaxial crimping device for the F connectors Before beginning, the user should determine the type of cable he/she has. Check the marking on the cable for its designation. The most common types are RG6 and Read More

RJ-11 is the standard connector utilized on 2-pair (4-wire) telephone wiring. RJ stands for “Registered Jack”- a physical connector interface most often used for telephone wire terminals. Though the RJ-11 connector has a total of 6 connector positions, typically either only 2 or 4 are actually utilized. RJ-11 connector wiring comes in two standard varieties- untwisted (flat-satin cable) and Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP). RJ11 is the most familiar of the registered jacks, due to the fact that virtually all single line (POTS) telephone jacks in most homes and offices in Read More

A range extender is a device that can be placed between two connection points in order to bounce a wireless signal from one device to another. Range extenders work great for large offices and factories that need high-speed Internet throughout the premises without running cables or purchasing satellite Internet. Range extenders can be used with virtually any router or access point and various models offer different features. In order to compare products, we will list several range extenders that are available on the market. Belkin Wireless G Universal Range Extender Read More

RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) is used to encapsulate VoIP data packets inside UDP packets. RTP is defined in RFC 3550 – RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications. RTP provides end-to-end network transport functions suitable for applications transmitting real-time data, such as audio, video or simulation data, over multicast or unicast network services. RTP does not address resource reservation and does not guarantee quality-of-service for real-time services. The data transport is augmented by a control protocol (RTCP) to allow monitoring of the data delivery in a manner scalable to large Read More

Free firewalls have become very common and represent an excellent alternative to commercial firewall packages. Most of these firewalls run under some form of Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD. Many of these free firewalls are front-ends for the lower-level firewall packages which ship with these operating systems, such as pf (Packet Filter), ipf (IPFilter), ipfw (IPFirewall), and iptables. Free firewall packages which you can download include: Firestarter Firesarter is a free firewall tool for Linux machines. Whether you simply want to protect your personal workstation or you have a network of Read More

Port 1723 is a network port that uses both TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) in order to transfer data from an application on one machine to an application on another machine. Port 1723 is rarely manually used and background services within the applications that access it usually manage it. This type of access between multiple applications is known as the PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol), which, by default, is usually run on Port 1723. TCP Vs UDP While Port 1723 runs both TCP and UDP protocols, each Read More

In fiber optics, there are hundreds of different fibers that are laid to provide telecommunications to people. It is important, though, for these companies to be able to change which fiber the information is running on. Therefore, they use what is called an optical switch. In technical terms, an optical switch is a switch that allows for signals that are traveling along one line of fiber to be switched selectively from one single circuit to another. Types of Optical Switches There are many different types of optical switches. They all Read More

Cisco is a leading manufacturer of networking devices such as modems, wireless routers, and network storage devices. Cisco products are sold worldwide to millions of consumers for both residential and commercial purposes. Cisco also markets a number of data plans for some of the largest Internet Service Providers in the world. What is 192.168.1.245? 192.168.1.245 is the default IP address of the control panel found on all Cisco routers and devices. Users can access this control panel by entering 192.168.1.245 into any web browser’s address bar. The user will then Read More

An adapter is a hardware device or software component that converts transmitted data from one presentation form to another. The data presentation can be, for example, a message sent between objects in an application or a packet sent through a network. A null modem adapter enables users to transform a normal serial cable into a null modem. It contains the necessary crosslinks between the signals. A null modem adapter converts any straight-through wired cable with connectors into a null modem "cross-wired" configuration. This configuration is suitable for many serial PC Read More