Golf Product

Archive for the ‘Computer Hardware’ Category

Server monitoring goes hand in hand with dedicated servers

Many firms which sell online are using dedicated servers as a vital part of their computing infrastructure, a part that is as important as their web domain, their website and the actual products or service they are selling. Server monitoring services are vital for making that these dedicated servers are functioning efficiently.

Dedicated servers are machines for your IT system that you do not have to share. You can run your computer and web hosting systems on them without any other user sharing your server’s resources. People making online payments on websites hosted on dedicated servers will notice the difference compared to a site hosted on a shared server. They will not experience the ‘freezing screen’ situation that you sometimes get with e-commerce websites hosted on shared servers. In these cases the site will not be sufficiently responsive to enable the transaction to go through successfully. There is another situation that sometimes occurs on e-commerce websites that are not hosted on dedicated servers. That is when the transaction will have gone through but the buyer may not be aware that it has because the site has stopped responding. So they will try again so that they end up paying two, three or more times for their purchase. That leaves them with a shock and a problem to sort out further on down the line and is not a good way of creating happy customers. Online merchants who have invested in a dedicated server will benefit from the added assurance of server monitoring services, to alert them of any problems with the service they have bought.

Dedicated servers are an important part of the online retailer’s toolkit because of the security they bring. If you are processing customer orders and handling their financial information you have to be secure. You need to be able to ensure that no-one else can access your stored data and see and download details about your customers. From the customer’s perspective it is reassuring to know that retailers have but measures in place like the use of dedicated servers to ensure that their financial information is being held safely. These kinds of retailers will be in a good position to build a firm customer base and win more customers. One of the worst things that can happen to a firm that sells online is to get their IT systems hacked into and their data stolen with details about their customers bank accounts and credit cards. There will be bad publicity which will reflect badly on the company and put thousands or even millions of people off using them. There may be compensation claims to pay. Server monitoring services go hand in hand with dedicated servers to help reduce these kind of threats.

And there will be the expanse of having to overhaul their IT systems and put protective measures in place. These measures will have to be more rigorous than necessary because the word will be out that their systems are not secure. So the hacker community will be out in force to see what they can get from the unfortunate online retailer. Firms with dedicated servers and server monitoring in place will know they are in a much better position that those with shared servers. Due diligence is important in business, so if something goes wrong, the blame can be deflected from firms that have taken the right precautions in this area.

Server monitoring goes hand in hand with dedicated servers / Author: Jez John

Jez is an expert on servers and server monitoring systems. http://www.cheap-server-monitoring.co.uk/

Important days ahead for future of the Net

THE Net headlines this week have been dominated by Viacom’s Round One victory in its legal battle with Google, owners of YouTube, over copy-right infringement.

A judge rules that Google must hand Vicom a 12,000 Gigabyte database recording every time a YouTube clip was watched and by whom. If you watched any YouTube clip, the details will be included. They will not identify you by name, but you’re IP Address and any login name you used will be there.

The one billion dollar claim against Google is for the copyrighted material that users uploaded to the site. Google say it is the fault of those users and that it complies wit the Law by removing illegal material once notified. However, this excuse is a bit thin given that you do not need to try hard at all to see blantant infringements on the site.

For instance, I am writing this Sunday afternoon (13 July 2008), and already I can watch still warm, if grainy, clips of the yet to finish Nadal vs Federer tennis marathon . Broadcasters’ copyrights count for nothing here.

It could yet be that Viacom will seek to use the data in question to go after those who posted their clips on the site. What do you think? Are these YouTube users performing a helpful public service or should the book be thrown at them?

One way or another, this is an important case. The nature of the Net,. The accessibility of Information and the privacy with which we use of it may all be at stake.

David is a IT Consultant and Website Designer Birmingham providing computer Bits and Bobs, Tips and Tricks, His Website Design Company is here Veritas Webdesigns for further information.

Important days ahead for future of the Net / Author: Web-Architekt

Occupation: Website Designer
David is an IT Consultant and Website Designer based in Birmingham UK – his services in summary; Website Design and Search Engine Optimisation SEO services – Birmingham Website Design Services specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), internet web marketing and web advertising to the Birmingham market place. Jump over to my website and see for yourself. go on you know you want too….”entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”
http://www.veritaswebdesigns.co.uk

Using MSF as a Timing Reference for NTP Servers

Atomic clocks are incredibly expensive and generally they are normally only to be found in large scale physics laboratories such as MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology (Colorado) or the National Physical Laboratory in the UK.

Fortunately, many national laboratories broadcast the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) time from their atomic clocks via a radio transmission.

In the UK the national timing broadcast is called MSF and is broadcast by NPL (National Physical Laboratory) in Cumbria. The MSF broadcast is used by throughout the UK and parts of Europe to synchronise consumer electronic products like wall clocks, clock radios, and wristwatches. In addition, MSF is used for high-level applications such as network time synchronisation utilising NTP.

The time code contains the year, day of year, hour, minute, second, and flags that indicate the status of Daylight Saving Time, leap years, and leap seconds.

MSF operates on a frequency of 60 kHz and carries a time and date code that can be received and decoded by a wide range of readily available radio-controlled clocks and provides a received accuracy should be less than 10 milliseconds (1/100 of a second).

While many NTP servers now use GPS to receive a timing reference, the advantage of using a radio transmission is that a signal can be received indoors (a GPS antenna needs a good view of the sky).

However, the radio signal has a finite range and can be blocked by skyscrapers, mountains and dense conurbations. A radio based NTP server usually consists of a rack-mountable time server, and an antenna, consisting of a ferrite bar inside a plastic enclosure, which receives the radio time and frequency broadcast. The antenna should always be mounted horizontally at a right angle toward the transmission for optimum signal strength.

Similar national timing transmissions are broadcast from other countries in the US the signal is referred to as WWVB and is broadcast by the NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) in Fort Collins, Colorado, other systems are broadcast in Frankfurt, Germany (DCF-77), Japan (JJY) and France (TDF).

Richard N Williams is a technical author and specialist in atomic clocks, telecommunications, NTP and network time synchronisation helping to develop dedicated NTP clocks. Please visit us for more information about an NTP time server or other network time server solutions.

Using MSF as a Timing Reference for NTP Servers / Author: Richard N Williams

Occupation: writer
Richard N Williams is a technical author and a specialist in the telecommunications and network time synchronisation industry helping to develop dedicated time server products. Please visit us for more information about a GPS time server or other NTP server products.
http://www.armagard.co.uk