Stepbystep (sbs)

What Are The Advantages Of VoIP ?

2007-04-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

Millions of people are walking away from regular phone services and using the new VOIP (Voice Over IP) technology. Why don’t you switch too? Of course, there are both advantages and disadvantages to VOIP. You’ll have to examine these benefits to see if VOIP is right for you.

Advantages of VOIP:
- Cheap prices. The main advantage of VOIP is its price for what it has to offer. Most VOIP companies don’t distinguish between local, long distance, and foreign phone numbers; you simply pay your monthly fee and you’re set. A lot of VOIP plans come with unlimited local and long distance minutes. For example, Vonage has an unlimited plan called “Premium Unlimited” for $24.99 a month. If you ask me, that’s a pretty good deal!

- Computer use. A neat feature and advantage of VOIP is that you can hook it up to your computer and use your computer (or laptop) and microphone as a phone instead of the classic handheld phone. With some extra computer software, you can easily share videos, messages, and documents while you talk with other VOIP users.

- Other features. VOIP goes beyond the features of normal telephony. It includes many unique features that give it a distinct advantage over regular phone technologies, such as free voicemail, free caller ID, conference calls, music-on-hold, and more.

I hope that these advantages of VOIP that I have listed will encourage you to try out VOIP if it looks good to you. By the way, most VOIP companies offer a 30-day money-back guarantee so that you can test the service and find out if you like it or not, so go ahead and try it out.

How Is VoIP Used In Business ?

2007-04-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

Are you a business owner or work at business that is interesting in using VoIP (Voice Over IP)? If so, you are probably wondering how VoIP is used in business. Businesses use VoIP for savings, flexibility, and extra features.

Why Businesses Use VoIP…

- Cost. VoIP is used in business because it is cost effective. Businesses can do a lot of calling in one month and those calls may be long distance or may be calls to another country. At the end of the month, a business might rack up quite a large phone bill. VoIP can save a business a ton of money. For example, Vonage has a plan called “Premium Unlimited” which includes unlimited local and long distance calls for just $24.99 a month.

- Flexibility. With a VoIP phone adapter and a high speed internet connection, business employees can use their VoIP connection anywhere. Customers can call them on the regular number and the business employee can call anywhere without costing the company a fortune.

- Features. The extra features that come with VoIP are yet more reasons why VoIP is used in business. VoIP can be more easily integrated with computer technology since it is digital. Also, VoIP allows a business to securely conference with both audio and video.

I hope you now see a few ways of how VoIP is used in business. In a few years, VoIP is sure to explode and many more residential consumers and businesses will switch to VoIP.

Dallas VoIP Solutions

2007-04-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Although VoIP-like technologies have exists for a few years, only now has Dallas started to embrace VoIP solutions. Experts have estimated that about 3 million US citizens (not just Dallas residents) have purchased the new VoIP solutions. By 2008, that number is supposed to rise to roughly 18 million people.

What is VoIP? VoIP is a way of phone communication, just like regular phone lines. However, it uses high-speed internet lines to transfer the data. Why use high-speed internet lines? First of all, it makes VoIP’s monthly price lower, mostly for users who make a substantial number of long distance and international calls. Plus, it is faster, so it allows extra features that normal phone lines would never be able to handle due to bandwidth limitations.

But there’s one problem. VoIP plans aren’t available in all locations yet. Some people are still looking for VoIP solutions in Dallas. But don’t start worrying; we’ve gathered some of the big VoIP companies and listed them here on this page. It’s easy to check them and see if they offer Dallas availability.
Try these Dallas VoIP Solutions…

- Vonage. Vonage, which may be the largest VoIP company, is probably the best place to start when looking for Dallas VoIP solutions. With plans starting at $14.99, why not?

- SunRocket. Claiming the best value in internet phone services, SunRocket’s plans begin at $9.95 a month. You can also pay $199 annually for the unlimited plan, which equals less than $17 a month.

- Packet8. This company was one of the first large companies to offer a concrete 911 emergency service.

- ViaTalk. With an unlimited plan for $15.95 a month, ViaTalk is a great deal. However, to grab that price on that plan, you have to agree to subscribe for 2 years or more.

I hope that you have found some VoIP solutions in Dallas! I also hope you have found this website helpful!

10 of the most important SEO design tips

2007-03-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

1. Optimise every page on your website

The major search engines are not looking at individual websites and ranking them, they are ranking pages from every website in the world. This means that if your website contains more than one page you should optimise for the specific content that is found on each page.

Optimising each webpage is overlooked by so many websites within Ireland and can be the difference between competing for a highly competitive keyword phrase such as “Irish Hotels” and competing for a much less competitive keyword phrase such as “Hotels in county Offaly ”. After that they can check out the rest of your website that is all about “Irish Hotels”.

2. Pick appropriate keyword phrases

This is the single most important thing to do when it comes to optimising your website for search engines. The keywords that your potential customers type into Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves are the keywords that your site should be using within the specific areas of your webpage (see below; Optimising your Page Titles and Optimising your Content). There are a number of useful keyword research tools available on the web. The most recommended and user-friendly are Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. Both offer trial versions.

3. Optimising your Page Titles

All of the major search engines have 100’s of different algorithms that compute where your webpage should be listed for different keyword searches. Putting your keywords within the Title description (the blue bar you will see at the top of your screen) of your pages is one of the most important SEO techniques and will help your website climb through the rankings and allow your visitors to remember exactly what your page is all about when they save it to their “favourites”.

4. Optimising your Page Content

It is sometimes very difficult to write content for your website. Not only do you need put the information that you want the visitor to see in front of them in an easy-to-read style, you also have to keep in mind the keywords or keyphrases that your page is targeting so that you can rank better within search engines.

There are a number of very useful books that can help you with your online copywriting skills. Karon Theaksons Step-by-Step Copywriting Courses provides very straightforward advice and guidance when it comes to writing page content .

One of the best pieces of advice that I have come across is to write for your visitors and include the keywords and keyphrases as much as makes sense. Read what you written out loud to yourself and a few others. If it sounds stupid… lather, rinse, and repeat.

5. Create an inbound linking strategy

Submitting your site to online directories is a very beneficial way to drive targeted traffic to your website. People will find your listing in a directory and click on the link to go directly to your site.

This not only brings visitors to your website, but it also creates links for search engine “spiders” or “robots” to find your website and index your pages within their results. If your site doesn’t have a link pointing to it on the World Wide Web the search engines will never find it and you will never see any traffic from Google or the other big ones.

6. Descriptively labeling your links and images (aka the anchor text)

This technique is both common sense and good practice. Telling your visitors what the link that they are going to click on allows them to know exactly what they are going to be directed to. Saying “click here” is not enough to help them understand what they're going to find once they click through. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The cool thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can almost always describe the page you're pointing to by using its main keyword phrase which is another one of those many factors search engines that into account when it comes to ranking your web pages.

7. Make sure your site is spider-friendly

Your website may look fantastic. You and your web designer may be talented graphic designers that can make Flash and Javascript dazzle your visitors with a show that would put RiverDance to shame. However, if your website contains Flash and Javascript it’s important to know that search engine spiders can’t read this code (or appreciate the effort you put into the design). The way around this is to provide navigation alternatives to allow the spiders crawl deep within your website and index the web pages within their results.

8. Create Fresh Content

When you are optimizing your website properly you will see a trend. If you are doing something that benefits your websites visitors then the search engines will reward you for it.

Search engines do tend to like websites that create fresh content regardless of the format. If they know any given site is adding new articles on a frequent basis, they will come around often to index it.

Blogs and forums are effective and easy ways of adding new information to your site on a regular basis.

However, if your only purpose of setting up a blog or a forum is for better search engine rankings then there really is no point in doing it. Only add a forum if it contributes something beneficial to your website and if you have the traffic to make it interactive enough for visitors to return to it. And, only add a blog if you have something of interest to say on a regular basis.

9. Do not think that you can trick Search Engines

As noted before, “ If you are doing something that benefits your websites visitors then the search engines will reward you for it”.

If you try to trick the search engines by hiding keyword phrases in your pages by making the text colour the same as the background colour, hiding keyword phrases in tiny font, joining link farms, or any other sneaky practice your sites will be removed from the search engines and it will take you a long time to get back in (and you will also have to spend more time cleaning up your website before they will accept you).

10. Offer something unique

If your website offers something that is unique and interesting to your target market and it is properly optimized (by applying all of the techniques that are listed above) you will not only rank well within the major search engines, you will also get the added benefit of people linking to your website in forums, blogs, and through other websites which will send your site more visitors and create more inbound links which will help it rank higher.

By Barry Fenning

Helping the Search Engines find your site.

2007-03-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, in a land called WWWebdom, there lived a little spider. It was a hungry little spider and it liked to munch up web pages and then keep track of which ones it liked best, so it could tell other people just how good they were.

The little spider never ran out of pages to munch because each page told the spider where to find other yummy pages (links). When lots of pages pointed him to one page, he usually found that page to be very tasty. Also, the more links he found to a specific page, the easier it was to remember it to tell others about.

*Incoming links are important to get your site found and ranked well.

Sometimes people tried to tell the spider which pages they wanted him to try and every so often, he'd check out some of the invitations he received. Usually, those pages weren't attached to any other pages, so the spider would be bored and forget they were there.

*Submitting your site to the search engines doesn't do much good without incoming links.

The spider enjoyed munching all types of pages, but some pages just tasted better than others. When he encountered pages that tried to make him eat a cookie and he refused those. He was on a diet and only ate yummy text.

Sometimes the pages seemed to recreate themselves over and over and they all tasted the same. Blech. Before he knew it, the spider would realize he was full of these repeating pages, so he would just stop and go home. The spider avoided the pages that had session ids all over them and never came back.

*Technical issues like forced cookies and session ID's will prevent your site from being indexed.

Some pages the spider munched on were very sparse. They were filled with fatty images and other things he couldn't eat, like Flash desserts. With only a little text on them, they didn't satisfy his hunger and he wasn't really sure if they tasted good or not. He didn't return to those pages very often.

The little spider loved big meaty pages with lots and lots of words. He really liked the ones that were well spiced with keyword phrases- it was easy to remember those pages and recommend them to his friends when they asked for a specific phrase.

*Get some real text on your pages and slim down on images. Use your targeted keyword phrases naturally throughout the copy.

Some pages were TOO spicy and the spider didn't like that at all. Especially when he hit a whole pocket of spice that he hadn't expected to be there. He also didn't like ordering one page, but being served another. Whenever he found out that was happening, he never returned to that page.

*Using tricks like keyword stuffing and cloaking can get your site banned by the search engines.

He loved the pages that were always changing a little- they were his favorite. He'd stop by to snack on those pages often. He liked the pages that stayed the same too- he just didn't stop by as often. He preferred to spend his time sampling new or different pages.

*Search engines like fresh, new content. If your content hasn't changed, there's no reason for the spider to index the page again.

While he didn't mind the extra side dishes of table code, CSS, and javascript, he never ate them. He just pushed it all to one side and left it there. He really appreciated the pages that kept the side dishes in separate files so that he didn't have to deal with them.

*Move your CSS and Javascripts to external files.

If he was really stuffed, sometimes he'd just order up the page titles and see what was available, making notes about the flavor of each page and whether he'd like to come back later when he was hungry and eat the whole thing.

*Partial indexing is typically nothing to worry about. Eventually, the page will be indexed, if there are no technical issues.

The spider had several spider friends who all liked the same thing and over time, there were more and more. They hoped one day, to eat every single page in WWWebdom and worked hard to make it come true. The End. ;-)

By Scottie Clayborn

Pay Per Click and Google Adsense How To Build Your Website Profits With Targeted Traffic

2007-03-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

With pay per click and Google Adsense you can build your affiliate marketing business with targeted traffic. This has become a very effective way to earn online profits. And if your website is rich with original quality content and you want to earn more profit, you can use Google Adsense to drive your profits.

Why Use Pay Per Click To Promote Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and one of the most effective ways to earn profits online. Online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates. Many affiliate programs pay up to 75% commission.

There are many different methods on how the merchant can compensate the affiliate for their services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply are a great way to make cash using these types of services.

Here are the 3 types of compensation with affiliate programs:

1. Pay-per-click

2. Pay-per-lead

3. Pay-per-sale

The pay per click method is the method most preferred by many affiliates, for their site?s visitor would only have to visit the advertiser?s site for them to receive money if the visitor clicks on one of the ads. In general this is how Google AdSense works. The traffic is targeted with the right type of original content on the webmasters website.

The other two methods, (pay per lead) and (pay per sale) on the other hand, are sometimes preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their customers or if the visitor would actually purchase their products or services.

Building large profits with affiliate marketing programs does not depend so much on the compensation method as it does on the targeted traffic generated to your site. A website that can attract more targeted visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

How Does Google Adsense Relate To Pay Per Click?

Google Adsense is actually an affiliate marketing program in its own right. With Google Adsense, Google acts as the intermediary for the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide text ads pertaining to their products and services. These ads, which are actually links to the advertiser?s website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by people who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

You can find some aspects that are similar with Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs and you can also see a lot of differences. With Google Adsense, all the person has to do is put some code on their website and Google takes care of just about everything else.

The ads that Google places on your site will generally be targeted and relevant to the content of your site. This is an advantage for both you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be interested with the products or services that are advertised.

Google Adsense is a program that compensates the affiliate on a pay-per-click basis. The advertiser pays Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google then forwards this amount to you with checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are sent monthly after the affiliate has reached a total of $100. Google Adsense helps with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from certain ads.

Affiliate marketing programs and pay per click programs such as Google Adsense work very well, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant?s side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites with original targeted content.

With this combination of profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate programs, you could earn some decent income.

By Dean Shainin
deans-knowledgebase.com

Blogger AdSense

2007-03-07T05:46:00.000-08:00

Every body has some reason, why become a blogger. Like myself, I became a blogger because I want to share my opinion with somebody else. I can write and post my point of view about everything that amuses me. Beside that I can get chance to get some money too as a blogger. We can make our blog revenue with Google as an AdSense publisher. The following basic guidelines and term of service (TOS) rules:

1.The blog must be functional.

Make sure your link work and your blog available to visitors without difficulty.

2.The blog must supported language.

Indonesian Language currently not supported. The Supported language is English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Spanish or Chinese.

3.Don't put competing ads.

You can't run other ads derived from search engine, or text ads that look like substantially similar to AdWord.

4.The blog must not illegal Content

Google prohibited the blog contains any pornographic, hate related, violent, cracking and hacking.

5.The blog must be professional.

Blog not only tell the story about your son and daughter, the content of the blog must contain content of some substance.

So, make some money from your blog, and remember don?t bomb the reader with ads, make the ads look nice to see and don't make blog just for the money, make a good content too.

By Bunyamin Najmi
bunyaminnajmi.blogspot.com

Flood Your Web Site With Traffic For FREE

2007-03-07T05:29:00.000-08:00

How To Get Higher Rankings In The Search Engines And Flood Your Web Site With Traffic For FREEHaving a high ranking in Yahoo, Google and MSN is definitely going to get you more traffic to your web site.

One of the best free ways to get higher rankings in the search engines is to write articles and submit them to article directories.

Webmasters looking for content for their websites and e-zine publishers looking for content for their e-zines can now go to these article directories to find articles they can use for free.

When they use your article they must keep the resource box in the article. The resource box contains a little information about you, including a link to your web site. If 100 people pick-up your article and use it on their website or e-zine, you now have 100 links back to your web site.

Back links to your web site will naturally increase your ranking in the search engines. A high ranking in the search engine will increase traffic to your web site.

The problem most people have with this technique is the actual writing of the article. This should not stop you. Below are some tips.

An article contains three parts: Title, Body and Resource Box. It should contain useful content and be between 400-800 words.

The title must be attention grabbing and let the reader know what the article's about. 10% of effort is put into writing the story and 90% is put into the title.

Assume the reader knows nothing about the topic. The body of the article must answer questions a reader would have about the topic.

The resource box is at the end of the article. It should be short, 3-5 lines max. It should contain some information about you -- name, what you do, and a link to your website. You can separate the resource box from the article by a single row of a character such as the asterisk (*********).

If you still don't want to write the articles yourself, you can hire someone to write them for you. You can get writers to bid on your job at www.Elance.com or www.RentACoder.com . It will cost you around $8-$12 for professionally written articles that you can publish as your own.

Before you submit your articles to any directories you must do some basic formatting. Different directories will have preferences on formatting so check with them individually for that. You can download a free text formatter from www.TextPad.com .

You should submit at least two articles a week and submit to many directories. Some article directories to submit to are:

www.GoArticles.com

www.ArticleCity.com

www.EzineArticles.com

www.ArticleCentral.com

www.IdeaMarketers.com

www.Articlez.com

You can do a search on www.google.com for "article directories" to find more.

Submitting articles to article directories is one of the best ways to get back links to your website. Back links will increase your search engine rankings and bring more traffic to your web site. The best part, it's FREE.

Start writing!

By Laura Hite

safetytechnology.com

Win easily $$$

2007-02-27T07:39:00.000-08:00

Here is a truthful company which gives you money by making a bar in the top of your desktop
هذه شركة تمنحكم فرصة ربح المال من خلال شريط يوضع على سطح المكتب لحاسوبك

You can win easily just follow these steps
فقط إتبع الخطوات التالية وبكل سهولة

First of all click HERE أولا إضغط هنا
Then follow the photos تم إتبع الصور

Fill in the form إملىء الخانات التالية

ِCheck your Email توجه إلى بريدك الإلكتروني

Then ثم

After installation you will get this bar بعد التنصيب تحصل على هذا الشريط

Whenever you are online run the bar عليكم بتشغيل الشريط كلما كنتم تتصفحون الأنترنت

Pay Per Click Is It for You

2007-02-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

Pay Per Click Is It for You

What is Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click Advertising is an online advertising format that enables you to place your advertisements at or near the top of search engines for your keywords based on the amount you bid. Imagine that you have built a great website with relevant keywords, excellent keyword density, perfect anchor text, and good links back to your site. You now look on the search engines for your keywords and your site doesn't show up? What do you do?

Your best bet is to advertise. You could advertise on television, on the radio, and in news papers but that could be beyond your budget and it might not be cost effective. An alternative could be Pay Per Click Advertising.

How to Use Pay Per Click Advertising

You must follow the guidelines for each of the PPC search engines to format your ads correctly. That is not difficult to do but it does limit how many words and what kind of words you may use. It requires you to make your ad well written with short headlines and limited ad content.

Here are recommendations for making good PPC ads:

Use relevant keywords in your title. You only get a second or two to catch the searchers attention.

Write your ad specifically for the target audience. They are the people you want to click through and take some kind of action. You do not want people clicking your ad that have no interest in what you are "selling", because they will just cost you money with no hope of return on your investment.

Point the ad to a specific page on your site where the information is relevant to the searcher. Otherwise they will hit the back key and move on to another site. Many PPC advertisers just send their viewers to their home page and wonder why they get poor results. You want the page they land on to get them to take some kind of action. That may be to buy something, sign up for your newsletter, or make a yes or no decision.

Do not use all capitalizations or use exclamation points in your title. The search engines specifically state not to do this. They use human editors and your ad can be rejected.

Try to get somewhere in the top five positions so your ad will show up on the first page of the buyers' search. Often times there is a great difference in the cost between the first position and the second position and between the second position and third position.

After you have gained experience with PPC ads, start experimenting with changes to your ads and test them to see if you can get a better return. The big PPC adsvertisers split test their ads by rotating them to see if small changes in the wording affect the click throughs.

Where to advertise

The two top places to advertise are Google Adwords and Yahoo's Overture. MSN appears to be gearing up for a PPC system similar to Google and Yahoo. Right now they get their ads from Yahoo.

The Dark Side of PPC

There is, unfortunately, a problem going on with the Pay Per Click search engines. It is called PPC fraud. PPC fraud can break your bank account.

PPC fraud is when someone or some group decides to click on your ad multiple times with no intention except to cost you money. These can be in the hundreds or thousands of clicks. They typically use click bots that mimic human click throughs from various IP Addresses making it hard for the search engines to recognize what is happening.

Who would do this? It could be a competitor trying to bankrupt you. It could be an individual or groups trying to make money from systems similar to Google Adsense. It could be internet vandals just doing it for kicks.

It doesn't matter who is doing it. It matters that you can find yourself in a heap of financial trouble.

What you should do is monitor your ads. You should do that anyway to determine how your campaign is going i.e. are you getting the return on investment you need, and you should do it for ad testing. If you sense that click fraud is happening, immediately suspend your campaign and contact your PPC engine and let them know about it. You may be able to get your PPC engine to refund the fraudulent amounts.

Google has stated in their annual report that they may have to refund PPC fraud and they don't know how much it will cost them.

This is not meant to scare you away from using PPC. It is meant to make you aware that it is happening so that you can approach it prudently.

Conclusion

Pay Per Click when done right can be an effective and low cost means to draw live paying customers to your web pages and be a strong tool in your arsenal for making money on the internet.

Written by Nathan Dickman

How To Win The War of Pay Per Click Advertising

2007-02-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

How To Win The War of Pay Per Click Advertising

Do you know what is the most important question among most internet marketers specially newbie’s. It’s "How to get highly targeted visitors to there site?" Believe me, I know it because I received this question from my subscribers almost daily.

Well, earlier when I started my internet business I also faced this problem. I tried safe-lists, I bought so called guaranteed visitors, even I blast my ad to 10 million (Yes, you are right. It’s 10 million) sites but couldn’t make a single sale.

Than I changed my strategies and get this problem solved by finding a right solution, and that is "Pay Per Click Advertising". Pay Per Click Advertising is a great solution for traffic worries which directs a highly targeted traffic to my site. Yesterday only I got around 280 visitors and I made 24 sales.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a "per-click" basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are pros and cons. Where there are flowers there are thorns also. what you have to do is to protect yourself from thorns and let only the fragrance touch your inner sense. I am going to tell you advantages the Pay Per Click Advertising.

One of the greatest advantages of PPC is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you're up and running. It doesn't demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier - and more effective - the process will be.

Now came the very point in your mind that what is bad about Pay Per Click Advertising. The downside is that PPC is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position - which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period. For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 10000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.

Since when you are doing the business for earning money and you are losing a heavy part of it then you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a monthly basis.

The only way to assess your success in this field is monitoring, not only monitoring but careful monitoring. You can easily analyze it by visitor behavior which can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and pay-per-click campaign is a must for this.

Written by Raamakant S

Auto-Update Good or Bad

2007-02-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

Auto-Update Good or Bad

In this paper I would like to bring light to an area of security that most people do not think about or maybe have blind trust in this aspect of security. What I am talking about is software with Auto Update functions.Most of us think about windows when you hear the term "auto-update" but there are a lot of different kinds of software that has auto-updates and some times it is enabled without your knowledge. Now auto-updates features can be very helpful to non technical users and when it comes to windows or other OS's it is very important to have your auto updates on. The problems with auto-updates starts when the software makers use auto-update functions to push updates in an unsecured manor. I have herd reports from many sources (one was from www.sploitcast.com) that some games are using peer based networks for updates, kind of like a torrent with the update files coming from other clients computers. This issue here is that if someone with malicious intent decided to inject malicious code into the update they could build a very large bot-net or just about any other kind of exploit to a large group of computers. Let's now look at how this kind of attack could happen. Let's say I was to download a copy of game-x and go onto an online gaming community.I would need to get updates from the game server to play the game online and this is where the auto update issues can start to happen. There are a lot of game makers now that push updates to your games without you knowing and a lot of them use peer networks to push the updates. Sometimes these companies use servers that belong to third parties that they have limited control over. So the problem that comes up is who is monitoring what is pushed out to the clients and is the process of updating secure. If someone was able to figure out how the update process worked in the peer to peer schema and wanted to infect other users with malicious code would there be a way to identify it and how would you stop this.

Now one way to stop this kind of attack would be to have the vendors code digitally singed so that any other code would not be accepted (this is how some of the game companies do there updates). Now you might thing "I have a firewall so this dose not affect me" but if your computer makes the connections directly a sever that routes your connections to the other clients then you now have an established session to that computer and the firewall now trusts this connection till it is ended. Once the session is open it is a link from them to you with out your firewall getting involved (this statement applies to NAT firewalls and any other firewall that allows established connects). One way to see what's going on is to run "Netstat" from your windows command line. This will show you the established connections to your computer and also show you the ports and protocols being used. Another way to see what is happening is to run a protocol sniffer like Ethereal/WireShark and look at the packet traffic to see what your computer is doing. You will be surprise about what a lot of your different programs send back to the vendors server and most of the time you have agreed to this release of your personal information by clicking the agree button when you installed the software. The safest thing to do is not use programs that do not need and if you feel you need to use a cretin game or application make sure it is not a warez copy as a lot of warez software is loaded with Trojans (& it is steeling). I feel it's just a matter of time before the gaming community see a attach similar to this one and when it happens we are at the mercy of the vendors and anti-virus companies to make a fix. Hopefully with newer versions of windows(Vista) we will see better security but when you think about it the true responsibility of computer security is the owner of the computer. We need to make sure we all educate our less technical friends,family, and users.

By Brian Wilson anti-hacker.info

To read this article in Arabic click HERE لقراءة هذه المقالة بالعربية أنقرهنا

Firewalls Hardware vs. Software for Home

2007-02-19T07:06:00.000-08:00

Firewalls Hardware vs. Software for Home users

We should all understand the need for a firewall for our home network. Firewalls help protect our computers from viruses, worms, Trojans, & hackers. What we may not think about is the difference between hardware firewalls and software firewalls. Here are some examples of software firewalls: Windows XP firewall, Zone Alarm, Norton Internet Security, Kerio Firewall, Check Point, and there are many others. Now here are some examples of (consumer grade) hardware firewalls: Linksys, D-link, Netgear, Iogear, Sonicwall, Netscreen, and many others. The cost of a home firewall can vary but the estimated cost are anywhere from $30 - $150 USD for ether a hardware or software firewall. So lets now take a closer look at the differences between the too.

Software Firewalls

The idea behind a software firewall is to protect your computer from harm by checking incoming and outgoing traffic for known Malware. Normally you have a training process to setup the software firewall by "burning it in". The software firewall will alert you to all kinds of traffic you may or may not know that is coming and going from your computer to the internet. It will probably ask you if you want to let this traffic though. Once you get past the training phase you are setup and ready to surf. Some of the user advantages for a software firewall are how easy setup is and updates are similar to antivirus software. Also a lot of software firewalls are built into antivirus programs so you night already have one running now. Some of the down sides to this kind of firewall are that the software vendors may not tell you about vulnerabilities and there are always going to be chances that without updates your computer can still be at risk. Just keep in mind that you should treat your software firewall the same as your antivirus products and keep it updated.

Hardware Firewalls

Hardware firewalls are normally safer because they are separate devices than your computer and any dangerous traffic get stopped before it hits your computer. Also if for some reason your network gets attacked your firewall takes the burden of the attack and not you're PC. Other pro's to the hardware firewall is that you can use it to protect all the computers on your network and this can save money from not having to load the software on all your computers. Hardware firewalls are also normally better because they are made to just protect your network and only serve this proposes unlike software firewalls that are just programs to run on your computer and can be disabled from other software and Malware.

Final Review

Let's now go over what we have covered and discussed in this article. Software firewalls are great and can help protect your PC. Keep in mind software firewalls are only as good as there last update. Hardware firewalls provide awesome protection and can as protect the whole network. The best thing to do is use both hardware & Software firewalls if you can. We recommend using the hardware firewall to protect the network and also using the software firewall to protect the PCs. Keep in mind that most of your antivirus software comes with some kind of software firewall protection and Windows XP (Home & Pro) has a software firewall option. There are also free software firewalls you can download from the internet. No matter how you chose to protect your network just use some kind of firewall and always use antivirus software.

By Brian Wilson anti-hacker.info

To read this article in Arabic click HERE لقراءة هذه المقالة بالعربية أنقرهنا

P2P Networks & Your Businesses Risks

2007-02-19T06:43:00.000-08:00

Peer 2 Peer Networks & Your Businesses Risks

As most of us had heard of p2p networks and services like Kazza and limewire
what we don't think about is that businesses are responsible for the activities on there networks. When an employee, vendor, or customer is on your businesses network do you know what they are doing? Well for businesses like Hotels, Internet Café's, or Public Access Points you are at highest risk for users to abuse you network. You will need to restrict cretin activities or you will find you ISP terminating your service or worse getting sued from the RIAA or MPAA. For the rest of the business owners you might want to understand the risks of lax network security and the true cost you could pay. Employees might want to surf the internet when they are at break or though out the day. This can be fine if you have web filtering. Some issues faced with web surfing at work is that if an employee downloads or installs peer 2 peer software. The biggest problem with most peer 2 peer programs that 80%+ of the contend hosted in the networks is stolen copyrighted content or viruses. This means if the owners of the content notice the download your business is liable for the theft. Other issues are viruses and Trojan programs that might compromise your Businesses data.

Understanding the issues is the first step to preventing your business from liability. Most businesses that have avoided this issue are implementing Web filters, Network Security, and employee training. Some the of things you can do is make sure you have a firewall installed and understand the ports that peer 2 peer software uses and then you are on your way to blocking the software. Here is a list of the most popular P2P programs and networks. Hotels, internet cafes, public wireless spots, etc. should block these ports to avoid any copyright issues with the use of their internet access.

* BearShare, Mopheus, Limewire, Gnutella
6346 and 6347 TCP, UDP
* Kazza, Grokster
1214 TCP, UDP
* Autonp, BeNapster
6699 TCP
* Napster, Duskter, Gnap
6700 TCP
* Inapster, Jnap, WinMX
6701 TCP
* Edonkey
4661, 4662, 4665 TCP, UDP
* iMesh
4329 TCP

The above listed is just some of the most common peer 2 peer network software & ports.It is always recommended to consult you networking vendor to insure you have the most up to date software and hardware to protect you business. In addition to port blocking there are other things can do to help you businesses network. Impose network policies for all users and keep all you network protection software up to date (Anti-virus, Spyware,Ad blockers). Provide Training to you users to explain the risks of the internet. One of he biggest risks to business networks are the users and the only way to insure network safety is to make sure the users fully understand network policies. Once your users have an understanding of the risks online and fully understand there responsibilities as a network user. You are that much closer to a safe digital work place. As always most local network consulting firms can provide what I have discussed and you may need to take additional step to meet the needs of your business. With HIPPA and Sorbian Oxley there is no reason to risk liability on your company's networks. As we see in the media every day more and more businesses have been learning the hard way about corporate liabilities.

By Brian Wilson anti-hacker.info

To read this article in Arabic click HERE لقراءة هذه المقالة بالعربية أنقرهنا

Antivirus & Trojan Protection?

2007-02-19T06:26:00.000-08:00

Antivirus & Trojan Protection?

In today's online environment it's important to know what risks lie ahead at each click. This paper will describe so of the malicious kinds of attacks your Home/Office PC may encounter online. Now I'm sure we have all heard of Viruses online and some of you have heard of Trojans.But there are more than just these few pieces of software out there waiting for you. The internet is a bastion of all kinds of malicious software or "MalWare". Some examples are Spyware,Scanners/Bots, Trojans, Viruses/Worms, and many other types of MalWare that exploits your PC. Now let's take a closer look at some of the above mentioned MalWare. "Spyware" What is it and how do I find out if my PC has it? Well this type of MalWare is basically any software that records your online actively without your knowledge and then reports to back to another party. Now Spyware is hard to find because a lot of programs act like Spyware. But the best thing to do is get Spyware removal software. Some fine examples of Spyware removal software are Spybot Search and Destroy 1.3 another good program is Adware SE.

Now let's look at "Scanners/Bots". Scanners/Bots are programs that try to find victims via port/IP scanning. The best way to prevent from getting infected by this kind of MalWare is to install a Firewall. There are many kinds of firewalls and some are software based and others are Hardware. You can buy a hardware firewall for around $50.00 USD or you can download a software Firewall. Some examples of software firewalls are Zone Alarm another one is Tiny Personal Firewall. Tiny Personal Firewall & Zone Alarm basic are free for home use.

"Trojans" Trojans can be the worse of MalWare. Trojans are sometimes confused with viruses but Trojans are "Program that neither replicates or copies itself, but does damage or compromises the security of the computer" This is just one of many definitions of a Trojan. A lot of Trojans have Key loggers built into them and can record all keys you press and them report them back to a hacker. This is bad because they will be able to use the key logger to find out your passwords, Credit card numbers, and other sensitive informational about you. The best defiance against Trojans is antivirus software but Most Antivirus software won't find all variants of Trojans so again a firewall is needed.

"Virus/Worms" Are malicious programs that replicates itself and may cause damage to a computer system by attacking or attaching itself to boot information, another program or a document that uses macros. The best defiance against this kind of MalWare is to install Antivirus Software. Now that we have reviewed some of the threats you face online lets go over our best defiance. Now just as a heads up there is no 100% way to protect you PC from online attacks because new Viruses, Trojans, and other MalWare are made daily. But you should be pretty safe in you have the following installed on your computer. Online must have software: Antivirus Software, Spyware Software, and Some kind of Firewall. With these steps in place you should be a lot safer then the average user and always never open an e-mail or file attachment from someone you don't know. I hope this paper has help and be safe online.

By Brian Wilson anti-hacker.info

To read this article in Arabic click HERE لقراءة هذه المقالة بالعربية أنقرهنا

How Cable Modems Work

2007-02-17T03:24:00.000-08:00

How Cable Modems Work

Basic explanation of DOCSIS

So you have a broadband connection at home/work and are wondering how it all works.Well I hope to explain to you how it works on a low-tech level so you will have a better understanding of how your connection works. Broadband services from cable companies or Multiple Service Operator's (MSO's) are normally provided via cable modems and 90% of the cable modems are using DOCSIS (Data over Cable Service Interface Specification). So let's now look at what DOCSIS is and what is means. DOCSIS defines interface requirements for cable modems involved in high-speed data distribution over cable television system networks (definition from cablelabs.com). With DOCSIS comes the different versions (1.0, 1.1, 2.0, & soon 3.0) and the limits for each version. We are not too worried with the versions and limits between the versions as consumers since we just want speed and security. But the important thing about DOCSIS is that it's a standard that protects the consumer and vendors by forcing interoperability and keep the cost of equipment down. If the modems where proprietary then the consumers would have to pay a very high price for the modem or would be force to lease them from the MSO's. Most MSO's will allow you to use just about any cable modem that is DOCSIS certified. Now not all MSO's will do this since they have to support all the modems on the plant with firmware upgrades and other issue with support but most of your well known modems should be supported.

Now for the CMTS & Node

Cable modems communicate with a device called a cable modem termination syste(CMTS). The CMTS is a router that talks to all the cable modems and routes there traffic to the internet or the MOS's backbone. There are a few different vendors in the CMTS market but the most recognized is Cisco Systems. Cable modes are typically grouped into regional nodes. A node is most likely your subdivision but could but a smaller or lager area the MSO uses to support all you services. The node is a fiber to RF converter which allows the MOS to send services to you area via fiber up to the point of you local service area and them the services are sent over coax. The size of the node and number of modem customers in that node can make some difference in the speeds of you modem. With cable modems the node is you local access point and the more users the less bandwidth available for all. Most MSO's over subscribe nodes but try to make sure there is always 50% available bandwidth at peak hours. What this means is that if you are in a heavily loaded node and everyone is downloading files you service can slow some. With how competitive the ISP business is most MSO's will try to not over subscribe nodes to much with out adding more nodes or splitting then.

Security on the Network

Other things to watch out for is the security of the node. Make sure other subscribers in your node are not able to see you computer and its traffic. This security issue is normally handled by encryption on the modems traffic to the CMTS. Most ISP's use BPI+ encryption to protect you traffic but you should always use a hardware firewall/router off of any broadband connection. To test the security of the node you can open your windows network places and look to see if any unknown shares are listed. If there is no encryption in the node and you're on the same subnet you might be able to see other user's network shares. This is bad if you have pictures or other sensitive data you do not want others to see. Other things to know are that most MSO's will block ports to your computer network. This is for both there business goals and your protection. MSO's typically block NetBIOS, SMTP, port 80, and a lot of other virus ports (business accounts may not have port filters). The port blocking is done mostly to protect the customers from viruses and worms that travel quickly over broadband connections.

Signal Levels and Splitters

Let's now look at the signal level needed to keep your cable modem online and surfing. Most cable modems have a signal range that they need to communicate to the CMTS. The signal levels can differ from vendor to vendor but as a rule of thumb most modems work well from RX -10dbv to +10dbv and TX 40dbv to 56dbv. A lot of modem vendors provide an informational webpage or diagnostic page you can connect too on the modem to see the messages from the modem and it's levels. The diagnostic page's IP is different from modem to modem but if you lookup your vendors modem specifications you will be able to see if you modem has this diagnostic page available. Other things to keep in mind is that your cable modem should be on its own coax line from the cable audit box outside or from the main feed you get from the MSO. It's not a good idea to have your modem on a coax line with a lot of splitters due to each splitter has at least 3.5dbv or loss. And if you have to use a splitter make sure you read the throughput ratings on the splitter it should be at least 5-1000 MHz pass though. I hope this basic look at cable modems has helped you better understand how it al works and if you would like to find out more information about DOCSIS, CMTS's, or cable modems try to use Google.

By Brian Wilson anti-hacker.info

To read this article in Arabic click HERE لقراءة هذه المقالة بالعربية أنقرهنا

Online VoIP Services Fun

2007-02-14T02:57:00.000-08:00

هذه من بين المقالات الرائعة لخبير الشبكات

Brian Wilson

حول كيفية جعل شخصين يتحاوران عبر الهاتف من طرف ثالث-الترجمة إلى العربية في الأسفل

Online VoIP Services Fun

by Slimjim100

Disclaimer : This paper and the topics covered in the paper are just for educational purposes and should not be tried on a network without permission from owner of the network/service you plan on testing. I hold no responsibility for any actions or damage that might accrue if you try anything explained in this paper.

Ok we all have heard of Vonage and the other VoIP providers that will give you unlimited Phone services over your broadband connection using your regular old phone. But there are other services that are similar but have a few extra fun options. Let's cover one of the services I have started playing with www.voipbuster.com. Now for legitimate use it is a very good provider and I have enjoyed calling friends all over the world. Now we move on to cover the dark side of online VoIP providers. One think to think about is where the provider is located (what country). This is important because there are different laws for different countries and if you use the service to harass people (which is really lame) you could find yourself in real trouble. The kind of fun I am talking about is Spoofing Caller ID and also call bridging. This is nothing new but I just want to write a quick paper on it to get the word out. I was informed of VoIPbuster.com from a friend of mine so a lot of the credit for this paper needs to go out to Toxic from www.csthis.com. Now that I have given credit to the person that spiked my interest with this kind of VoIP Phrecking I can get down to business.

Direct or Call Bridging is the act of connecting two PSTN numbers from a 3rd party. Basically this function allows you to use software to call friends by having the VoIP service call your PSTN number 1 st and after the call on your phone goes off hook it will auto dial the remote end PSTN number. Since both land line phones where called neither one of the landline phones will be billed for the call. The cool thing is that called ID is sent in both directions from the numbers called so your phone is ringing with your remote numbers caller ID, when you pick the line up the other end starts ringing and they see your caller ID so there is no trace of the 3rd party connection other than the 1 st line getting a auto ringing when it goes off hook to the remote line. This service used legitimately is very useful and cool. But if you decide to use this for fun then you can force anyone to call anyone else and they will have no idea what is happening. To the end caller it looks like they are getting called from the other line. This is fun to do when you are around to see their faces of the people you are forcing to call each other. Now for the dark side if you call someone's cell phone and keep them online and call it again while spoofing the number to match there cell phone it should force you into there voicemail. The trick here is that some cell providers do not set passwords to voicemail if it is called from it's own number (even if you are prompted for a password a lot of systems have default passwords that never get changed). Other fun things to do with caller ID are spoofing you outbound ID to show something funny (like "BellSouth"). The idea here is that the sky is the limit since the PSTN is permanently hooked to the internet. I am sure we will see a lot of hacks coming to exploit the fact the internet and phone infrastructure are now merging .

Spoofing Phone Cards is another trick you can use to have fun. Again there are legitimate reasons to have this kind of card. You perhaps need to call someone to give them an anonymous tip but wanted to make sure your call was not traced (the card provider could still release the call logs to law enforcement). One of the more popular Spoofing card providers is www.spoofcard.com. Now with the different spoofing card providers they offer different features like: the ability to change what someone sees on their caller ID display when they receive a phone call, make calls truly private, ability to record calls, web based control panels, and ability to change your voice on the call .

Sniffing VoIP calls is another trick that can be done. Now there are a few good reasons for Sniffing VoIP calls like to trouble shoot VoIP routing issues or to record you own calls. Now there is also many bad thing that can come out of sniffing VoIP like the fact if you are on a open WiFi AP other can be recoding your calls and even rerouting them. There are many kinds of sniffers out on the internet free but the only one I trust and endorse would have to be Cain & Able from www.oxid.it. With Cain & Able you can do a lot of different kinds of Sniffing to include capturing of Passwords, RPD sessions, SSH, Telnet, and VoIP calls. Cain can do a lot more than just that but I recommend going to there site to read more. As everything move to the internet there will be many helpful advanced in the way we live but keep in mind that with every new convenience there are risks associated with it .

By Brian Wilson anti-hacker.info

To read this article in Arabic click HERE لقراءة هذه المقالة بالعربية أنقرهنا

Routing Protocols Explained

2007-02-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

Routing Protocols Explained

Preface:

In this paper I will explain many different routing protocols and give some basic details and features about them. This paper in no way should be considered a source of full detail about any of the listed protocols. For detailed information about routing protocols I would suggest looking into the Request For Comments (RFC) for that protocol, goggling them, or maybe visiting different vendor's websites such as Cisco, Juniper, or Bay networks. Most vendors' web sites have detailed explanations about all the Protocols there equipments support features. Before you can understand routing protocol you will have to have a basic understanding or IP networks, Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM), Network Topologies (bus, star, Hub, ect..), and the OSI model. If you are not familiar with any of the above subjects you may want to read up and learn about them before moving into routing protocols. Routing protocols are what makes the internet work by moving traffic from network to network. With out routing protocols the internet could not work because networks would just be separate LANs with no connection to others LANs. The internet in basic terms is just a lot of LANs wired together to make a huge WAN.

Protocol types:

Distance Vector: distance vector routing is a type of routing protocol that discovers routes on interconnected networks. The Distance Vector routing algorithm is the based on the Bellman-Ford algorithm. Examples of distance-vector routing protocols include RIP (Routing Information Protocol), Cisco's IGRP (Internet Gateway Routing Protocol) try Google to see all the different protocols in the Distance Vector family. Distance Vector protocols are suitable for smaller networks as many of the protocols in this family aren't scaleable in lager complex networks as they are limited. The main limit to Distance Vector Protocols is there method that requires each router simply inform its neighbors of its routing table. This routing table update to other members is bandwidth intensive to lager networks.

RIP (Routing Information Protocol):

Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is one of the first protocols to be used in networking and is classified as a distance vector routing protocol. RIP uses broadcast User Datagram Protocol (UDP) data packets to exchange routing information. There are two versions RIP V1 & V2. RIP Version 1 is the original version and has many limitations. The metric that RIP uses to rate the value of different routes is hop count. The hop count metric works by assigning static routes with a value of 0 and all other routers values are set by the number of hops (up to 15) that the data must travel though to get to an end point. RIP Version 2 supports plain text and MD5 authentication, route summarization, classless inter-domain routing (CIDR), variable-length subnet masks (VLSMs), Multicast support. Some vendors support other non-standard features for RIP but be careful as many vendor centric features are not compatible in a mixed vendor network.

IGRP (Inter Gateway Routing Protocol):

Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) is a distance vector routing protocol which is a proprietary and invented by Cisco. It is used by routers to exchange routing data within an autonomous system (AS). IGRP supports multiple metrics for routes, including bandwidth, load, delay and MTU. This improves reliability over RIP because IGRP uses advanced metrics to compare two routes into a combined route. The two routes together are combined into a single metric, using a formula which can be adjusted via command line. The maximum hop count of IGRP is 255 which is an improvement over RIPs 15 hop max. Keep in mind that IGRP is a Cisco proprietary protocol and can not be used in a mixed vendor network.

Link State: Link State routing protocol requires each router (peer) to maintain at least a partial map of the network. When a network link changes state (up to down, or vice versa), a notification, called a link state advertisement (LSA) is flooded throughout the network. All the routers note the change, and recompute their routes accordingly. This method is more reliable, easier to debug and less bandwidth-intensive than Distance-Vector. It is also more complex and more compute- and memory-intensive. Link state routing protocols are found in many lager networks and provide Scalable solutions for more complex networks.

OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)

Open shortest path first (OSPF) is a link-state routing protocol that calls for the sending of link- state advertisements (LSAs) to all other routers within the same hierarchical area orautonomous system (AS). An AS can be divided into a number of areas, which are groups of contiguous networks and attached hosts. Information on attached interfaces, metrics used, and other variables are included in OSPF LSAs. As OSPF routers accumulate link-state information, they use the SPF algorithm to calculate the shortest path to each node.

(IS-IS) Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System

Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) is a routing protocol developed by the ISO and is natively an ISO Connectionless Network Service or CLNS protocol so it does not use IP to carry routing information messages. It uses OSI protocols to deliver its packets and establish its adjacencies. IS-IS has been enhanced to carry IP (Internet Protocol) and this is called Integrated IS-IS. Integrated IS-IS supports VLSM and converges rapidly. It is also scalable to support very large networks and is the key protocol in many larger ISP's.

Hybrid: Hybrid routing Protocols are a combination or both Distance Vector and Link state protocols and only one protocol fits into this field. EIGRP is Cisco Systems Proprietary protocol based on their original IGRP. For more information on Hybrid Protocols look below to the section on "EIGRP".

EIGRP (Enhanced Inter Gateway Routing Protocol)

Enhanced Inter Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is Cisco Systems Proprietary protocol based on their original IGRP. EIGRP is a balanced hybrid IP routing protocol, with optimizations to minimize both the routing instability incurred after topology changes, as well as the use of bandwidth and processing power in the router. EIGRP has Protocol-Dependent Modules that can deal with AppleTalk and IPX as well as IP. The advantage with this is that only one routing process need run instead of a routing process for each of the protocols. EIGRP provides loop-free operation and almost instant simultaneous synchronization of routers.

Inter-Autonomous System: Inter-Autonomous System routing protocols are designed to connect lager networks or Autonomous Systems (AS) together and allow for muitiple Autonomous Systems to network. One example for the need of an inter-autonomous system protocol is to connect two or more Internet Service Providers (ISP) together so there customer can connect to each other. Without getting in to too much detail both "Link State & Distance Vector" protocols are considered intra-autonomous system protocols as they are designed to just route traffic in a singal AS. Inter-Autonomous System protocols main goal is to propergate the intra-autonomous system information between different autonomous systems.

BGP4 (Border Gateway Protocol Version 4)

Border Gateway Protocol is the backbone routing protocol for most of the internet and allows for peering and carrier networks to connect. BGP is explained as a path vector protocol. With BGP the policy or attributes for making the actual route selections among the interconnected autonomous systems is based on Weight ,Local preference, Multi-exit discriminator, Origin, AS path, Next hop, & Community. BGP information is propagated through the network by exchanges of BGP messages (4 types: Open, Update, Notification, & Keep Alive) between peers. Another key feature to BGP is that is supports Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR) with the support of CIDR BGP can reduce the size of the Internet routing tables. BGP neighbors exchange full routing information when the TCP (port 179) connection between neighbors is first established. When changes to the routing table accrue, the BGP routers send to their neighbors only those routes that have changed. BGP routers do not send periodic routing updates and advertise only the optimal paths to a destination.

By Brian Wilson anti-hacker.info

To read this article in Arabic click HERE لقراءة هذه المقالة بالعربية أنقرهنا