Are Your Internet Sessions Stale?



The flow of data arrives
in peaks and troughs

By this we don’t mean boring, ‘stale’ is a technical term related to the flow of data.

Data, or anything you do over the internet, doesn’t actually come to your computer in a nice neat flow, it just looks that way. It actually comes in like a wave, but with the peaks and troughs happening so rapidly that you don’t notice.

Now imagine that you have several waves happening at the same time. Sometimes a peak and a trough will meet each other and create a process known as ‘interference‘. Basically, they cancel each other out and nothing happens. The data transfer dies, in effect, which is known as a ‘stale session’.

You’ll know when this happens to you when nothing happens. So the pages you are expecting to see… don’t appear. Nothing happens. It’s easy to fix though, if you click Refresh the process will start again and your pages will appear. Non-technical users are often left scratching their heads wondering why nothing happened first time, but did when they clicked Refresh.

It’s a natural process that will happen to everyone occasionally but if it happens often then there is a solution – use a more sophisticated router.

With IT equipment the difference in price between apparently similar items is often due to the quality of the individual components and the functionality built into them. More sophisticated – and therefore more expensive - routers are likely to have in-built software that balances the data transfers to prevent stale sessions – peaks and troughs meeting each other – from happening. This makes internet experiences faster and less frustrating for users. 

Enhancing Visitor Security



Beware of the dangers of
allowing access to Wi-Fi

If you have visitors to your premises they will sometimes ask if they can use your Wi-Fi. Usually you will agree as you want to help someone else out or not appear rude.

There is a potentially dangerous security flaw with this though. In effect, it’s like giving someone the keys to your house and trusting them not to steal or damage anything.

The source of the risk is what might be on their computer. So if their laptop or tablet has viruses or malware then you have allowed it access to your server. This is particularly risky if the visitor can send emails using your mail server. It is possible that the malware on their device will send itself to everyone on the contact list saved on the server, meaning you have helped spread a dangerous piece of software and probably getting yourself blacklisted as a result.

Removing yourselves from blacklists is technically complex, expensive and time-consuming but the most immediate impact is that until you resolve it, emails you send will go into spam filters, so may never get through.

But in the worst-case scenario you may have allowed malware with criminal intent on to your server and therefore into your systems.

Prevention is much better than cure in this case and there are two potential solutions if you want to continue allow visitor access to your Wi-Fi. If you don’t, then there isn’t an issue so long as you don’t give them your password.

Firstly, if you have a mail server, configure access so that visitors cannot send email from it. They can still use the server to download messages but not send or reply, which prevents your mail server from transmitting any malware which might be contained on their computer. This doesn’t mean they can’t send email when they are at your premises, it means they will have to use their own ISP's webmail facility instead.

The second solution is to have a router with what’s known as a VLAN. This creates an isolated area that visitors can use, which is separated from your systems. So even if their device is infected with something, it cannot gain access to your system because it is fenced off.

The VLAN approach works whether you have a mail server or not. But if you do have a mail server we would suggest also using the first approach, i.e. configuring the mail server to refuse access to visitors so that they have to use webmail.

Leased Lines for Faster Connections



A leased line offers increased
speed when accessing the internet

A standard broadband connection is usually sufficient for most businesses and organisations. But for heavy users or those where continual, reliable internet access is vital, something more robust is needed, such as a leased line.

A leased line is a dedicated broadband connection for your premises. Costs for this have been prohibitive for most users until now but as more superfast cable gets rolled out and more customers sign up to it, costs have started to decrease noticeably. It is now starting to become a viable proposition for more organisations.

A broadband connection can be thought of like a pipe in that only a certain amount of material can go down it at any one time. The more things people try to put down it, the greater the likelihood of it becoming blocked or running slowly.

Most broadband providers share the pipes across multiple customers, perhaps on a 20:1 or 5:1 ratio. What this means is that 20 (or 5) different customers share the same connection. If everyone uses it at the same time then it will be slow. In effect, you have to wait your turn to use the pipe.

Business contracts tend to be at the lower end of the number of users on one connection (perhaps 5:1) whereas domestic contracts are at the higher end, such as 20:1. This is why business contracts cost more than residential contracts.

A leased line is not shared with anyone else. If you have multiple simultaneous users all trying to access an application over the internet at the same time, a leased line can ensure they get a more reliable service at faster speeds. But because it isn’t shared with anyone else, it means you pay a lot more for your connection. Where a typical business broadband connection might cost £30-£50 per month, a leased line might be more like £800 per month.

But over the last 12 months or so we have seen contracts originally costing nearly £800 dropping to under £500, and are likely to continue to fall further. Although still substantially more than a traditional broadband contract, it does start to open up possibilities for organisations that might benefit from it.

Some of the advantages and opportunities that a leased line can offer to organisations include:

• Guaranteed access providing greater security of service and assurance of uptime
• Fewer carriers involved in the process, leading to enhanced Service Level Agreements and a higher level of service
• The ability to roll-out web-based applications to a greater number of users and still provide guaranteed uptime and service levels
• Connecting multiple sites together for seamless networking across multi-site operations (using something known as a LES – LAN Extension Service).

So if you are looking at expanding your online operations or need greater levels of assurance and support in your operations, a leased line may be a possibility for you.

Recent Computer Scam of ‘Significant Risk’



Remain Vigilant & Ensure Virus
Protection & Firewalls are up-to-date

Vigilance is always required when looking after your IT systems. There are always new scams trying to infiltrate your systems and damage them, or even steal from you. 
We regularly have to repair systems which have been affected so we encourage everyone to make sure they have up-to-date protection, but users also have to play their part.

One simple piece of advice is to never open an email with an attachment unless you know exactly who it is from and are expecting it. Be particularly careful of .zip or .exe files. Opening these can unleash a piece of software called a Trojan. Named after the Trojan Horse of Greek mythology, a Trojan needs to be allowed in to your systems but once there it can wreak havoc. One classic access route is the user opening a zipped (.zip) or executable file (.exe). An email with an executable file often looks like it contains a software program so might appear to be offering you something useful.

A cunning trick used by some viruses and Trojans is to send itself to everyone on an infected computer’s contact list. So you might receive an email from someone you recognise and think it is genuine, but it could actually be a mechanism for spreading a Trojan. This is why the advice is to make sure you are expecting the file, rather than merely recognising the name. If in doubt, call the person and ask if they deliberately sent it to you or not, before you open it.

One recent example was ‘cryptolocker’, which was serious enough for the National Crime Agency to issue a ‘significant risk’ alert. Cryptolocker encrypts files on your computer, such as photographs, documents, databases, PowerPoint presentations – anything that might be useful to you – and then issues a ransom notice on your computer, giving you 72 hours to pay up. If you don’t, the encryption key will be deleted which means you will permanently lose access to the files. It’s fiendishly clever but also an absolute nightmare if you get trapped by it.

We’ve written several articles in the past about protection, such as Spam and Viruses, Remote Security and Secure Remote Working, but the key pieces of advice are:

• Make sure you have a high-quality protection system in place with virus protection and firewalls. Speak to a reputable IT support company if you need assistance.
• Keep your protection up-to-date. A good system will do this automatically in the background but you will need to periodically renew it to maintain your protection.
• Keep an offsite back-up and perform it regularly. In the event of being held to ransom by cryptolocker, for example, you could dump the old computer and reload everything you have on it to a new one from your back-up. It needs to be offsite and remote though, as cryptolocker will seek out any drives connected to your computer, such as external hard drives or cloud solutions and also encrypt files found there.
• Exercise sensible precaution as you would do in your own home. Would you let an unexpected visitor into your home without checking their credentials first? You should use the same principles when letting files and data into your computer systems.

What’s the Difference Between ADSL and SDSL?

Broadband Connections affect the speed
in which you send and receive data

Every industry has its jargon and IT is no exception. In this post we want to tell you about two terms used in connection with broadband connections – ADSL and SDSL.

ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line and SDSL means Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line, with the difference related to the speeds for uploading and downloading. Asymmetric has different upload and download speeds, but they are the same with Symmetric. In ADSL, the download speed is several times faster than the upload speed, which makes it more practical for most uses, e.g. viewing internet pages.

An analogy is to think of a major road going into a town or city with a total of 10 lanes; 4 active traffic lanes and a hard shoulder each way. Most people will be going in during the morning and out in the evening, so having the same number of lanes means there will be traffic jams during the morning and again in the evening when commuters leave. If you could have an uneven number of lanes in the morning and evening then you could reduce the jams, i.e. by having more lanes going in during the morning and more coming out in the evening.

ADSL is like having this uneven number of lanes - but only in one direction. So great when everyone is going the same way but not if you need both directions. ADSL is fine for ordinary usage such as the internet at home (mainly downloading) but not so good if you have to upload data to a server frequently, such as you might do with remote workers or a cloud computing arrangement.

So organisations using cloud computing services for vital operations would need an SDSL line but ADSL is fine when there is less need for speed and capacity. SDSL is more expensive which is why ADSL is usually the default option unless requirements indicate otherwise.

There is also a third route – bonded ADSL. This involves merging two ADSL lines together which provides some additional capacity but doesn’t offer the same apparent speed as an SDSL line.

Switch Skype off When Not in Use

Skype can be a really useful way to communicate but it can also slow down your broadband and computing power. Even if you sign out, it will still be running in the background. You might not be able to make calls, but it can still act as a drain.

How do you know if this is happening to you? Follow these simple steps, using the images as a guide:

• Press Alt-Ctrl-Delete together to display the Task Manager.

  

  Open the Task Manager.
• When the Task Manager opens, select the Processes tab. 

  

  Select the Processes Tab on the Task Manager.

• This will display a list of all the active programs currently using your computer. Look for the one called Skype.exe as shown in the image. If there is a figure in the ‘Mem Usage’ column then it is using computing and broadband capacity.

  

  Is Skype.exe displayed?

• The way to prevent this is to close Skype down from the System Tray after you sign out.

  

  Right Click the Mouse & select Quit to close the application.

The System Tray is normally in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and if it has the Skype logo as shown then it is still active in the background, even if you have signed out. If you click on the logo with your right mouse button it will provide a menu from which you can select Quit (as shown).

If you select Quit then Skype will close down completely and stop using processing power in the background. You can check this by displaying the Task Manager again and checking under the Processes Tab that Skype.exe is no longer shown.

Alternative Methods of Delivering IT Services

Ensure you choose the right
type of IT support for your company.

There are two broad approaches to providing IT support and services; Managed Services and 3rd-Party Access.

Managed IT services means that all IT and related services (such as computers, servers, printers, telephony, broadband, website hosting and so on), is supplied and supported by one provider. This can simplify the perception of support as there is only one company to contact for anything IT-related.

Delivery of Managed IT support normally means that the provider will subcontract some or all the services you require to 3rd-parties and then re-sell them under their own name.  You have no access to the company actually providing the support.

The alternative, 3rd-Party Access, is where the contract lies between you and the supplier, such as the broadband or telephony company, but where an IT support company manages it on your behalf.

Managed IT services have their place and we can provide them. But we generally recommend the 3rd-Party Access model because it gives you greater control and transparency, plus it allows the most appropriate supplier and equipment for your individual needs to be used.

A managed services contract means committing yourself to one provider and there are likely to be a multitude of Service Level Agreements between them and their suppliers, any of which can affect your IT.

If you want to know more about the differences and relative advantages of each approach, we've written about the differences in more detail on our website in the article Different IT Support Methods.