What is “Open Source” or the layman’s guide to getting your software for nothing and saving “cloud” costs.

Lets get a grounding before we start, you don’t buy or own software, you are paying for a licence to use it. Whether it comes in a smart box with a CD and activation code or you download it from the Internet, its never yours, you are just licencing it. The licence will tell you how you can use it, on what, how many and who and why. The normal model is that you pay an amount and then you can use that software in accordance with the terms and conditions usually called a EULA or End User Licence Agreement. In paying the fee you agree to the EULA.

There has been a push to make software licencing more and more expensive. This is to push small business to the cloud where they pay monthly and usually end up paying three times as much over a five year period compared to having the software working in-house. The big companies such as Microsoft and Sage think you don’t have an alternative.

There are alternatives to Sage, Microsoft SQL, Exchange, ACT! etc, and that is to use open source software in house on your own hardware. Its what Unilever, Tesco, Amazon, Google and many more do, so read on. or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8fHgx9mE5U  To see it explained using Lego.

“free” as in freedom, not free as in beer.

Some companies don’t charge for the software licence, a famous one for this is AVG and their model is that some people will go on to purchase a licence, so they give it away as a temptation or loss-leader.

There is another category, the Open Source licence. There are many variations but essentially they will grant you a licence to use, modify and distribute the software at zero cost. Basically you obtain it for nothing and you are own your own. You install it, you configure it and you solve any problems. Well that’s fine if you are an IT company but what if you aren’t and you want to use the software but don’t have a server or anyone to help?

The answer is simple, you pay someone to do it for you. They will charge you a monthly amount to load the software on their servers, give you access and help you use it. So Open Source doesn’t mean free in this case. This means you are free to use it and change it but it may cost you money. We prefer the term free licence.

How to save 82% on your software costs

The difference is quite simple. Lets say you want an e-mail server. You can buy a server and load Microsoft Server and Exchange software on it. This will cost you the software at around £5,000 including licences for ten users. Every user you add will cost you more. The charge for installing that would be around £300 and you will pay monthly for support from the supplier of around £500 a year. That’s a total cost of ownership (TCO) of £7,800 for five years use. I am ignoring hardware costs.

If you decide that you want to use e-mail but on the Internet with the same facilities the you will pay £3,000 but it might not be Microsoft, it might be Zimbra, which works the same, does the same but its open source. You are paying the people at Zimbra to do it all for you.

If you decide to install Zimbra on your own server then this is where we come in. You pay the same for the installation and support as the first example but the licensing cost is zero, so the TCO is now £1,425 because the large lump that went to Microsoft has disappeared.

You are happier as you pay less and get the same results and your supplier is happier because they take all of the £1,425 rather than a tiny part of £7,800. You have got the same result but have spent only 18% of the Microsoft solution. The other bonus is the hardware costs are reduced as Zimbra needs less computing oomph than Microsoft Exchange does.

There are plenty of Open Source alternatives

We call these clear alternatives. Your needs may be simple such as writing a letter and preparing a cash flow. It doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you end up with a letter and a cash flow. You can use any of the programs below to achieve this:

Microsoft Office Home & Small business   £229.00             TCO over 5 years £229

Microsoft Office 365                                         £10 a month    TCO over 5 years £600

Ability Office                                                      £30                      TCO over 5 years £30

OpenOffice and Libre office                          £0                        TCO over 5 years £0

The results are the same but Ability is just like using Microsoft but OpenOffice and Libre Office have their own menus.

But this stuff’s worthless!

A lot of people say that “anything free is worth what you pay for it”. A lot more say that other Office suites are no use or don’t work. So here are the simple facts; For most people this software will meet all of their needs.

Nobody uses this stuff!

For software that “nobody in their right mind would use” open source is doing very well indeed. 70% of all web servers are run using the Open Source Apache web server. Millions of web sites use the open source PHP web scripting languages. The Linux operating system, Mozilla Firefox, PERL (Web scripting language) and PNG (graphics file format) are all examples of very popular software that is based on open source.

A report by the Standish Group (from 2008) states that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers. Open source has some very impressive backers. IBM – whose software department is bigger than Microsoft – fully endorses the Linux operating system (open source). Other large companies such as HP and Novell are backers as well. Each of these companies invest billions in this technology.

The term “open source” software is used by some people to mean more or less the same category as free software. It is not exactly the same class of software: they accept some licenses that we consider too restrictive, and there are free software licenses they have not accepted. However, the differences in extension of the category are small: nearly all free software is open source, and nearly all open source software is zero cost.

Why zero cost?

If you want to establish yourself in the market place then give your licences away, people will take the software, modify it, improve it and find out the problems, at no cost to you. You can then implement the changes on your paid-for versions at a fraction of what it would have cost. In our earlier example there are 500,000,000 people using Zimbra.

So why isn’t it more plentiful?

Most computer installers are self trained or certified by Microsoft, so they have a one size fits all mentality. Big business uses Microsoft but more of them such as Amazon & Google use a variation of a product called UNIX. This is an open source operating systems which was developed by academics. Over the years it has grown, most mobile phones use it instead of Windows, Routers and every Apple item uses it. It’s technical and you cant just get on and use it, unless someone makes it friendly as Apple has done, but in it’s native form which is best for servers, its as friendly as a rabid, cornered, rat.

Anyone can install Windows badly but only the technically proficient can install UNIX. A server is a server and most users don’t go near it or work on it, as long as it does the job of delivering mail and data they don’t really care. For a computer person to migrate from Windows to UNIX would take years, we have had discussions with IT companies in Suffolk and they don’t have the capability or the need to supply UNIX because they can keep selling Microsoft solutions. We do both Microsoft and UNIX so we have the choice based on Clients needs, but then we don’t have sales people and don’t ignore the needs of small business.

Clear Alternatives

There are many alternatives but we have focussed on the market leaders. All our UNIX servers come pre-installed. All you pay for is the implementation, usually £300 and a support charge of £225 annually per module. Here is a list of popular software products and the equivalent that is pre-installed on all the servers we supply.

File server                               Samba

Sage                                          Front  Accounting ERP

ACT!                                           Sugar CRM

Microsoft SQL                         MySQL , PostGRES

Microsoft IIs server                Apache

DropBox                                    OwnCloud

Microsoft Exchange                Zimbra, SoGo

Veritas backup                        PCBackup

Microsoft Project                    OpenProject

Microsoft Dynamics ERP       OpenERP

Anyone who knows me well knows that I:

1. like Lists,
2. like unfunny jokes,
3. have a unique sense of humour
4. have T-shirts made to order with slogans I like.

I thought I would share with you geeky jokes that I have collected over time. Some aren’t funny enough therefore don’t make it on my list, all the others have passed the chuckle-groan test. If I get either response it goes on my list, otherwise I find myself trying to explain it.

Maybe this is why the other seven cmx guys always ask “its not one of your jokes is it” When I ask them if they have a moment.

I have copied and seen some of these so I do not claim any credit whatsoever, or blame.

Have you heard of CDO? It’s like OCD but the letters are in the right order – as they should be!

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. It’s a hardware problem.

A SEO couple had twins. For the first time they were happy with duplicate content.

Why is it that programmers always confuse Halloween with Christmas?
Because 31 OCT = 25 DEC

Why do they call it hyper text?
Too much JAVA.

Why was the JavaScript developer sad?
Because he didn’t Node how to Express himself

In order to understand recursion you must first understand recursion.

Why do Java developers wear glasses? Because they can’t C#

What do you call 8 hobbits?
A hobbyte

Why did the developer go broke?
Because he used up all his cache

Why did the geek add body { padding-top: 1000px; } to his Facebook profile?
He wanted to keep a low profile.

An SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, pub, tavern, public house, Irish pub, drinks, beer, alcohol

I would tell you a UDP joke, but you might not get it.

8 bytes walk into a bar, the bartenders asks “What will it be?”
One of them says, “Make us a double.”

Two bytes meet. The first byte asks, “Are you ill?”
The second byte replies, “No, just feeling a bit off.”

These two strings walk into a bar and sit down. The bartender says, “So what’ll it be?”
The first string says, “I think I’ll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^CjfdLk jk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy~~owmc63^Dz x.xvcu”
“Please excuse my friend,” the second string says, “He isn’t null-terminated.”

“Knock, knock. Who’s there?”
very long pause… “Java.”

If you put a million monkeys on a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java program. The rest of them will write Perl programs.

There’s a band called 1023MB. They haven’t had any gigs yet.

There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

What goes “Pieces of seven. Pieces of seven.”? A Parroty error.

Here is an oldie but a goodie.  When a total n00b joins the team you start talking about dropped packets, give them a floor tile puller and tell them to go find the missing packets in the data center and put them back in queue.

An object-oriented version of COBOL has just been released – it’s called ADD 1 TO COBOL.

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.

What did the one Object say to the other Object? “I do not approve of your methods!”

What did the one Object say to the other Object? “Oh, so you think you’re in a Class of your own?”

What did the one Object say to the other Object? “So, what did you inherit?”

What do you call a sub-net of Mac products with class-less I.P addresses? Apple C.I.D.R

A DHCP packet stands on the street corner and says hello hello hello.

DNS is the root of all problems

A SQL statement walks in a restaurant and sees two tables then ask if he can join them.

A DHCP packet walks in a bar asks for a beer, waiter says ok but I’ll need it back in an hour.

A multicast packet walks into a bar, and then leaves out all the doors and windows at once.

An OSPF packet walks in a bar, asks for a beer waiter says “here just don’t leave the area with it”

There is a helicopter flying over Washington thick fog comes in they can’t see. They have some VIP passengers, and there running low on fuel. A clearing in the fog appears in it there is a high-rise building. They pull up close to it; co pilot writes on a piece of paper where are we? A Small group of people gather around, with a small whiteboard. They draw in a helicopter.

The pilot then takes off, about five minutes later they land just as the fuel runs out. The co pilot asks the pilot how did you do that. Pilot easy the people at that building there answer was totally correct, but totally useless, so I knew that it was the Microsoft support building and from there airport is 2 miles east.

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

“House” for instance, is feminine: “la casa.”

“Pencil,” however, is masculine: “el lapiz.”

A student asked, “What gender is ‘computer’?”

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether “computer” should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

The men’s group decided that “computer” should definitely be of the feminine gender (“la computadora”), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is impossible to understand for everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval;

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women’s group concluded that computers should be masculine (“el computador”), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem;

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer you could have gotten a better model.

How a fluffy happy bunny can turn evil or how Microsoft’s best intentions can wipe your machine

I meet a lot of people who are only happy to slag off anything Microsoft produce without giving it a real chance.  I was the last to move over to Windows 8 and I knew I was going to hate it, I now love it, but I have turned it in to a Windows 7 look alike. There I would have stayed telling everyone that its not the OS its the way it’s setup, I remember doing the same for 2000, XP, Vista, Windows7 – never Millenium edition, hated that one. However I am going to join in and give Windows 8 a good kick.

Every operating system has been hated before it’s accepted and Windows 8 is no different. There are two people at CMX who loved it from the start but they are now testing Windows 9 for Microsoft but only one of them knew about this dangerous item that I am now going to tell you about.

“Factory reset” is known by everyone, and feared at the same time. If Vodafone ask you to do one you either lie and say you’ve done it or dread doing it. Well imagne they described it as the “fluffy Bunnykins button”, You wouldn’t be frightened but it would change what it is about to do would it, soon you would have a fear of rabbits – Leporiphobia, in case you wondered.

This is what Microsoft have just done. There is an optio to either “refresh” or “reset” your PC. This is Microsoft trying to be helpful and guarantee that you don’t need people like me and the techies at cmx. If you want to resell your machine you can reset or refresh it. You can make it all like new but this is what refresh does according to Microsoft:

“How to refresh, reset or restore your PC 

What is the Point of Social Media, Anyway?

The world used to revolve round Yellow Pages and newspaper advertising. If you had a shop it was “passing trade”. The problem now is that virtually every business has become “invisible”. No one goes to the High Streets, its all charity shops and bars now anyway and the Yellow pages is as relevant to business as an Agatha Christie novel.

The only way is mail, e-mail, telephone and cold calling, however, these are beyond most businesses, either from cost or revulsion.

So how do you become “UN-invisible”? Well its something we don’t offer so I feel I can talk about it! Its the wonder of Social Media.

Everyone is raving about the benefits of social media. It’s presented as the “be all and end all” of business interaction. Anyone worth a grain of salt in the business world has a wealth of social media accounts and the impressive connection numbers to go with each.

You’ve probably played along, creating the keyword rich social media profile pages and adding interactive buttons to your blog. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are checked on an hourly basis in the hopes of seeing the new friends, followers, and connections everyone talks about. Each check provides disappointing results as there are no new connections to be found. You slowly start to wonder what the point to social media is anyway.

Rest assured that social media can take your business to new levels. You just need to revamp your approach!

Start by recognising that the key to social media lies in the name itself. In order to generate a response from your social media efforts, you need to be social with others.

Think of it as a real life conversation you’d have with a colleague, potential client, or business partner. In order for the spark to be established you must first form a bond with this person. Whether it is shared interest in a new product unveiling or the latest industry hot gossip, you must find common ground. Seek out these types of connections online and get the conversation started. That common interest is uncovered through comments, posts, and e-mail conversations with individuals you wish to make a connection with.

Take the time to read what others are saying and make a comment, just as you would with a real-life conversation. Create a relevant blog post based on industry hot topics and share it on the appropriate social media sites. Make a valiant effort to be a part of the conversation. This will place your name and brand inside a particular industry. As a result these individuals will begin to learn who you are. The more they learn, the more respect and trust you will earn.

Another great key to social media is understanding how each site works. Just like the various levels of your marketing plan, each social media site serves a different purpose. Twitter and LinkedIn are great destinations for sharing ideas and providing feedback on the ideas of others. Facebook and Instagram serve to humanise your business, placing a familiar face with an unfamiliar product or service. This information will help you fine tune your marketing plan, ensuring your target market audience is being reached.

 In order to shine on social media you need to be, well, social! but that’s not that easy.

Like any marketing plan you have to have, well, a plan. You need to know where, how when, and what. The other thing you need is the skill to write things. It’s easy for me, I have been writing articles for years and with my own specialised sense of humour its just a matter of sitting down and writing something relevant. You also need to keep your ear to the ground. So we have the where for us, its, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and our blog. They are all linked together, I use buffer to make sure I post once and use buffer to repeat my message, there are others that do the same job. Buffer posts for us four times a day at times that I think will be least obtrusive. The when is easy. I post four posts a day, two blogs a week and do an e-mail shot once a fortnight. The what is the hardest, I trawl all the trade news e-mail’s, newspapers and listen to clients and the other people at CMX. I then just write a post, an article or I combine the two, posting about an upcoming blog item.

It’s time consuming but no one ever increased their market share by doing nothing, that’s the route to invisibility. I also network a lot. I do BNI in Ipswich and 4N in Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Colchester, my face is well worn on many welcome mats!

So now you know all the answers but you still aren’t going to do it are you? Its too much to put together and you don’t have the skill sets maybe? Well I would like to recommend a friend I met through business networking and I have got to know here blogging and media skills quite well. Its the first time I have ever recommended someone in my blog but I would like to recommend Sam Brook of Suffolk Social Media.

She is young, enthusiastic and makes a living by making people like you “Get it done” for Social media and blogging. The costs start at £59.50 which is worth it just for the knowledge and kick-start you will get. To find out more click here.

You wont find fame and fortune overnight, if you do let me know how, but with steady work it will grow and grow, you will become an expert in your field and you will have to start somewhere – unless you and your business want to remain invisible. As a good friend of mine often quotes, “If you want to do something you will, if you don’t you will find an excuse”. What’s your excuse? I hope you don’t have one.

Join in a Twitter conversation. Make a thought-provoking Facebook status update. Praise someone on a well-written blog article. Before long you will begin to see what the point of social media is after all!

10 powerful presentation tips The odds are that you’re going to wind up making a presentation, either in person, hosting a video conference or webinar sometime in the near future. With a limited amount of screen real estate to work with and varying device screen sizes that your audience will be using, it’s more important than ever that you make a great first impression. So, are you ready for your close up? It is crucial for you as the speaker to be able to establish confidence and credibility with your audience in order to hold their attention, especially on a video conference. Think about it—they don’t even have to worry about looking rude if they want to leave; if they don’t like you, they can just turn off their device. Luckily we’ve compiled 10 tips for simple and powerful body language improvement that you can follow to help build trust nonverbally with your audience. These are aimed for using the smaller (or wider? screen but they apply to personal appearances too)

Tip 1: Check your body language (before you wreck your body language).Are you sitting slouched over? Are your arms crossed? Do you appear approachable? Those are all questions that your audience asks themselves when they see you for the first time. They are looking for subtle physical cues to inform how they are going to listen to you or interact with you. If you open up your posture and appear relaxed and friendly, your audience will subconsciously mirror that behavior and be more accepting of what you’re going to say.

Tip 2: Create positive eye contact, not the creepy kind. We all know that there’s a clear distinction between “creepy” eye contact and positive eye contact. Your audience is going to be staring directly at your face for an extended period of time, so make sure that your expression isn’t too intense and try to smile with your eyes, or just relax your face and pretend like you’re talking with a friend. This will put your audience at ease, and they will find themselves smiling back at their screens. Like yawning, it’s contagious.

Tip 3: Use microexpressions to add animation.No need to maintain a blank poker face when talking on a video conference or webinar. In fact, your audience will probably appreciate you having animation as it shows them that you are passionate about your topic or empathetic to their problem.That being said, before you turn on your webcam to hundreds of (hopefully) intent listeners, take a few minutes and preview yourself in the video viewer. Do you raise your eyebrows when you’re surprised? Do you furrow your brows when you’re confused? Being aware of these microexpressions can help you shape your audience’s initial impressions of you while projecting self-confidence on camera.

Tip 4: Decide what to wear and what not to wear.It’s difficult to listen to someone or even take them seriously when they are wearing a sloppily tied bow tie or ridiculously tight clothes. You find yourself distracted and focusing on the person’s appearance instead of their message. The same goes for your audience. Make sure you have selected an outfit that is culturally appropriate for the audience you are addressing. Try wearing form fitting, professional clothes that make you feel good and colors that you know will compliment your overall appearance on camera. (Red is the hardest color to produce on video.) That small level of self-comfort will translate on screen in a big way to your audience. The more at ease you look, the more confident you will appear to people—and that goes a long way towards building credibility.

Tip 5: Know your frame game. A typical phrase used in television is to ask “What’s my frame?” It’s a way for an actor or director to understand how the camera is going to be framing up their shot. As you are your own active cameraman, you’re going to have to take the responsibility to ask “What’s my frame?” before your audience even sees you. Are you in a professional setting where you feel relaxed and ready to talk? Is your chair at the optimum height for your audience to see you? Is your webcam pointed directly at you? Is the lighting around you unflattering? These are all small things that you can adjust so that you feel ready and don’t have any last-minute scrambling, which your audience might interpret as you not being ready or not caring about their time.

Tip 6: Keep your gestures within view. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who liked to talk with their hands? While it can be a fun way to illustrate your point (or a not-so-fun way to put out an eye), it can also be a giant distraction for your audience. In a video conference, you don’t have a lot of space for gestures, and wild or large hand movements that may work in live environments might make you look erratic or completely detract from what you are trying to say. Keep your movements controlled and on-camera at all times. Be assertive with your movements without being harsh and try to keep the movement as natural as possible. Looking crazy or nervous on a video conference using fast or unnatural gestures could be interpreted by your audience as bring unprepared.

Tip 7: Sit up straight, like you’ve always been told.Do you ever find yourself hunching over to look in to your camera? Well, your audience sees that too, only it looks like extreme slouching to them. Good posture is a subtle nonverbal cue that your audience will pick up on as an indication of poise. The more open and erect your posture on camera, the more confidence you are going to project to those watching you. If you look assured of yourself and your presence on camera, your audience will trust that you know what you’re talking about.

Tip 8: Know your stuff.This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s worth repeating if it will help you build credibility and lead to a stellar first impression with your audience. Have you rehearsed your presentation? Do you know your topic inside and out? Do you know who you are talking to? Are there any cultural nuances that you should be aware of with your audience? Asking yourself these types of questions beforehand can help you avoid embarrassing pitfalls which could annoy or even offend your audience. Knowing your subject matter will also allow you keep your head up instead of buried in notes. That will give the impression of self-assuredness and intelligence—two very good things when trying to build trust and make connections with new people on a video conference.

Tip 9: Vary your vocal pitch (but not too much).The inflection of your voice, even before you get into the meat of your presentation, has the power to influence the way others will see you. Before you start your video conference, allow your voice to relax into its optimal pitch. Do some vocal warms ups, practice how you are going to say hello or even just practice the first few lines of your pitch. This will help you maintain a more even and relaxed tone when meeting your audience for the first time. Try to keep your vocal inflection varied but not all over the place. It will keep your tone interesting. Sounding confident and prepared will help establish you as a thought leader in your audience’s eyes.

Tip 10: Get familiar with your good side. It sounds funny, but do you know your “good side?” Being aware of your strengths will go a long way to establishing credibility with an audience who are going to be making a snap judgment of you based on what they see on a webcam. The  audience is literally taking you at face value when they first meet you on a video conference. Understanding how you look on camera and what angles work for you is an easy way to show your audience that you know what you’re doing and that they should listen to you.

Lights, camera, your turn! Closing that big deal or presenting to an executive board can be stressful, but using these simple yet effective tips can help you to exude self-confidence and build credibility with your audience.

Here is a guide to why no one has any real control over the broad band performance they get but also a little tale of how we doubled the broadband and wireless performance at one site.

When it comes to broadband you get what you are given. Everyone is offered the service of zillions of Gigabytes for a few pence per week but reality really delivers.  Its also difficult to squeeze any significant extra performance, even if you follow some of the websites. It’s a bit like the myth of £200 Goldplated HDMI leads, they don’t work any better than a £2.50 cable, ask my why and I will tell you.

The further away from the excjhange then the slower the broadband will be, have a graph.

So if you leive near the exchange, which can anything from a large brick building with Openreach vans to a small brick building tucked away in larger villages You will get a good fast broodband signal. You can see how fast it tails off and at around 3km its getting bad. Remember it’s not how the bird flies but how far the cable travels. In the case we are quoting later the crow would fly 3 km but the cable snakes a 6.2km route to the property and through some pretty ropey cables and connectors.

Sp distance is a factor, If I am sitting nect to you and you shout my name its easy to hear but the further away I go then the fainter your shout, so that is signal strength. The other factor is signal to noise ratio. If my ear is 2cm from your mouth then I will hear your shout quite well. If I move across a crowded bar ten metres away, then I would be pretty pushed to hear you over the heavy metal music that happen to be playing, so you slow down what you are saying, it’s the Englishman talking to a foreigner effect. Whereas in a wood at night no problem. This is the signal to noise ratio, no noise the ratio is high, loads of noise it gets quite low. This is measured in dB or decibels, the figures are confusing so we wont really go there.

So the stronger the signal and the lower the noise the better and clearer what comes out, in Broadband terms, the faster the signals, notice the plural?

There are two types of signal, Upstream and Downstream. The down stream is what the exchange sends to you, upstream is what you send to the exchange. They work at different speeds because you send “I want Google” by typing it in, you type the URL http://google.co.uk, 19 charcters and you get back a a screenfull for example Wikipedia is over 28,000 and google is about 2000, BBC news is around 3,000. From this you can see that you want to send less than you get back. There are exceptions which I will talk about later.

As a result the download speed is more than the upload speed and as nearly all lines go through BT they dont give you any more upload speed than they have to.

How does this all get sorted out for my home speed?  

Your router “talks” to the exchange, they hold a “Can you her me and how well?” conversation. They start high and gradually drop the speed until the signal is clear between them, this can take ten days and is known as the training period.

One of the measures is the Signal to Noise Ratio, I mentioned this earlier with the crowded room. BT sets a limit of 6dB, TalkTalk run a little higher at 9dB. It doesn’t matter the method but when the router reports the SNR ratio as 6dB back to the exchange the speed change stops and that’s what you get, and the higher the down speed the higher the up speed. The chances are that if you get 2Mbps down you will get 0.5Mbps up. If its 1Mbps then you will get 0.256Mbps. Don’t worry about the units its about how many characters per second you get.

How we fooled the exchange to go faster

As you have guessed by now, if you have been following the blog, we are geeks, but we are unusal in that we can explain things in English. We know that ALL routers run on UNIX. This is a system that has been about for years and virtually runs the Internet, all Apple products, Android phones and probably your TV but most medium to small IT companies avoid it because it’s too technical for them.

So we take a router, reprogram it so that when it sees a poor signal at 12dB it doesn’t tell the exchange that figure it says, yep 6dB all is well, the exchange being trusting says ” OK time to fix the speed” and sends it faster than it would do otherwise. The risk is that the signal will get swamped and drop out, only it doesn’t.

We have been able to take a broadband router with a speed of 1.25/0.256 Mbps and get the speed up to 2.6/448 Mbps which makes Youtube and iPlayer work at HD resolution with any buffering or delays.

You can’t do this to any router, you need one that has ADSL configuration and allows you to change the programming. We found one at around £200. And there was an added bonus.

Really powerfull wireless signals.

In Ameraic everything is bigger, houses, ranches, everything so If you have a big house and a large “yard” or garden to us Brits you need a good signal from your wireless broadband. In Europe apparently we all sit in each others lap sowe can have less signal, according to Brussels EU-Rule 2005/513/EC. limits the output power to 100 mW but US routers go up to 400mW which gives you a better range. There have been experiments that have upped the power to 1,500,000mW and achieved a 50Km wirelsss signal.

So we just told the router it was now in the US of A and we wanted 100% power and it then covered an area of 2 acres rather than three rooms. We haven’t tried it any further but we have removed two repeaters.

While we are on the subject of wireless different devices work differently. Normal laptops have a small aerial the size of a 1p. We like the T series of Lenovo they are built the way a laptop should be built, with the best that technology can offer. For example the T series have twin aerials running down each side of the screen, That’s why the work better and cost more.

Also on that topic we setup a small experiment at a marina, we took a small UNIX computer called a Raspberry pie, attached a decent aerial and a wireless device and we were able to get a signal that phones and laptops couldn’t get. We then took this signal and re-broadcast it so that every device on the boat, phones, laptops etc. could have broadband even though the marine had limited to one single device per boat. We could have over 200 sharing the signal. There are marine devices to do this for around £700, we reckon we could supply the same thing for £200-£350. Interested? works for caravans and anywhere where there is a week WiFi and limited to one device.

This is a follow on from last weeks article “To BYOD or Not to BYOD, that is the question – maybe”

First of all what is BYOD? Obviously we have run out of three letter abbreviations so we are rapidly moving on to four or more.

BYOD is simply Bring Your Own Device, this is anything you take in to work, namely Laptops Tablets and Smartphones and other electronic devices that can communicate with your infra structure.

You may not think that anyone brings in their own device but neary everone has a smartphone and some companies allow or even encourage employees to buy their own tablet or laptop and use them for work and play.

What are the risks? Is it an accident waiting to happen?

If you are diligent you will have a secure building, fire policy, alarms, CCTV, Firewalls on your router, secure network, signing in and out book, Health and Safety policy but anyone who comes in with a device is inside your “Fortress”, not outside trying to come in.

From an IT point of view we have complex passwords, firewalls, routing tables. These are to make sure that no one can access your data by hacking in, well clearly in many cases of the big banks and stores it fails but at least they try, so they wont get a £500,000 fine for breaking the data protection laws, how about your company.

You should have a BYOD policy to protect you and your company, its usually like wills, backups and intruder alarms, they all become important after the event.

Here is a list of the top eleven threats.

Risks Are Both Simple And Complex

Threats to the enterprise posed by an employee-owned mobile device can be as complex as a sophisticated malware attack designed to snoop on an employee’s browsing activity or as simple as a lost phone in a taxi. The threats are forcing security teams to introduce new policies to reduce the risk. Enforcing them without impacting productivity is a balancing act. Experts say the first step is to understand the perceived risks and weigh them against the company’s security posture.

11. Jailbreaking and rooted devices

Jailbreaking removes the limitations imposed by the device maker, often eliminating restrictions designed to improve security of the devices. Rooting gives the device owner administrator-level permissions, enabling them to install and run apps that could be potentially malicious in nature. Often the employee who demands the latest and best technology may also be technical enough to jailbreak or root their device. Easily available Tools have helped make this easier and now it can be done with a few mouse clicks.

10. The Greeks are inside!

That might have been the call in ancient Troy but its never heard, or anything like it in an office. Maybe it should be updated to “The Geeks”. Every device that comes into your premises is a potential threat. They may have cheap or free anti-virus which isn’t up to the standard you use. They may have undetected networking viruses or other malware which is just itching to jump into your network and spread its deadly disease throughout. Cryptolocker, the ransomeware data encrypter, comes in through an e-mail and spreads all over a network making data useless unless a ransom is paid and usually when discovered it’s too late. The key is vigilance and preparation

9. Restrictions can be broken

Employees can find and use a workaround to tie into company resources. Restricting devices from accessing the network might make you feel safe but certain mobile apps can enable access controls or at the very least enable the device to access company e-mail, calendar items and contacts

8. Vulnerability

There is a risk that can expose company data by failing to update the software and these are usually just to improve security. A further complication is the update method for some devices. Apple pushes out software updates to all iPhone users, but Android devices make the user, carrier and manufacturer responsible for updates, which can leave known vulnerabilities available for quite some time. In addition, you have no control over the quality of apps so there could be software errors in third-party applications running on the device

7. Wireless networking

Most devices are configured to find and try to connect to any wireless networking signal to access the Internet. While most businesses provide secure access points for guests, open wireless points can put device owners at risk of man-in-the-middle attacks and other threats that enable an attacker to snoop on their activity.

6. E-mail

If the device owner fails to implement a PIN code to lock the device, anything that falls into the wrong hands can give an unauthorised person unlimited access to e-mail and data until the device is reported lost and the data is wiped. Some organisations are implementing policies to make users sign in every time they access their e-mail using their device.

5. Adware, Spyware

Many easily available add-ons and applications collect as much information as possible about the user on the device in an effort to sell the data to advertising networks. A mobile application is considered Adware or Spyware by security vendors when it collects data without requesting the owner’s permission. Some apps also install aggressive ad-driven search engines on the device to send users to specific advertiser web sites.

4. Too Many Permissions

Google, Apple and Microsoft have restrictions that force mobile application makers to request permission to access resources, such as the camera and contacts but most users usually fail to read the small print and grant permission during the install process. The wrong permissions could expose contacts, e-mail addresses and device location data to unscrupulous people.

3. Cloud-Based Storage Services

Dropbox and other remote storage services known as “the cloud” but in reality it’s a fancy name for just using the Internet to store data elsewhere which can lead to data leakage. These are used to store data as a backup or to share and if you fail to put restrictions on sensitive data or fail to have an enforcement mechanism restricting the use of mobile cloud storage apps there could be a problem. If a company doesn’t provide an approved storage solution, technically savvy users might bypass any security controls altogether. In addition to Dropbox, Google, Apple and Microsoft have cloud-based storage capabilities aimed at consumers and anyone can stick a server on the network and sell space without any regulations or checks.

2. Mobile Malware increasing

There is a steady increase in malware targeting mobile. The bulk of the threat is made up of SMS text messaging Trojans targeted at consumers, but enterprises are not immune. Security firm Kaspersky Lab recently identified Red October, a targeted attack campaign that had a mobile malware component. Zeus and SpyEye are banking Trojans that attempt to take advantage of a victim’s mobile device.

1. Lost Or Stolen Devices

Lost or stolen devices are the biggest risk if you allow employees to connect their personally owned device to the company network. It is possible to implement ways to remotely wipe any corporate data, such as e-mail and contacts, from a lost device. The response from employees who don’t want to give their employer unrestricted access to their device has prompted companies to take a closer look at containerisation. By containerising business data on the device, IT teams can have the ability to selectively wipe corporate data if the device is lost or stolen.

A policy for BYOD?

To ensure that you cover all these points it is necessary to have a BYOD policy in place and ask every employee, as nearly everyone will want to use your network, to agree and sign. Most wireless routers will allow users to connect using their device and you hand out the access rights when you give them the password. You do have password protected wireless don’t you? The safe way is to grant them access after they have signed the policy and note their devices code so they can’t give it to anyone else. Its like everything in your business, you need to stay in control otherwise others will control you.

You need to have a company wide anti-virus policy

Wireless access should only be granted after agreeing to and signing a BYOD Policy Document

You will need the MAC code from all authorised devices

You need a wireless router that can restrict access by MAC code

Look at software that bricks or containers the device if lost or stolen

Investigate anti-virus for mobles from people like ESET

Implement a pin code on all authorised devices

Make sure your Internet storage is necessary, safe and secure.

We can write and help you implement a BYOD policy which covers most of the aspects in this listicle – which is a new word in the Oxford English dictionary, an article based on a list.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?” – Bill

Of course you know the quote by William Shakespeare from Hamlet but what’s it got to do with BYOD? Just read on and you will find out.  Hamlet wonders whether he should simply endure the hardships of the situation he is in, or else take aggressive action to combat the problems. I think we would place the same interpretation on this quotation today, you probably do have BYOD in use but who is in control, you or events? Actually it’s not the question as virtually everyone does bring a device. Its a question of what you let them do with it.

First of all what is BYOD? Obviously we have run out of three letter abbreviations so we are rapidly moving on to four or more.

BYOD is simply Bring Your Own Device, this is anything you take in to work, namely Laptops Tablets and Smartphones and other electronic devices that can communicate with your infra structure.

Cons

There are several concerns with BYOD usage. The main issue for many businesses is control. Since it is the employee’s device, they have complete control over the apps and data they access, not you or the company.

This lack of control correlates with a second issue when it comes to letting employees use their own devices: security. Since there is no control over what employees do with their devices, they run the risk of downloading apps and data that are not secure and could pose a threat to your company technology. Many employees are not aware of what apps could present a risk or even aware of what constitutes a risk.

Another major issue in terms of BYOD is deciding what constitutes acceptable use. With company-owned devices, what is and is not acceptable is pretty easy to define. It is harder to define those uses when the employee owns the device and uses it for both business and personal reasons.

Pros

Many companies are allowing their employees to use their own devices for work-related purposes because it offers their company several huge benefits that may outweigh the negatives.

One of the main advantages of allowing employees to bring their own device is that it often saves the business money.

When employees use their own mobile or computer, they pay for it themselves, which can save companies as much as £40/month per employee. You can always just reduce your bill where you pay £15 a month to cover work related tasks.

According to an eWeek.com article, increased employee productivity and efficiency is another major benefit of BYOD. 64% of IT managers surveyed said they felt allowing employees to use their own devices would increase productivity and efficiency and 42% of employees enrolled in BYOD programs said that they saw a rise in both areas.

Tips

Before you start allowing employees to use their own devices, make sure you do your research to determine if a BYOD policy will work for your company and employees. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when considering BYOD:

1. Evaluate: Consider whether or not the benefits outweigh the negatives, or vice versa.
2. Educate employees: Make sure your employees are aware of the risks of using their own devices for work purposes. If employees are educated about the risks and potential errors, they are less likely to make them.
3. Create a strategy: According to Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco, organizations need to create a mobile strategy and should especially consider potential security issues.
4. Communicate: You need to be clear about expectations and rules for when employees use their own devices. Once you have a policy for use in place, communicate that with your employees so they know what to expect.
5. Cloud computing is one of the major contributing factors to the growth of the BYOD trend. When you sign your business up for cloud services, you can “anywhere enable” your data and applications so that employees can access them on their own devices.

In a few days time we will be looking into this a little deeper about the risks and what you can do in your own business. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog. Top right there is a “subscribe” button

The difference between “\” and “/”

There is something that we have all become familiar with and it wasn’t until I started swapping between using UNIX and MSDos that I even noticed. Look at the URL in your internet browser. Notice its http://www.cmx.co.uk/blog/. The slashes lean forward like this / whereas if you look at a Windows location then its C:\windows\system32\. The \ doesn’t even exist on golfball or other typewriters – Do you remember them?

If you are a Unix geek like we are then you know the answer, maybe you don’t care but for the rest of you here is the answer. The quick one is \ is for MsDos which is behind Windows in all it’s guises. The other is for UNIX which runs many things including the internet, TV’s, mobile phones, routers and so much more, it’s amazing. (read our post a few weeks ago to find out more).

It all stems from Microsoft’s relationship with IBM. When MSDos Version 1 came out there were only floppy disks A & B.

Many of the DOS utilities were written by IBM, and they used the “/” character as the “switch” character. The “switch” character is the extra character that tells the utility which options to use.

Although on UNIX it was the “-” character but most early DEC operating systems used “/”. As several of the original MS-DOS developers were old DEC developers it’s possible that they carried it forward.

The fact that the “/” character conflicted with the path character of other relatively popular operating systems weren’t particularly relevant to the original developers – because DOS didn’t support directories, just files in a single root directory.

Then along came DOS 2.0 tied to the PC/XT, whose major feature was a 10 Mb hard disk. IBM asked the Microsoft to add support for hard disks, and the MS-DOS developers took this as an opportunity to add support for modern file Application Programming Interface’s (API) – they added a whole series of handle based APIs to the system (DOS 1.0 relied on an application controlled structure called an File Control Block (FCB). They also had to add support for hierarchical paths or directories as we know them.

Now historically there have been a number of different mechanisms for providing hierarchical paths. UNIX defines hierarchical paths with a simple hierarchy rooted at “/” – in UNIX naming hierarchy, there’s no way of differentiating between devices, files and directories, etc. (This isn’t bad when you get used to it by the way, its just how it works.

For MS-DOS 2.0, the designers of DOS chose a hybrid version – they already had support for drive letters from DOS 1.0, so they needed to continue using that. And they chose to use the UNIX style method of specifying a hierarchy – instead of calling the directory out in the filename, they simply made the directory and filename indistinguishable parts of the path.

But there was a problem. They couldn’t use the UNIX form of path separator of “/”, because the “/” was being used for the switch character.

So what were they to do? They could have used the “.” character like the DEC machines, but the “.” character was being used to differentiate between file and extension. So they chose the next best thing – the “\” character, which was visually similar to the “/” character.

And that’s how the “\” character was chosen.

Here’s a little known secret about MS-DOS. The DOS developers weren’t particularly happy about this state of affairs – heck, they all used XENIX (Microsoft’s version of UNIX) machines for e-mail and stuff, so they were familiar with the UNIX command semantics. So they coded the OS to accept either “/” or “\” character as the path character (this continues today, – try typing “notepad c:/boot.ini” on an XP machine.

They then went one step further, they added an undocumented system call to change the switch character and updated the utilities to respect this flag.

Then they went one stage further and finished the scenario; they added a config.sys option, SWITCHAR= that would let you set the switch character to “-“.

Which flipped MS-DOS into a UNIX style system where command lines used “-switch”, and paths were / delimited.

I don’t know the fate of the switchar API, it’s been long gone for many years now.

So that’s why the path character is “\”. It’s because “/” was taken.

Its also why when you use the internet where virtually everything is run by UNIX the / appears but your computer thinks of it as \.