Network Administrator

Want a chance to preview Office 2010, select this link and fill out the requirement fields.

https://microsoft.crgevents.com/Office2010TheMovie/Register/Contact/Default.aspx

You may have used Google Wave and wondered…So what problems does Google Wave solve?  Will this technology replace corporate Email, Twitter, Face book, or instant messaging?

For many people in order to understand Google Wave you have to change the way you have looked at Email and online collaboration for years. I think it will be years before this becomes mainstream in  corporate culture. Today when a group of people collaborateon a document or  some piece of text it is usually done through a series of email threads with corrections coming in from every direction which makes it really hard to track changes between many people.   When you add a new person to an existing  conversation the message is not forward to them,  they have the same view as the original viewers. I like how easy it is to drag in a document or picture from my desktop whether it be 1MB or 8MB, to often when you send an attachment to recipients there is always someone who has a full mailbox. In the end Google Wave should fix most things that are wrong with email systems today.

Internet Explorer 8 – With Microsoft behind it, IE hangs on to a reputation of safe and reliable browsing. When you open a new tab from an existing page, the new one opens directly to the right of the originating one, and both tabs are given the same color. Also the new ability to reopen tabs. To reopen the last tab you’ve closed, you press Ctrl-Shift-T Each tab is isolated from the others, this is helpful if one tab crashes, the entire browser doesn’t go down. You can  restore the crashed tab it reloads with the information that had been in it when it crashed such as  a blog or email you were writing.

Google Chrome - Chrome’s multi-process architecture makes a bad Web page less likely to take down the whole browser.  Chrome loads pages fast and makes use of all the screen space. There is an “Incognito” mode that lets you leave no footprints from where you’ve been.

FireFox – Also loads pages fast, and has a huge library of plug ins to make your browsing and online collaboration easier.

https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx – Windows live mesh, allows you to sync files and remote desktop to any computer running live mesh client.

http://www.leafnetworks.net/ – Enable network and device sharing between an individual’s home office and work PCs

http://www.cacti.net/ – Data collection, storage and graphing tool that lets you poll data from multiple sources and create visual representations of information across complex networks

http://www.kismetwireless.net/ – Kismet is an 802.11 Layer 2 wireless network detector, sniffer and intrusion detection system. It works with any wireless card that supports raw monitoring mode

http://www.kiwisyslog.com/ – Kiwi Syslog Daemon is a freeware Syslog Daemon for Windows that receives messages from network devices and displays them in real time

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/ – MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a tool that graphs router and other network device traffic by monitoring SNMP and creating visual images of the traffic passing through each interface.

http://www.solarwinds.com/products/freetools/netflow_configurator.aspx – If you are unfamiliar with the command-line options for configuring NetFlow set up NetFlow on supported Cisco devices.

http://nmap.org/ – uses raw IP packets to determine which hosts are available on the network, which services those hosts are offering, what operating system they are running and what types of packet filters and firewalls are in use

http://www.pingplotter.com/–traceroute application that allows you to trace the route between them and a target and collect performance metrics about that route.

http://www.plixer.com/products/netflow-sflow/free-netflow-scrutinizer.php – NetFlow and sFlow analyzer that accepts unlimited flows from routers, switches and network interfaces

http://www.uvnc.com/ – remotely control the screen of another computer from a workstation via the Internet or a network connection.

http://www.wireshark.org/ – examine protocol data from a live network or from a capture file on disk

http://www.ziptie.org/overview – network inventory and configuration management

http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/ 

http://iptrack.sourceforge.net/ – IP address management (IPAM) software and tracking tool

With nine “Critical” and five “Important” updates, October’s patch Tuesday is going to be pretty important to say the least.

Microsoft will be addressing at least 34 vulnerabilities.

See the complete details here….http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-sep.mspx

Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner is a  diagnostic tool that identifies common Active Directory and network related problems.

It performs more than 100 separate checks in these categories: Network Connectivity, Active Directory Subnet Configuration, Active Directory Replication, File Replication and SYSVOL Administration, DNS Verification, Network Adapter Configuration, Domain Controller Health, Network Time Protocol Configuration, Exchange Server Configuration, Network Configuration, and Event Log Entries.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=dd7a00df-1a5b-4fb6-a8a6-657a7968bd11

After building my new 64bit 2008 web server I never got around to enable the the nic teaming. The steps for implenting this might be different depending on  the manufacture of the network interface cards I have intel nics. The first thing to do is  to make sure that you have the correct driver for your nic to support the advanced functions such as teaming. Then go into the properties of one of the nics and select configure, select teaming, select new team and choose the nics that would want in the team. Now you can go to your network connections and you will see three interfaces for the Team. I like to rename the two nics that make up the virtual nic as a and b and then call the virtual nic public. You can then select the properties of public and set the correct settings such as ip, dns, gateway, etc.

The last thing to do is configure the port aggregation for each interface on the switch that the nics are connected. I have my server connected to a Cisco catalyst 2924. I will be using Fast ethernet ports 21 and 22.  This command needs to be issued on both fast ethernet interfaces  “port group 1 distribution destination” without the quotes. For better performance I have also disabled spanning tree on each port 21 and 22, this is done by issuing the no spanning-tree command on each interface.

Available from http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials
the program is designed to stop common threats such as viruses, spyware, rootkits and Trojans. It runs on Windows XP, Vista and 7, in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

Also check out..http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php