As will soon become apparent, it is the way in which the Internet has evolved and hence its current structure that allows for the possibility of certain ISPs and larger Telcos to jointly exercise what would amount to an elitist monopolistic style of control over the Internet encompassing all elements and aspects of its accessibility, delivery, reach and functionality.

It is those issues surrounding current and future Internet accessibility that are of particular relevance considering the content, scope and provisions of various tabled and pending legislations in the USA and other countries. Make no mistake about it. What is at stake here is the very thing that has made the Internet what it is today; its neutrality.

Therefore; throughout the course of this investigation, we will be keeping an eye to the future while paying specific attention to how it is possible for ISPs, if permitted to control the Internet and all elements and aspects of its accessibility.

A Distributed Wide Area Network (WAN) Model

In essence, the Internet (internetwork) is based around a distributed Wide Area Networking (WAN) model (see Fig.1 above) comprised of untold numbers of different networks of varying architectures, topologies, technologies, sizes and complexity being linked together to form one giant internetwork spanning the entire globe and even beyond into space. Yes, they do have Internet access onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

As depicted in Figure 1; consumers, enterprises and organizations of all types and sizes wishing to access remote resources or to connect with another network via the Internet must first establish and maintain a connection with their Internet Service Provider (ISP). This ISP will in turn accesses the Internet backbone either directly at an Internet Exchange Point (IX or IXP) or by connecting with another (usually larger) ISP from whom they purchase IP transit or peer with. See IP Transit for more details.

The key factor that defines a distributed WAN is that servers and clients will be spread throughout the entirety of the network more or less randomly. In fact, up until recently the majority of Internet access and services were such that end-points would be continually and sporadically connecting and disconnecting without prior notice to their ISP.

From an ISP's perspective, this behavior placed scalability issues among the hardest facets of service provision and quality of service delivery to address.

It was also common for ISPs to terminate endpoint connections that they (the ISP) “deemed” to be idle. Unfortunately, the end user and their ISP often have very different and conflicting ideas and definitions of what constitutes idle and therefore qualifying for connection termination. This has always been the most frustrating characteristic of traditional dial-up Internet access.

The Rise of Point-to-Point Links

When dissecting and analyzing the structure and topology of the Internet it is important to never lose sight of its fundamentally distributed conglomerate nature. One direct consequence of this is that routers play an essential role in connecting together the various networks and subnets which comprise the Internet.

In general, whenever these different networks are not geographically adjacent dedicated always on point-to-point links have up until recently been the traditional modus operandi (see Figure 2 below).

Historically, this type of point-to-point full-time telecommunications interconnect is known as a leased-line and in its simplest form consists of a dedicated telephone line with modems and routers or modem/routers at each end. Standard practice in implementing this design is to assign the dedicated link a subnet unto itself with only two IP addresses; one for each end.

This type of arrangement was fine from an enterprise perspective as it permitted various geographically dispersed branches of an organization to be permanently connected while preserving IP addresses.

The biggest drawback however, is the fact that point-to-point connectivity deployed as a full mesh topology (see Figure 2 above) rapidly becomes an over complicated administrative and economical nightmare. As the number of separated sites requiring interconnection increases, so too does the number of relatively expensive dedicated leased-lines and associated point-to-point connectivity terminal devices (modems, routers, cabling etc.) and infrastructure (distribution and access devices and wiring).

Another problem with traditional point-to-point connectivity is that each individual link consumed two “live” IP addresses. Incorporation of multiple redundant links as in a mesh topology (Figure 2) improved the overall internetwork's reliable availability but consumed ever larger numbers of “live” IP addresses which were fast becoming very hard to come by. This depletion of the available “live” IP address pool is one of the main reasons that we are currently transitioning to IPv6.

The practical establishment of an organization-wide mesh topology network is therefore economically and administratively unrealistic. The result was that in practice, organizations would establish up to three point-to-point links per site thereby providing redundancy of connectivity. Should any one link be disrupted the site could still communicate via the other links; albeit in a circuitous manner. The message still got through.

A Cooperative Model

Moving beyond a single enterprise desiring full-time interconnectivity the picture immediately increases in complexity. Now either every organization has its own routers connecting to the shared internetwork or some organizations could cooperatively share internetwork connected routers as their “gateway” to the internetwork. For a fee of course (see Figure 3 below).

The technical term for cooperative tariff-free network access and IP transit arrangements between different organizations (or even individuals) is peering.

Due to its numerous different forms, details, characteristics and manifestations peering warrants an article unto itself. Similarly, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Tier system merits further investigation. However, due to the tight relationships between the two (ISP tiers and ISP peering) I will collectively cover them both in another article entitled Internet Service Providers (ISPs) Tiers and Peering.

Jumping forward in time for a moment, we find that for the Internet of today a modified cooperative model has won. Special organizations known as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have their own Internet internetwork connected routers and the rest of us enter into an agreement with the ISP to gain usage rights for Internet access via their (our IPS's) Internet internetwork connected routers (see Figure 3 above).

Internet Backbone Topology

Right from the outset, the Internet in the USA has always used a backbone topology, with the original backbone network infrastructure being provided by the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). This structure was eventually privatised in 1995 when a variety of commercial organizations, known as Network Service Providers (NSPs) collectively took over the backbone functionality.

Note that in most parts of the world today (including Australia and the USA) these original Internet backbone provisioning and support NSPs are now referred to as Tier 1Internet Service Providers (ISPs). As I will discuss shortly; very similar structures, circumstances, peering arrangements and relationships between the Tier 1 ISPs exist in practically every Internet connected country, at least at their local national level.

Internet Exchange Points (IX or IXP)

One particularly important and pervasive characteristic of the Internet that also occurs at the local, national and the global levels is that geographically speaking Tier 1 ISPs interconnect with the Internet backbone and each other at various clearly defined and readily distinguishable physical locations throughout the Internet backbone (see Figure 4).

Originally, these Internet backbone access and ISP interconnectivity points were known as Network Access Points (NAPs). However, the term Network Access Point (NAP) is no longer used in this context. Rather, the name commonly given to the physical locations at which Tier 1 ISP Internet backbone interconnections occur today is Internet Exchange Points (IX or IXP) (see Figure 4).

Note that although the term Network Access Point (NAP) is still in common use today it now refers not to the Internet backbone access points but to those points at which users access their local network. This may be a home or corporate LAN, MAN, WAN or even a public wireless hot-spot. In fact any point at which individuals access a network is considered to be a network access point.

As one would expect either certain cooperative arrangements (peering) or very complex financial schemes exist between the various Tier 1 ISPs. I will be discussing these arrangements and Tier 2 and Tier 3 ISPs in another article so I won't delve into this aspect any further at this point. Suffice to say that on the global stage the Internet is built around the same type of backbone structure with discrete Tier1 ISP access via Internet Exchange Points (IX or IXP).

ISP Point of Presence (POP)

An ISP has a Point of Presence (POP) at a physical location if its customers can connect to it at that location. This holds true regardless of which tier that ISP may be classified as belonging to or which level of the Internet structure or local hierarchy we are discussing.

Local Conditions and Network Evolution

As an example of the changes and local conditions that may prevail in different geographical locations from time to time I will use the Australian case as this is somewhat easier to grasp and illustrate being a one-country continent even though the distinctions between Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 ISPs are somewhat blurry.

Back in 1990 the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) was established to connect all Australian universities and a number of research institutions. The first AARNet implementation involved a state-level router in each Australian State capital city. These routers were connected to the main AARNet hub router in Melbourne by way of expensive leased-line services. An additional leased-line was used to link the Melbourne-based hub router to the USA.

AARNet retained ownership of all of the routers and the provision of basic carriage services was the only involvement of Telstra, the telecommunications provider at the time. Thus, Internet access between Australian universities more or less followed the cooperative model as already discussed above.

This expensive to maintain and run architecture has now been replaced by a far more economical one where an ISP (C & W Optus in this case) interconnects all state regional networks to each other as well as to the publicly accessible Australian and International Internet.

In this example we see a relatively expensive private hybrid tree/star topology network based upon point-to-point connections being replaced by a far more economical publically accessible commercial backbone-based topology internetwork.

Endpoint Connectivity and Presence

While the Internet backbone is a highly structured, ordered and persistently stable component of the global internetwork, the terminal networks, user nodes and other endpoints connecting to it are free to come and go as intermittently as they please. It is merely a matter of convenience or of a fiscally driven e-commerce desirability that sees most broadband Internet connections being “always on”.

Beyond Terra Firma and into the Future

As already noted Internet access is available onboard the International Space Station (ISS). What is not so well known is the degree to which traditionally Earth-bound communications and networking technologies and devices such as routers and switches are leaving the confines of terra firma and making the transition to space; thereby becoming truly universal infrastructure devices.

To illustrate just how much these unified communications and networking technologies are extending their reach far beyond terra firma, the Japanese have recently launched an ATM switch onboard a communications satellite.

The idea being to perform the switching functions in situ (in space) rather than beaming signals from earth-bound handsets up to the satellite, down to a ground-based exchanges for switching, then back up to the satellite for final relay back down to the intended earth-bound recipient. Compare this to the efficiency of a caller beaming the signal directly to the satellite where onboard switching takes place and the signal will then be transmitted directly to the intended recipient.

With the continuing evolution of converged unified communications and networking technologies and functionalities such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) this trend will not only continue into the foreseeable future but accelerate exponentially.

Further Reading, Additional Links and Resources:

• Wide Area Networks (WAN)
• Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
• IP Transit

Final Words

All these programs can make your life that little bit easier, and hopefull you will give them a shot, and see just how good these programs are. After all their all free, and they are all easy to uninstall should you decide that their just not right for you.

Texas Instruments Inc.

This device extends the battery life in certain types of medical tools, scales, and data acquisition applications.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Building- I. M. Pei

The architect tends to design buildings that depict the high-tech movement. He always works on larger scale projects and uses geometric designs to shape his buildings.

The "Butterfly Effect" - Prof. Edward Lorenz

Professor Lorenz realized that small differences in a forceful system such as the atmosphere could trigger unsuspected results. These explanations eventually led him to formulate what became known as the butterfly effect. "This term came from a paper he wrote in 1972 entitled Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?"

Bose stereo - Professor Amar Bose

These stereo speakers are world-renowned for giving high-end performance despite their reticent size.

Ethernet - Robert Metcalf

Ethernet is a relationship between the unit frame-based computer networking technologies for (LANs). The Ethernet controls our access to certain types of data processing models, i.e. Internet.

The Internet Archive - Brewster Kahle

The Internet Archive (IA) consists of an online library containing the vast information on the Web and other multimedia resources. This information includes certain snapshots from various times from software, WebPages, audio visual and other sources.

Rockman amplifier - Tom Scholz

The Rockman is used in conjunction with headphones and an amplifier used for certain guitars. If any of you are familiar with Boston then you know who invented this.

Spacewar, the first computer game-Steve Russell

Spacewar was the first digital computer game of our time. The idea behind the game involved spaceships attempting to shoot each other while manipulating within the galaxy. I remember this game; I used to play it all the time on my Atari. I wish I still had it.

Hypertext - Prof. Vannevar Bush PhD

Hypertext is defined as words or text that leads the user to information associated with those words.

GPS (Global Positioning System) - Ivan Getting

The GPS uses satellites that transmit microwave signals. These signals enable receivers to determine certain types of pertinent information such as direction, time, speed and location.

 

 

 

IP transit is a formal agreement, usually in the form of a registered contract by which wholesale Internet bandwidth is sold or resold by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and content providers.

Pricing is typically offered as a fixed or sliding scale of per megabit per second per month basis (M-bit/s/Month) and requires the purchaser to commit to a minimum volume of bandwidth. Pricing for the bandwidth can be reduced significantly by purchasing larger volumes or extending the contract term.

Modern IP transit agreements typically provide service level guarantees to almost all of the major Internet Exchange Points within a continental geography such as North America, Europe or Australia. However, these IP Transit Service Level Agreements (SLAs) still only provide best-effort delivery since they do not guarantee service from the Internet Exchange Point to the final destination.

As individual consumers, we too enter into SLAs with our particular ISP to purchase IP transit. For Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) broadband services these consumer grade service level contracts are generally expressed in terms of an asymmetric capped bandwidth rate usually with some upper volume limit on a Gigabytes per month basis.

The asymmetric aspect is generally manifested as a quoted download connection rate with a much lesser upload connection rate. Bear in mind that actual data transfer rates tend to be somewhat less than the connection rate in either direction.

They also tend to be variable in that once the connection has been established the actual data transfer will begin at a rate of XM-bit/sec which is not sustained indefinitely as it will progressively decrease throughout the duration of the conversation.

You will however find that at some point this transfer rate depreciation will plateau; more often than not somewhere near the rate cited by your ISP as being that of the immediately adjacent lower metric and/or lower priced service agreement rate currently available to you from that ISP.

The result is; as I am sure you have already noticed by now, that you can download considerably quicker than you can upload. Additionally, downloading a 50MB file takes considerably longer than 50 times the time taken to download a 1MB file.

Considering that the average Internet consumer's usage habits are such that they will spend a far greater proportion of time downloading then they do uploading this disparity between the two rates of transfer is usually perceived by the consumer as being satisfactory. We just accept that that is the way it is.

Another factor that reinforces this degree of consumer “satisfaction” is that the majority of us remember years of frustration with dial-up services followed by the revolutionary advent of broadband (ADSL) and now with ADSL 2+ there truly is a gap of “light-years” between now and then. Still I have no doubt that the magic will wear off and consumers will be primed for further higher-speed always on services and technologies.

One of the driving forces in this vicious cycle is the size factor of the average file transferred over the Internet. With the “average” file size increasing as rapidly, if not more so than the capacity for the “I want it now” consumer's Internet service to deliver it now impatience will often win out. Nobody likes waiting for websites that are slow to load or files that take ages to transfer. With a click of the mouse we will generally surf on to the next site.

Holding consumer attention is something that Web masters are all only too acutely aware of. With Google, Yahoo, MSN and co. delivering so many options for a search this should come as no great surprise. StubleUpon.com is one such social networking service characterized by high user “surf-through” rates. I myself click the Stumble button if a site is slow to load. There are heaps of worthy sites yet to Stumble and so on I go.

The richness of Web 2.0 and user interactivity (feedback, comments, content contribution etc.) is such a powerful element that it further accelerates mass migration from once flavor-of-the-day bogged down social networking sites to newer better performing ones with such suddenness that it truly takes the breath away. Check out Delicious.com and the recent changes (including changing their user unfriendly name and URL) wrought there for these very reasons.

Other recent trends such as Software-as-a-Service (S-a-a-S) and many Web hosted applications; such as many of the more recent Help Desk implementations, all contribute to the richness, variety and in most instances the cost-effectiveness of the Web-based applications solutions over the traditional locally hosted varieties.

The most important element of all of the above implementation scenarios is that is very rarely investigated by the end-user is that somewhere along the line and usually at more than one point IP transit must be negotiated.

More often than not and for various reasons not readily available to the consumer this element of costing is hidden from obvious sight. It usually can be found under such headings in the small print of SLAs as “overhead”, “establishment fees”, administrative overheads” or as a component of “service fees/charges”.

However; for commercial enterprises and particularly those with very active websites such as social networking and bookmarking sites the standard consumer grade arrangement is most definitely unsatisfactory and so they will have a different type of SLA with their ISP. Up until very recently this usually meant leased lines or dedicated fiber optic cables between their premises and the ISP's exchange equipment.

I must also make note of the fact that the asymmetric nature of ADSL is not always manifested by higher data transfer rates for downloading than uploading. Sometimes it is more important for a site to have upload data transfer rates superior to its download data transfer rates.

Instances where this type of IP transit arrangement would be considered desirable include manufacture and developer download sites particularly where the content of the consumer downloadable files changes often, regularly or is deemed to be of a critical nature (antimalware sites). Generally their upload link to their consumer/customer accessible downloads and support sites would be a separate and dedicated link specifically for this purpose.

Urgent notification systems that need to rapidly disseminate variable critical content to a large number of target systems and users especially “knee-jerk” security responses to zero-day threats and other emerging vulnerabilities.

Update sites such as the Microsoft Windows Updates site and their automatic updates services would avail themselves of an IP transit Service Level Agreement (SLA) where administrative upload links to these facilities would be higher than that of the download rates. They may even use SDSL access technologies.

Another variant of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) broadband services is Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL). Yes it means just what it says. Data transfer rates are more or less equal in both directions (upload and download).

Today, with ADSL 2+ we find that many a small to medium business no longer requires these expensive alternatives. Web hosting services have also made an impact in this area through the provisioning of assorted quality of dynamics, metrics, 24/7, auto-responder, domain hosting services and Internet point-of-presence services that are affordably suitable for many smaller scale enterprises and individual requirements.

No doubt this is a lucrative field for the services hosting provider. A fact reflected by the number of hosting services providers including Microsoft's entry into the arena with their free domain hosting services.

Once built, upload the website and the rest is taken care of (more or less). No servers to worry about. Let the networking guys at your hosting service provider do that.

Yet another resurfacing technology that follows the Software-as-a-Service (S-a-a-S) centralized application, processing (computing) and services philosophy is terminal services. In a terminal services production environment implementation centrally located servers host the applications, deliver services and perform the bulk of processing (computing) for those clients assigned to it. This is the same sort of structure and relationship that existed between the mainframes of yesteryear and their associated user terminals.

The benefits of this type of arrangement include a dramatic reduction in the amount of data that needs to be transmitted between end-points. Client requests and server replies containing the results of processing and “dumb” client user service accessibility requests ready for onscreen display are basically all that is transmitted.

The above factors also apply to wireless networking and wireless Internet access technologies. The main distinctions between wireless network access (including the Internet) and other technologies is that it is wireless. Apart from this, access, authentication, logical connectivity, bandwidth and aggregate data throughput rates etc. and associated issues are for the most part much like the other available technologies when it comes to IP transit.

The result is that all of these factors are continually conspiring to change the face of the Internet and how we use it. For many of us, considerations and decisions relating to IP transit and the specific intricacies of the products and services offered by and stated in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between ourselves and our ISP rarely come to our attention. Yet there can be little doubt they are the arrangements upon which the Internet is built and commercial viability is derived.

I guess you could say that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. One way or another somewhere along the line you the end user, still pays for your share of Internet access and use. The trick from all perspectives (consumers, business, government, enterprise and organizations of all sizes and persuasions) is to minimize these costs.

I will discuss many and varied aspects of the Internet in future articles. Until next time enjoy!!

Some important tips for dial-up users to increase the speed considerably are:

Use a web accelerator

Web accelerator is the best option to increase the speed of your dial-up connection. The main techniques used by web accelerators are cache recent documents,prefetch documents used most often, filter unnecessary ads and stop them from displaying, and compressing files to a smaller size. A web accelerator is a proxy server which reduces web site access time. There are many web accelerators available on the web and some are available at free of cost. Some of the popular web accelerators are Fasterfox, SiteCelerate, Onspeed, Google web accelerator, Propel, Netfury, and Rabbit. Please be sure about which accelerator suits your operating system and browser before downloading. Some web accelerators are compatible with only certain operating systems (for example, google web accelerator is compatible with only Windows) and some accelerators suit only specific browser service(Fasterfox only serves for Firefox browser).

Empty the cache frequently

Empty your cache regularly to help in speeding up your dial-up. Don't depend much on caching as it may harm your computer besides slowing down the connection. Cache is a place where all the information about the web pages you have visited and the images are stored. This helps in retrieving the page when you want instead of loading it once again. But after few days or months, these files in cache just pile up and decrease overall performance of the computer besides slowing down your dial-up speed.

Use download managers(for people who download videos and files)

For downloading files and streaming videos faster one can use download manager along with web accelerators. Web accelerators increase the access time but they can't decrease the downloading speed. For this download manager should be used on your computer. A typical download manager provides means to resume the download if any interruption occurs, without losing already downloaded work. It can optionally split the file to be downloaded into 2 or more segments, which are then downloaded in parallel, potentially making the process faster within the limits of the bandwidth available.

Block pop-ups

You can block the pop ups by changing your internet settings. They are literally unnecessary and they just take time to load and slow down other activities running on the computer.

Increase the RAM size

Increasing the size of RAM helps a bit. Though it doesn't actually increase the speed of your dial-up, it at least increases the performance of your computer and thus helps in opening the web pages fast.

Realizing you have a spam problem does not mean you went on some forbidden website or have compromised your email security. The people who use spam to try to get you to come to their web sites or to buy something are pretty clever. They buy email addresses from people and have other ways of hacking or finding out your email address without you ever giving it to them. So do not feel that you are being personally targeted by spam. If you get an spam email, that was probably part of a mass broadcast of that advertisement to tens of thousands of email addresses that spammers try to get to in hopes that a few "suckers" will be taken in and fall for their schemes.

The battle against spam seems to be an endless one. The things you can do seem to work for a while and then somehow things change and the spammers start getting through to you again. You can buy software that is supposed to control it. But what we don't see is that there is a continuous battle of wits going on between people who seem to insist on sending out spam and those who are making money stopping it. Each time spammers come up with some new trick or tactic to get their emails to your inbox, the anti-spam people come out with a "new and improved" product to stop it, which of course, you have to buy.

But that just seems to excite the spammers who have endless patience and technical savvy to figure out around the latest blocks and get through again. And so the cycle continues to repeat and the only ones who seem to be doing well in this ugly battle are the people you pay for anti-spam software. You would almost suspect that they are cooperating in the cycle because it sure does line their pockets each time you have to upgrade your spam software to block the latest waves of spam.

But the confusion and the burden of spam doesn't just end with having to spend your hard earned money on software to stop it. Once you get the software, you have to "train" it. Software designed to stop spam has to somehow know the difference between spam and good emails. If your spam software is too "aggressive", it can end up filtering out emails you need and want which can be even more of a problem than the spam in the first place.

So your installation of the software has to learn from you what key words you want to block that it might "see" in the message box or the body of an email message. Often there is a "blocked list" where you can add any email addresses that send you spam and the software will filter them out and send them to the deleted emails folder or a special folder just for spam. It keeps that special folder so you can quickly scan what it puts there before deleting anything in case the software made any mistakes.

The result is that in exchange for spam "protection,", you get a new hobby of constantly finding new email address that are being used to send you spam and adding them to the blocked list. Spammers know this trick and it seems they can create new email addresses faster than you can add the old ones to the blocked list. Blocking on dirty words or certain key words like "Viagra" or "get rich quick" is also somewhat effective but not totally because as soon as spammers figure out what you are doing, they change their strategies and get their spam to you.

You add to that the daily chore of reviewing the "spam folder' where the bad emails were sent to make sure nothing valid went there and you really have not eliminated the problem of spam. You have just organized it into a bunch of habits you have to be in every day to constantly battle the flood of spam coming your way. It is pretty maddening especially when you consider you have to pay the spam software companies for the privilege of constantly training their software to do a so-so job for you. You wonder sometimes who is training who.

There has to be a better way. And in fact, there is a better way that not only is free, it is effective because it reduces the amount of "maintenance" you have to do tremendously. You still must take a few steps each week to keep this system working but it is a slick, simple and effective way to cycle all spam to trash and keep all of your good email isolated. It is so simple that you will wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. Here is how it works.

A New Way of Seeing Email

The problem is we have been looking at this problem all wrong. The approach we just reviewed is based on an assumption that we must fight all bad email from getting into our inbox by pushing it to a quarantine box. So you get into that constant battle of figuring out the originating email address and adding it to the "blocked senders" list so your software can catch that sender and send that email to the designated folder. Then the spammers change their email addresses and the fight is new all over again the next day.

Obviously, the fight to keep your inbox full of only pure emails is a losing one. Like many problems of this nature, maybe instead of trying to find new ways to fight the battle, we need to change the terms of the fight to give the advantage to you and me. The heart of that new approach lies in one basic question which is …

What is so Holy About that Inbox?

Instead of fighting to push all bad email to a quarantine box, what if we changed the way we saw the battle over email. Instead, what if we "quarantined" good email and let the spammers have the inbox? This is a far more controlled approach and if you implement it correctly, you can put this solution in place with no extra software to buy and very little effort. You just have to use a tool that is…

Right Under Your Nose

There is actually some anti-spam tools built right into most email software such as Microsoft Outlook. In fact, you may be already using one of the most effective tools for managing spam that is not really identified as a spam tool. It is the facility Outlook gives you to route email to email folders you create based on keywords or email addresses. So you can identify all of the email addresses from your family and as soon as they arrive, Outlook can put those in a "family" folder so you know what they are.

This is a terrific feature especially if you get a lot of emails. You can have your newsletter subscriptions go to one email folder, work related emails to another and emails from family and friends to another and keep things straight like this. But this is a tool that can very easily become a foolproof spam protection system that doesn't cost a dime beyond what you paid for your email software. It works every day and on every email and it reduces your spam maintenance from a constant daily hobby to an every once in a while maintenance step. Here is how it works.

• Create a new folder in your email system. Just call it "Good Email" or something similar so you know that this is to become the new holding tank for all the emails you value.
• Now use that tool that allows you to route emails to a selected folder based on email address. Look at every routine email you get that could be considered legitimate. Now add each of those emails to a new email "rule" that routes those emails to the "Good Email" folder that you just created.
• Instantly your inbox becomes the spam quarantine and all good emails are kept in one guarded email folder that you have total control over. Now all you have to do is quickly glance at your old inbox to make sure no new good emails show up there. As soon as you find an email from a new person or company that you want to hear from, you move it to the "Good Email" folder and it is safe.
• When you do identify a new email recipient that you want to add to your elite list of allowed emails, along with moving the new email to the "Good Email" folder, you just open the rule that filters your emails and add that one new email address to the list. From then on out, emails from that sender will always go to your protected folder.
• Each day and maybe each time you check emails, you will see spam "trapped" in your inbox. A quick glance confirms it is all spam. Then with a quick "select all" and delete, the spam goes away, just that easy and just that quick.

The maintenance of adding new email contacts to the allowed senders list will be something you will be doing with some regularity in the first few weeks you have this system in place. But before long, most if not all of your allowed email senders will be on your allowed senders list. Then you just have to add new people on an "as needed" basis. Checking for spam is a task that just takes a few seconds because you know almost everything in your email inbox is spam. And you just delete it all and you are spam free again.

It is a system that is amazingly effective considering how simple it is. You can have it in place in moments and forget about paying subscriptions for spam filtering products. You save money, time and a lot of frustration. And above all, this very simple and inexpensive system is fool proof, it works every time without fail and it accomplishes what all the fancy and expensive software says they will do but they cannot do. It gives control over your email back to you and keeps that control in your hands forever. That is good spam control for sure.

It appeared to be from my bank. It was from their national headquarters rather than from my local branch. They asked me to verify my name, my address and phone number. They then asked me to change my pass phrase for the Internet access. They said it should be changed every few months to prevent others from accessing my banking information. They asked me to type in my account log on word plus my current password. Then, they asked me to type in a new password of eight characters including at least one numeric character. After I put on the information and pressed “Send”, I received a new email response thanking me for updating my information. A note said that the new password would be activated at the end of the business day.

Relieved, I recorded the new password on my personal records so I would not forget it. I did not try to use the new password until the next day.

When I checked my online account balance the next day, I was horrified. First of all, the new password did not work. I decided to go back to the old password. The account opened and showed an account balance which was much lower than I expected. When I checked the detailed daily record of the account, I saw that someone had withdrawn several hundred dollars from my account.

Rather than sending an email, I went to my local bank branch to complain. They said it was probably a scam email that I had responded to. They told me that their bank never sends emails of that type. They allowed me to use a computer in their office to log into my email account. In the "trash" folder, I found the email that I had responded to. In the "sent" folder was a copy of the information that I had sent the day before.

The officer in the bank pointed out to me that the return address on the email was not to their bank but to a strange-looking email address, one that I had never seen before. They had me fill out a report of the scam that had sucked me in although they told me that it was unlikely that the culprit would be discovered as he probably changed to another email address overnight.

I write this to offer suggestions to other people who receive emails from their banks. You should check the email address the sender used. Also, you should contact your bank rather than respond to an email. If the bank wants new and updated information about you, you should provide it in their office instead of in an email.

I have recently noticed that my "spam" folder of my email account sometimes has emails from many banks, not just the bank where I have an account. It appears that the phisher, the person who is trying to get people to do stupid things such as I did, uses many bank names in hopes of finding people who have accounts in those banks. This technique used by unscrupulous people is referred to as phishing. They are sending out thousands of emails and expect some people to fall for the scam, just as I did.

The Look

Well everybody knows Macs are mostly about the look and its true! Just look at the new Mac Book Air it's just so cool! So is the Mac mini, which is so small and cute! But some of you might not know that PCs also have pretty cool designs such as the ACER ASPIRE 8920G. However even if you are a big PC fan you have to admit Macs do look better.

Score so far: MAC 1-0 PC

Gaming

All right now! Calm down PC fans! I know that for many years gaming has stopped people from buying Macs because people wanted to play games and Mac didn't offer them. However now that Boot Camp has been made to Mac OSX Leopard, Mac users can buy windows software and play all the games. But this is using PCs so therefore PCs are without doubt the better of the two as concerns gaming.

Score so far: MAC 1-1 PC

Price

You have to admit the major reason why people buy PCs and not Macs is because of the price of Macs. Macs are a bit overpriced but the Macs are worth it! However, you can buy a PC for only £250 but the lowest priced Mac is around £700 and that's a Mac mini, which is better than the cheapest PC. Anyway for the price I recon PCs are better as the public can easily afford them unlike Macs. Normally, Macs should win this point as they are cheaper in the long run but I gave the point to PC otherwise it would end up 100-0.

Score so far: MAC 1-2 PC

Viruses

Mac OS X is more secure than any other operating system but this is NOT because hackers don't make Mac Viruses as apparently "they reach for the bigger audience". It's because the UNIX family of operating systems were designed from the ground up to be secure. If you get a trojan horse on a Mac, you cannot damage the system simply because the user it is run under does not have the right access to system files. Compare this to Windows, on which the default user is an Administrator. However if you download PC Doc and scan your Mac you will see that there ARE viruses on your Mac but they do not affect the operating system unlike in Windows.

Score so far: MAC 2-2 PC

Stability

Over the five years of using all different types of Macs, I have to admit that my Mac Mini crashed once with a Kernel Panic and my Mac Book Air crashed after several months use. However the tightly controlled Unix-based operating system is way better at tackling these problems than Windows and so can easily be fixed. On Windows if your computer crashes you might as well chuck it in the bin.

Score so far: MAC 3-2 PC

Speed

Now, nobody can even have any objections on which of the two is better in terms of speed. We all know that Macs are up to ten times faster than PCs which HAVE been proven by scientific test so nobody can say anything.

Score so far: MAC 4-2 PC

There are many more reasons to talk about but they would make this article too long. If you would like to know the rest of the reasons just leave a comment.

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Here is the list, my personal review of some computer software programs that made our life easy.

Firefox

The Firefox Web Browser is the faster, more secure, and fully customizable way to surf the web than others.

Features:

• One-Click Bookmarking - you can search and organize Web sites quickly and easily
• Instant Web Site ID - You can avoid online scams, and suspicious transaction
• Improved Performance - You can view Web Pages faster and less memory for your computer

Yahoo Messenger

Chit Chat with your buddies and find friends in Yahoo! Yahoo Messenger is the most widely used instant messenger in the world wide web.

Features:

• Send text messages in real-time to your buddies on Yahoo or Windows Live Messenger
• Join a chat room to meet new friends while you discuss your favorite topics
• Photo Sharing - Share photos from your desktop or Flickr, then discuss them over IM while you and a friend view them together
• PC to PC calls - Make a voice call to another Yahoo! Messenger user for free
• Send text messages from Messenger to your friends mobile phones for free

Skype

No money for calls? With Skype you can chat and make free calls over the internet to other people on Skype for as long as you like, to wherever you like. You can call to mobiles using your computer. And it is absolutely free to download.

Adobe Reader

Adobe is a free software to download. This simplest of Adobe's PDF programs lets you do just about anything PDF-related (besides create new ones), including online collaboration. It includes a host of features to aid users with disabilities. Use Adobe Reader to view, search, digitally sign, verify, print, and collaborate on Adobe PDF files.

Features:

• Leverage a simplified user interface - You can view information more precisely and efficiently with the redesigned, easier to use Reader 8 interface
• More secure document workflows - Better protect documents, forms, and drawings
• Automate digital certificate administration
• Leverage existing security infrastructure

Audacity

Audacity is a free to download software you can do recording and editing of your audio interest. Audacity available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X operating systems.

Features:

• Record Live Audio
• Convert tape copies and records into digital recordings or Cds
• You can Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files
• Do can copying, cutting, splicing or mixing sounds together
• Change the beat or speed tempo of your Audio files

GIMP

The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is the most widely used bitmap editor in the printing industries. GIMP is a graphics, photo images, logos editor. Cropping, resizing, altering color, brightness adjusting, combing multiple images, and converting into different format files. It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop. But it is not designed to be Photoshop clone.

Features:

• Customizable Interface
• Photo Enhancement
• Digital Retouching

iTunes

iTunes is a software free to download. A digital music or media player introduced by Apple Inc. The program used for playing and organizing mp3, digital music, and video files. This software can connect to the iTune store via internet to purchase download music, videos, TV shows, iPod games, audio books, movie trailers, ring tones, and more.

Features:

• iPod music downloader
• Media player

AIM

Advanced Information Management (AIM). It is one of the most widely used free Instant Messenger program.

Features:

• AIM Plug-ins
  • Whimsicals - They're web applications that let you interact with your Buddies, send & receive IMs, & more all from a web browser.
  • IM fight - Fight your buddy.
  • AIM share - Blast your buddy list.
  • AIM WIMZI - Put a chat window anywhere.
  • QQ games - Fun and play with your buddies.

WinAmp

WinAmp the most famous media player after WPM. Play music, video, movie files, DVDs. Lots of Skin to choose for their new version. WinAmp offers 50 free mp3 download for downloading the software. You can also search for skins and plug-ins, access thousands of shout cast Radio stations, get free Music and Videos and search the Web using Winamp Search.

Feature:

• Offers free download of music and videos in their toolbar
• Remote Music and Video Playback and Sharing
• Play list the Best Music on the Web with Media Monitor
• Winamp Toolbar enables browser control of Winamp
• Album Art Support for Portable Devices

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is an ultimate open source desktop mail app support by mozilla. Its pluggable interface lets developers freely build extensions to make it ever more useful.

Features:

• Message tagging - Thunderbird 2 allows you to tag messages with descriptors such as to Do or Done
• Advanced Folder Views - offers a variety of ways for you to organize and display your folders, whether by favorites, recently viewed or folders containing unread messages
• Message history navigation - Show toolbar allows you to click forward and back much like in your Web browser
• Saved Research - Thunderbird has a “saved” folder allows you to store your file searched