ASTRA2Connect Maritime Broadband

ASTRA2Connect Maritime Broadband is a two-way satellite broadband Internet service for use on private boats and commercial ships throughout European waters.

ASTRA2Connect provides high-speed Internet access (at up to 2Mbit/s downlink) along with VoIP telephone, email, and virtual private network services to vessels while at anchor/moored or in motion. The service started in September 2009.

The ship-borne service is based on the ASTRA2Connect land-based satellite broadband technology and is operated by ASTRA Broadband Services (ABBS), a subsidiary of SES ASTRA, itself a subsidiary of SES based in Betzdorf, Luxembourg, in conjunction with Korean marine antenna manufacturers KNS.

Uses

ASTRA2Connect Maritime Broadband provides an always-on Internet connection to vessels, and the service can be used equally well while a vessel is either docked or underway at sea, to provide users the same connectivity capabilities they have in their homes or offices.

The service is intended for pleasure crafts, fishing and coastal ships, ferries and smaller commercial cargo carriers, operating mainly in the North and Baltic Seas, and the northern Mediterranean. ASTRA2Connect coverage is available throughout Europe and so the service may also be used by boats on in-land waterways.

Astra Broadband Services claims that the service provides for all aspects of maritime communications, including:

* VoIP telephone
* email
* on-board entertainment
* worldwide web browsing
* crew communications
* data transfer
* content-on-demand
* virtual private networks

The main alternative to the service is Inmarsat's FleetBroadband service that, although almost global in reach, is based on 3G technologies and limited to a 432Kbits/s download speed.

Marketing

ASTRA2Connect Maritime Broadband is marketed to end users by third party service providers, of which there is currently one for all of Europe – UK-based H2OSatellite. The H2OLitespeed package includes hardware rental and broadband access in a fixed-rate monthly fee, dependent on the speed of connection (512Kbit/s download, 96Kbits/s upload, 1024Kbit/s download, 128Kbits/s upload, and 2048Kbit/s download, 128Kbits/s upload are available).

Technology

The Internet connection provided by ASTRA2Connect Maritime Broadband is a two-way satellite link between the user’s vessel and the Astra 1E communications satellite at 23.5° east, which in turn is linked to the Astra Broadband Services HQ and teleport in Betzdorf where a hub connects to the Internet backbone.

Downlinks and uplinks to/from the vessel's antenna comprise IP data embedded in a DVB-S2 carrier using the Ku band (10.70GHz-12.75GHz for downlink, 14.00GHz-14.50GHz for uplink).

User Equipment



essels using ASTRA2Connect Maritime Broadband require a simple VSAT terminal comprising an antenna developed by KNS and modem from Newtec. The antenna is an in-motion motorised and stabilised dish for reception and transmission (500mW), which automatically aligns to the Astra 1E satellite and maintains its orientation (and therefore the IP link to the satellite) even while the vessel is in motion – underway, manoeuvring, rolling or pitching.

ASTRA2Connect Maritime Broadband uses the KNS SuperTrack A9 antenna – an 85cm dish weighing 57 kg, housed in a 110 cm x 103 cm protective radome – which is mounted on the superstructure and connected to an ACU (Antenna Control Unit) in the control room. Also in the control room, the ASTRA2Connect satellite modem connects to the dish’s iLNB and to the user's local area network using a standard RJ-45 Ethernet connector, behaving as an IP Bridge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

Most traditional communications media, such as telephone and television services, are reshaped or redefined using the technologies of the Internet, giving rise to services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and IPTV. Newspaper publishing has been reshaped into Web sites, blogging, and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated the creation of new forms of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking sites.

The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet.

The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own standards. Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely-affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Future Internet

Future Internet is a summarizing term for worldwide research activities dedicated to the further development of the original Internet (see also History of the Internet).

While the technical development of the Internet has been an extensive research topic from the beginning, an increased public awareness of several critical shortcomings in terms of performance, reliability, scalability, security and many other categories including societal, economical and business aspects, has led to Future Internet research efforts.

Given the diversity of technologies related to the Internet, extended by lower and higher layers and applications, the related research topics are wide spread.

In addition, the approaches towards a Future Internet range from small, incremental evolutionary steps to complete redesigns (clean slate) and architecture principles, where the applied technologies shall not be limited by existing standards or paradigms such as client server networking, which, for example, might evolve into co-operative peer structures. The fact that an IP address denotes both the identifier as well as the locator of an end system, sometimes referred to as semantic overload, is an example of a conceptual shortcoming of the Internet protocol architecture. The clean slate type of approaches are based on the experience that supplementary or late additions to an original and established design are limited in their acceptance and introduction. Technical examples for evolutionary approaches include supplements to existing Internet technology, such as MobileIP, IPSec, DiffServ, HIP, RSerPool, Shim6 or IPv6. Illustrative examples for alternatives that follow the clean slate idea can be found by using search engines. Since most of the projects are either ongoing, or technically not settled yet, and also to avoid instability or bias of this article towards any of them, none of them are listed or explained here.

Regarding the current status of Future Internet, it seems too early to identify any technical consensus or even standardization. Therefore, the term Future Internet should be used with caution only, especially not as a specific technology but instead as an abstract referrer to the visible, worldwide activities in this direction.

The non-technical aspects of the Future Internet span large areas such as socio-economics, business and environmental issues. The OECD has picked up the term and shown activities such as publishing recommendations for the future of the Internet economy, for example (see the activities section).

The time horizon of Future Internet studies is typically considered to be long term, taking several years before significant results can be expected or corresponding deployments take place in the real world.

Research areas that could be seen as components of the Future Internet include Network management, see Management of the Future Internet, Network virtualization, and an approach called network of information, treating any kind of information as objects, independent of their storage or location.

Implementation plans and activities

While Future Internet is often connotated with the Global Environment for Network Innovations initiatives of the NSF, several other international research programmes have adopted this term. Future Internet Research and Experimentation is a research program funded by the European Union to foster research on the future developments of Internet technology and services. While the list is non-exhaustive, it exemplifies the world wide or national scale, and not on single projects.

* European Future Internet Portal
* FIA - Future Internet Assembly
* EU ICT FP7 Future Internet projects
* Future Internet Research and Experimentation
* FIND - Future Internet network design
* GENI - Global Environment for Network Innovations
* Clean Slate Research Program - Stanford University
* ITU-T Study Group 13 (SG13) on Future Networks including mobile and NGN, focus group FG-FN, Q21/13
* ITFAN Inter-Agency Task Force for Advanced Networking (USA)
* it839/u-it839 (Korea)
* it839/u-it839 and FIF (Future Internet Forum) funded by MIC (Korea) http://www.fif.kr/
* NICTA (Australia)
* ANR (France)
* Groupe de Reflexion Internet du Futur (France)
* G-LAB funded by BMBF (Germany)http://www.german-lab.de/project/
* ICT SHOK (Finland) http://www.futureinternet.fi
* AKARI Project (Japan) http://akari-project.nict.go.jp/eng/index2.htm
* Super Janet funded by EPSRC (UK)
* Plataforma tecnologica española de convergencia hacia IF (Spain) http://www.idi.aetic.es/esInternet/
* Internet del Futuro (Spain) http://www.internetdelfuturo.es
* Ambient Sweden http://www.vinnova.se/upload/EPiStorePDF/AmbientSweden.pdf
* Belgium http://www.ibbt.be
* Luxembourg ttp://www.ipv6council.lu
* Italy http://cit.fbk.eu/future_internet
* Netherlands http://www.futureinternet.ez.nl
* Ireland http://www.futureinternet.ie

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Webvet

WebVet is a website for pet health and wellness news, information and education. All content on the site is "vet-approved" and reviewed on an annual basis to ensure accuracy and timeliness. In addition to providing abstracts on a wide range of pet health topics, users can search the site for symptoms, veterinarians, breeds and pet sitters. WebVet also offers users a place for pet owners to read lifestyle and general interest articles, as well as engage with others who share their interests via blogs and "pet chat".

WebVet also offers social networking and entertainment opportunities to pet owners. For example, they hosted "Birds on Broadway,"a contest allowing owners to submit videos of their birds, which were then displayed on the site allowing visitors to vote on their favorite who then won a cash prize and promotional media opportunities. The contest was created to promote health and wellness in pet birds.

WebVet is financed by private investors, sponsorships and advertising.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Web threat

A web threat is any threat that uses the internet to facilitate cybercrime. Web threats use multiple types of malware and fraud, all of which utilize HTTP or HTTPS protocols, but may also employ other protocols and components, such as links in email or IM, or malware attachments or on servers that access the Web. They benefit cybercriminals by stealing information for subsequent sale and help absorb infected PCs into botnets.

Web threats pose a broad range of risks, including financial damages, identity theft, loss of confidential information/data, theft of network resources, damaged brand/personal reputation, and erosion of consumer confidence in e-commerce and online banking.

Delivery methods

Web threats can be divided into two primary categories, based on delivery method – push and pull. Push-based threats use spam, phishing, or other fraudulent means to lure a user to a malicious (often spoofed) website which then collects information and/or injects malware. Push attacks use phishing, DNS poisoning (or pharming), and other means to appear to originate from a trusted source.

Precisely-targeted push-based web threats are often referred to as spear phishing to reflect the focus of their data gathering attack. Spear phishing typically targets specific individuals and groups for financial gain. In other push-based web threats, malware authors use social engineering such as enticing subject lines that reference holidays, popular personalities, sports, pornography, world events and other hot topics to persuade recipients to open the email and follow links to malicious websites or open attachments with malware that accesses the Web.

Pull-based web threats are often referred to as “drive-by” threats, since they can affect any website visitor. Cybercriminals infect legitimate websites, which unknowingly transmit malware to visitors or alter search results to take users to malicious websites. Upon loading the page, the user’s browser passively runs a malware downloader in a hidden HTML frame (IFRAME) without any user interaction.

Growth of web threats

“And if today’s malware runs mostly runs on Windows because it’s the commonest executable platform, tomorrow’s will likely run on the Web, for the very same reason. Because, like it or not, the Web is already a huge executable platform, and we should start thinking of it this way, from a security perspective.” – Giorgio Maone

The growth of web threats is a result of the popularity of the Web – a relatively unprotected, widely and consistently used medium that is crucial to business productivity, online banking, and e-commerce as well as the everyday lives of people worldwide. The appeal of Web 2.0 applications and websites increases the vulnerability of the Web. Most Web 2.0 applications make use of AJAX, a group of web development programming tools used for creating interactive web applications or rich Internet applications. While users benefit from greater interactivity and more dynamic websites, they are also exposed to the greater security risks inherent in browser client processing.

Examples

In September 2008, malicious hackers broke into several sections of BusinessWeek.com to redirect visitors to malware-hosting websites. Hundreds of pages were compromised with malicious JavaScript pointing to third-party servers.

In August 2008 popular social networking sites were hit by a worm using social engineering techniques to get users to install a piece of malware. The worm installs comments on the sites with links to a fake site. If users follow the link, they are told they need to update their Flash Player. The installer then installs malware rather than the Flash Player. The malware then downloads a rogue anti-spyware application, AntiSpy Spider.

In May 2008 websites worldwide were compromised with a malicious JavaScript. Initially a half million websites worldwide were infected with a SQL injection which leveraged a ZLOB variant which then downloaded additional Trojan onto users’ PCs. Then websites in China, Taiwan and Singapore were compromised followed shortly thereafter by humanitarian, government and news sites in the UK, Israel and Asia. In this attack the compromised websites led, through a variety of redirects, to the download of a Trojan.

Prevention and detection

Conventional approaches have failed to fully protect consumers and businesses from web threats. The most viable approach is to implement multi-layered protection -- protection in the cloud, at the Internet gateway, across network servers and on the client.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Web Sheriff

Web Sheriff is an internet policing company based in the United Kingdom. It acts against media copyright violation by websites, privacy violations, domain name squatting, and illegal websites by sending "take-down" notices.

In the past, artists like Prince and record labels like Domino hired Web Sheriff's services in order to get their copyrighted content removed from websites. Web Sheriff also made a failed attempt to take down a torrent, tracking content copyrighted by The White Stripes, from The Pirate Bay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

WADND

WADND is an acronym for World Association of Domain Name Developers, an organization aimed at promoting the free enterprise development of internet domain traffic, thus increasing the value of the domain names, themselves. The mission of the WADND has been to help enhance the value of domains for a relatively new group of entrepreneurs who have referred to themselves as internet and domain name investors, according to Rick Schwartz, one of the current board members of WADND. The organization, in its mission statement, indicates it is working to promote a more efficient search process for users whilst enhancing domain name values and advertising potential.

WADND functions as an umbrella organization that is working to educate and inform advertisers, search engine companies such as Google and Yahoo! and other entrepreneurs about the specifics of internet traffic, site visits and the impact of using various landing pages to drive traffic to specific sites. The process of utilizing multiple landing pages across several domain names is known as "targeting traffic".

The free ownership of domain names is one of the challenges currently being undertaken by WADND, which filed a federal anti-trust lawsuit against the International Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers, also known as ICANN, and VeriSign, an internet domain name registry. The organization, in the suit, alleges various violations of the Sherman Act and the Cartwright Act, which are laws of the United States designed to prevent corporate monopolies. The suit, succinctly, claims ICANN and VeriSign have intentionally established a global business practice that would prevent free ownership of domains under the .com and .net Top-level domain, and that individuals who privately own such TLD's could be compelled to forfeit ownership rights to their domains. A copy of the WADND lawsuit against ICANN and VeriSign can also be found at the WADND website at http://wadnd.com/Complaint(ver4).pdf.

WADND, through an associated corporation known as TRAFFIC, holds several conventions in various cities across the USA to discuss current internet user trends, advertising trends and legal matters affecting domain owners, including the aforementioned legal suit. TRAFFIC, which stands for Targeted Redirects and Financial Fulfillment Internet Conference, most recently met in Las Vegas, Nevada; Hollywood, Florida; and New York City.

Keynote speakers for the last two conferences included billionaire publisher Steve Forbes, and Jim McCann, founder of 1800Flowers.com, according to the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. website. Late in 2008, the industry's convention will meet at an international venue for the first time, when the organization meets in Australia during November.

Among WADND's board of directors is a former Ohio television news reporter, Ron Jackson, and the former mayor of North Miami, Florida, Howard Neu. Jackson presently operates a domain-industry news channel on the internet, and Neu is a practicing trademark, contract and liability attorney practicing in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Vexi

The Vexi project is an international effort to create an easy-to-use platform for the development and delivery of internet applications.

Origins

The original XWT project brought together most of the current Vexi developers. XWT evolved into the Ibex project. Original estimates for a stable release of Ibex were incredibly optimistic and when Adam Megacz announced that Ibex would not be stable in the foreseeable future, most of the contributors agreed to fork the project and form Vexi.

The initial goal of Vexi was to create a stable version of the XWT/Ibex technologies. Now this has been achieved, the focus is on integrating the improvements made in the old codebase with the new technologies from Ibex.


Companies Using Vexi

Vexi is in production use by several companies around the globe.

Companies currently specialise in developing Vexi applications:

* WEBenableIT (UK)
* Rocket Logic (US)
* Achievement Focused Technology, Inc. (US)
* Health Care Systems (US)

Contributors

Current

* Charles Goodwin (Core layout and widget development)
* Michael Goodwin (New core development)
* Jeff Buhrt (Core debugging)
* Adam Andrews (Core and widget debugging)

Inactive

* Adam Megacz (Original author of everything)
* Brian Alliet (Major core contributor)
* David Crawshaw (Major core contributor)
* Tupshin Harper (Core network code)

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Timeline of popular Internet services

2006

* Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates, tweets, which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

2005

* YouTube is a video sharing website.
* Google Earth is a virtual globe computer program.

2004

* Podcast: A downloadable audio file for listening to on a portable media player. A bit like a radio program that you can save and listen to at your convenience. "Podcast" is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast". Podcasting began to catch hold in late 2004, though the ability to distribute audio and video files easily has been around since before the dawn of the Internet.

2004

* Facebook is a social networking website.
* World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).
* Flickr is a photo/ video sharing website.

2003

* iTunes is an online store which sells music and videos in downloadable form.
* MySpace is a social networking website.
* Second Life is a virtual world.

2001

* Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. One of the best-known wikis.

1998

* The Google website started off as a search engine for the world wide web. Now offers search facilities for all kinds of media such as books, magazines, forums, email, Google Earth.

1996

* Internet Archive is an archive of periodically cached versions of websites.

1995

* Ebay is an auction and shopping website.
* Wiki: A website that anyone can edit.

1994

* Amazon.com is an online retailer, best known for selling books, but now sells all kinds of goods.

* The Yahoo! website started off as a web directory and soon became a webportal offering all kinds of internet services.

1993

* Blog: A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website which resembles an online diary. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Originally hand-coded, there are now blogging tools (a kind of content management system) to facilitate searching and linking to other blogs.

1992

* World Wide Web

1991

* Gopher: A hypertext system which was soon largely replaced by the World Wide Web.

1990

* ARPANET was retired and merged into the NSFNET.

1988

* Internet Relay Chat (IRC): A form of real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message.

1983

* Internet: A global computer network which was created by interconnecting various existing networks with the TCP/IP protocol suite.

1982

* First standardization of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a network transmission standard for the transport of email.

1979

* Usenet: A distributed threaded discussion and file sharing system; a collection of forums known as newsgroups, that was a precursor to today's web-based forums. One notable difference from a BBS or web forum is that there is no central system owner. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers which store and forward messages to one another.

1978

* MUD: First real-time, multi-player MUD adventure game was developed by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex University, England.

1973

* E-mail: First proposal for standardization of electronic mail message format in RFC 561.

1971

* FTP: File Transfer Protocol

1969

* Telnet: A system for logging in, over a network, to a computer situated in another location.

1960s

* Email: Electronic mail applications are developed on timesharing main frame computers for communication between system users.


http://en.wikipedia.org/

Sharelin

Sharelin is a terminal peer-to-peer file sharing client for Unix derivated operating systems. It operates on the Gnutella2 network. The project is based on SourceForge.net and was established in 2008. It is since under active development. Features of the Gnutella2 (G2) network similar to those of Shareaza are being ported. It features a web UI to allow to control it via a web browser, which makes operation and maintenance possible in the various graphical environments commonly used in different Linux distributions.



The creator and author Sharelin is "Sav", one of the developers of the Shareaza project. At the beginning, the idea behind Sharelin was to help Shareaza and the G2 network by allowing to upload and download files from unix based servers. The latest information about the project are posted on the Shareaza forums and on the Sharelin homepage.

A small part of its code is based on Shareaza. This justifies the similarity of the names of both clients, however there are barely 100 lines of code borrowed from Shareaza. The whole G2 networking code has been written from scratch, hashing and base32/64 implementations use code borrowed from various sources licensed under the GPL or similar free licenses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Shareaza

Shareaza is a peer-to-peer file sharing client which supports the Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey Network, BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP network protocols and handles magnet links, ed2k links, Piolet links, and the now deprecated Gnutella links. It is available in 30 languages.

Shareaza was developed by Michael Stokes until June 1, 2004, and is now maintained by a group of volunteers. On 1 June 2004, Shareaza 2.0 was released, along with the source code, under the GNU General Public License (GPL), making it free software. The latest version, released on October 1, 2008, is 2.4.0.0. The next version (2.4.1.0), a v2.5 release candidate, is planned for release around 1st October, 2009, followed by 2.5.0.0 a month later.



History

In mid 2002, Stokes released the first version of a Gnutella client he had written and dubbed "Shareaza". It was from the beginning a client with the aim of having features other Gnutella clients did not have. Over the next two years Stokes coded in support for the eDonkey 2000 network, BitTorrent and a rewritten Gnutella-based protocol which he named Gnutella2.

On June 1, 2004, Stokes released the Shareaza source code under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (which coincided with the release of Shareaza version 2.0). It was the third big filesharing application (after LimeWire and Gnucleus) to become truly open software on the Gnutella network and moved Gnutella clients towards of open source development.

Since the beginning, Shareaza was advertised as "completely free. No ads, no spyware, no guilting you to upgrade to a commercial version", stating that the developers " stand that kind of crap." It has remained as such in each subsequent release.

The original version of the client featured swarming, metadata, library management, automatic file hashing, and numerous other features, which all remain in the client to this day and are extended and improved at each release.

Domain takeover

On 19 December 2007, the project's domain name, shareaza.com, was redirected to an unrelated site, promoting the download of a client known as Shareaza V4(now V6). As a result, the Shareaza team were forced to move their home page to SourceForge.net.

Starting 1 January 2008, the current domain owner, Discordia LTD., takes advantage of the automatic update feature built into versions prior to 2.3.1.0 of the original Shareaza to suggest to users that ShareazaV4 is an update to open source Shareaza. This vulnerability was fixed in Shareaza 2.3.1.0, released on January 3. It is the last stable version of Shareaza that will support Windows 9x.

Yahoo, which uses SiteAdvisor to filter their search results, no longer lists domain shareaza.com due to it being listed by SiteAdvisor as a security risk. Other website rating services, such as WOT (Web of Trust), also rate Shareaza.com as dangerous.

Attempted trademark registration

On January 10, 2008, the new owners of Shareaza.com, Discordia Ltd (iMesh Inc.), filed for trademark registration of the Shareaza name in an attempt to stop the original developers from using the name, claiming that the first-ever use was on December 17, 2007. The Shareaza Development Team have obtained legal representation to challenge the registration and a legal defense fund has been set up.

Current release

The latest release of Shareaza is v2.4.0.0, released on October 01, 2008, with many bug fixes and major changes to provide better stability of the client. It is also the first stable release to include IRC support. Furthermore, major changes to the torrent handling mechanism have been made and Windows 98/Me support has been discontinued (the last version which works on Windows 9x is 2.3.1.0).

Loss of pantheraproject.net

After the loss of shareaza.com, the project moved to pantheraproject.net, where it was rebuilt and maintained by the Shareaza community. On June 11, 2009 the pantheraproject.net domain was sabotaged by William Shields Erwin , who had been the administrator of the community forum and posted by the name of 'Rhythm'. As a result of his actions the contents of the website have been changed to mimic the Discordia owned Shareaza.com domain. William Erwin also attempted to sabotage parts of the project that were hosted on SourceForge, but they were restored shortly after by the SourceForge staff and he was banned from the project. On June 15, 2009 the forums were reinstated. The pantheraproject.net domain is no longer related to the Shareaza project and its community.

Features



Multi-network

Shareaza is able to connect to Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey and BitTorrent. Shareaza hashes its files for all networks, and then distributes those hash values on G2. This allows Shareaza to download one file from several networks at once. When another Shareaza client, connected to G2, finds such a file, it is given the hash values for all networks and can search on the other networks with their respective hash values, which increases the number of sources and therefore also increases the download speed of the respective file. Shareaza also uses its G2 network to find more sources for torrents.

Security filter

The Shareaza client has some basic content filters including a forced child and optional adult pornography filter, and some other optional filters such as a filter for files protected with Digital rights management (DRM). Shareaza's security filters can also be extended with user-defined keywords and/or IP addresses. Latest versions of Shareaza allow for the use of regular expressions and filtering by hash. These filters increase the chances of getting the files the user wants and decrease the chance of getting malicious or fake files. The file format used for the filters is an extendable XML schema. The filters are editable inside Shareaza, or with any external text editor, and can be exported from the application to be shared with others.

Plugins

Shareaza implements a framework for additional plugins. The Shareaza installer ships several plugins. Most of them are used to read and strip off built in metadata from the files being hashed and convert it to an external XML based format, or to decode multimedia files for making a preview for other G2 clients. Some others serve the need of a media player inside Shareaza, and enhancements of that media player. Third party plugins can also be used, for example, Sharemonkey, which will add a link inside Shareaza when downloading or searching copyrighted material from where it can be legally downloaded.

Skins

The client can have almost all parts of the GUI skinned. This includes bars, icons, as well as backgounds and buttons. In that way, Shareaza can be completely changed with colors, images, new buttons, etc. A basic list of skins is contained in the Shareaza installer package. Other skins can be downloaded in the community forums or found via a search for .sks (Shareaza skin files) in the Gnutella2 network. The skins are zip archives, renamed with the extension .sks, containing icons and images, as well as an XML file which binds the images and colors with the GUI.

This feature is also used for localization. The language files are XML files, like the normal skins, but not zipped. The XML file contains the translations for a certain part of the program. This enables languages to be easily changed, updated and tested without compiling an entire binary.

Modes

Shareaza contains 3 user modes. The first one is for normal users. This mode is the default mode and provides a clean, trimmed GUI. Users will not be able to heavily change the settings in this mode, but will be able to make use of the most essential functions, like searching and downloading. The second mode is for power users. It provides more access to network and advanced settings, but can also break your connection to the networks. The third mode is the windowed mode. In this mode, users can see different tabs (windows) simultaneously, providing a lot of control about the things happening. This mode also makes it possible to personalize the look of the client to perfectly fit the needs of the respective user.

Awards

In November 2008, Shareaza was featured on SourceForge as Project of the Month.

Shareaza for Linux

Sharelin is stable working client like Shareaza for Linux, it is under development still. Currently there is not known clone for Linux with ported all features of Shareaza.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

The Food Channel

The Food Channel (not affiliated with Food Network) is a consumer Web site with food recipes, news, reviews and advice. The site compiles information to produce food industry trends and aims to be a gateway for all things food.

Site content is separated into four categories: recipes, articles, blogs and videos. Recipes are created by The Food Channel chefs, as well as recipes from featured cookbooks. Content for the site is generated by a team of editors and the chefs of The Food Channel. Food bloggers also contribute content to the site.

History

The Food Channel began as a newsletter in the 1980s, predicted and reported trends in the food industry. The newsletter was published 23 times per year by Noble Communications (formerly Noble and Associates).

The Web site was launched January 21, 2008 by Noble Communications under the direction of CEO Bob Noble. Headquartered in Springfield, Missouri, the site was in Beta version for about one year, in which time new site features were tested and added. On January 22, 2009, the Web site finished Beta testing.

While in Beta stage, The Food Channel was nominated for the "We Love This Site" Web Award by the blogging site DivineCaroline.com .

Trends

The Food Channel compiles information to spot industry trends. Using information gathered by The Food Channel and Noble's CultureWaves team, food industry trends are analyzed and reported on the site. In late 2008, the site released the Top Ten Food Trends of 2009. Developed by The Food Channel, with contributions from Neemee and the International Food Futurists, the list identifies the significant food movements for consumers, food service professionals and manufacturers

Food Widgets

In October of 2008, the site introduced a food recipe Web widget. The widget provides users with daily recipes created by the site's chefs or provided by partner sites. The recipe widget is a follow up to the food trends widget introduced one month prior. The widget is a box consisting of nine round buttons which display different content when scrolled over. The widget is used by a regional publication with a network of 90 magazines

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Sociology of the Internet

Sociology of the Internet or sociology of cyberspace explores the social implications of the Internet, new social networks, online societies (virtual communities) and social interaction on the Internet.

The Internet—the newest in the series of major information breakthroughs—is of interest for sociologists in various ways: as a tool for research, for example, in using online questionnaires instead of paper ones, as a discussion platform, and as a research topic. Sociology of the Internet in the last sense includes analysis of online communities (e.g. as found in newsgroups), virtual communities and virtual worlds, organizational change catalyzed through new media like the Internet, and social change at-large in the transformation from industrial to informational society (or to information society). Online communities can be studied statistically through network analysis and at the same time interpreted qualitatively, such as through virtual ethnography. Social change can be studied through statistical demographics or through the interpretation of changing messages and symbols in online media studies.

Emergence of the discipline

The Internet is a relatively new phenomenon. As Robert Darnton wrote, it is a revolutionary change that however "took place yesterday, or the day before, depending on how you measure it." The Internet developed from the ARPANET, dating back to 1969; as a term it was coined in 1974. The World Wide Web as we know it was shaped in early 1990s, when graphical interface and services like email became popular and reached wider (non-scientific and non-military) audiences and commerce.Internet Explorer was first released in 1995; Netscape a year earlier. Google was founded in 1998. Over time, the amount of information available on the net and the number of Internet users worldwide has continued to grow quickly.

Research trends

According to DiMaggio et al. (2001), research tends to focus on the Internet's implications in five domains:

1. inequality (the issues of digital divide)
2. community and social capital (the issues of time displacement)
3. political participation (the issues of public sphere, deliberative democracy and civil society)
4. organizations and other economic institutions
5. cultural participation and cultural diversity

After an early period in which there were predictions that the Internet will change everything (or nothing), a consensus has emerged that the Internet tends to complement rather than displace existing media. In the end, the Internet still offers a valuable opportunity to study changes wrought by the newly emerged - and still evolving - communication technology.

Social impact

The Internet has made possible entirely new forms of social interaction, activities and organizing, thanks to its basic features such as widespread usability and access.

Social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace have created a new form of socialization and interaction. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of items to their personal pages, to indicate common interests, and to connect with others. It is also possible to find a large circle of existing acquaintances, especially if a site allows users to utilize their real names, and to allow communication among large existing groups of people.

Sites like meetup.com exist to allow wider announcement of groups which may exist mainly for face-to-face meetings, but which may have a variety of minor interactions over their group's site at meetup.org, or other similar sites.

Political organization and censorship

In democratic societies, the Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool. The presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004 in the United States became famous for its ability to generate donations via the Internet. Many political groups use the Internet to achieve a whole new method of organizing, in order to carry out Internet activism.

Some governments, such as those of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, the People's Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia, restrict what people in their countries can access on the Internet, especially political and religious content. This is accomplished through software that filters domains and content so that they may not be easily accessed or obtained without elaborate circumvention.

In Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily (possibly to avoid such an arrangement being turned into law) agreed to restrict access to sites listed by police.

Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws making the possession or distribution of certain material, such as child pornography, illegal, but do not use filtering software.

There are many free and commercially available software programs with which a user can choose to block offensive websites on individual computers or networks, such as to limit a child's access to pornography or violence. See Content-control software.

Leisure activities

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas.

The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other websites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity.

One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet.

While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, to which players of games would typically subscribe. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games.

Many use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. As discussed above, there are paid and unpaid sources for all of these, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Discretion is needed as some of these sources take more care over the original artists' rights and over copyright laws than others.

Many use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book holidays and to find out more about their random ideas and casual interests.

People use chat, messaging and e-mail to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking websites like MySpace, Facebook and many others like them also put and keep people in contact for their enjoyment.

The Internet has seen a growing number of Web desktops, where users can access their files, folders, and settings via the Internet.

Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing the Web at work, according to a study by Peninsula Business Services.

Socially Identifiable Groups/Individuals

The Internet has given rise to a new sense of individualism much like the Renaissance. However what has categorized the Internet's individualism is its grouping and collectivisation of like-mindedness or 'Super individualism' (the state of socializing with groups of the same or similar interests). An emergent socialisation of this individualism has arisen akin to Social isolation. Traditional media has categorized this both positively and pejoratively, a most notorious example of this type of behaviour has been the Bridgend Suicides, where the internet was seen as decisive in forming a like-minded group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Sleep emailing

Sleep emailing is described as an episode of somnambulism, more commonly known as sleepwalking, in which the patient writes an email after turning the computer on, connecting to the Internet and remembering the password to access the email account.

The first recorded case of Internet use while asleep was recorded in December 2008, when research staff from the University of Toledo published a report regarding a 44-year-old woman who, in her sleep, turned on her computer, connected to the Internet and sent three emails. The report appeared in the medical journal Sleep Medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Session management

In human-computer interaction, session management is the process of keeping track of a user's activity across sessions of interaction with the computer system.

Typical session management tasks in a desktop environment might include keeping track of which applications are open and which documents each application has opened, so that the same state can be restored when the user logs out and logs in later. For a website, session management might involve requiring the user to re-login if the session has expired (i.e., a certain time limit has passed without user activity).

Desktop session management

Desktop session manager is a program that can save and restore desktop sessions. A desktop session is all the windows currently running and their current content. Session manager on Linux-based systems is provided by X session manager . On Microsoft Windows systems, no session manager is included in the system. Session management is provided by third-party applications like twinsplay.

A full description of Session Management under X Window-based systems is on the X session manager page.

Browser session management

Session management is particularly useful in a web browser where a user can save all open pages and settings and restore them at a later date. To help recover from a system or application crash, pages and settings can also be restored on next run. OmniWeb and Opera are examples of web browsers that support session management. Other modern browsers such as Mozilla Firefox support session management through third-party plugins or extensions. Session management is often managed through the application of cookies.

Web server session management

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is stateless: a client computer running a web browser must establish a new Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) network connection to the web server with each new HTTP GET or POST request. The web server, therefore, cannot rely on an established TCP network connection for longer than a single HTTP GET or POST operation. Session management is the technique used by the web developer to make the stateless HTTP protocol support session state. For example, once a user has authenticated herself to the web server, her next HTTP request (GET or POST) should not cause the web server to ask her for her account and password again. For a discussion of the methods used to accomplish this please see HTTP cookie.

The session information is stored on the web server using the session identifier (session ID) generated as a result of the first (sometimes the first authenticated) request from the end user running a web browser. The "storage" of session IDs and the associated session data (user name, account number, etc.) on the web server is accomplished using a variety of techniques including, but not limited to: local memory, flat files, and databases.

In situations where multiple web servers must share knowledge of session state (as is typical in a cluster environment—see computer cluster) session information must be shared between the cluster nodes that are running web server software. Methods for sharing session state between nodes in a cluster include: multicasting session information to member nodes (see JGroups for one example of this technique), sharing session information with a partner node using distributed shared memory or memory virtualization, sharing session information between nodes using network sockets, storing session information on a shared file system such as the network file system or the global file system, or storing the session information outside the cluster in a database.

If session information is considered transient, volatile data that is not required for non-repudiation of transactions and doesn't contain data that is subject to compliance auditing (in the U.S. for example, see the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for examples of two laws that necessitate compliance auditing) then any method of storing session information can be used. However, if session information is subject to audit compliance, consideration should be given to the method used for session storage, replication, and clustering.

In a service oriented architecture Simple Object Access Protocol or SOAP messages constructed with Extensible Markup Language (XML) messages can be used by consumer applications to cause web servers to create sessions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

SIX

SIX (Slovak Internet eXchange) is a Slovak internet exchange point, established at the Center of Computer Technology of Slovak University of Technology (SUT). As of April 2009[update], the SIX interconnects 47 ISPs operating in the Slovak Republic, and has a peak traffic rate of 23.5 Gbit/s, making it the most significant exchange point in Slovakia.

Information

* Location: Bratislava, Slovakia
* Interconnection points: 2
* Connected ISPs : 47
* Average peak data transmission: 20 Gbit/s
* Founded: 1996

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Rural Internet

Rural Internet is the access to the Internet from rural areas (also referred to as "the country" or "countryside"), which are settled places outside towns and cities. Inhabitants live in villages, hamlets, on farms and in other isolated houses.

Mountains and other geographic accidents can impede rural Internet access.

Most rural access to Internet is voiceband by 56k modem. Methods for broadband Internet access include:

* Mobile Internet (broadband if HSPA or higher)
* Power-line Internet
* Satellite Internet
* ADSL loop extender

In the United States

The United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service has provided numerous studies and data on the Internet in rural America. One such article from the Agricultural Outlook magazine, Communications & the Internet in Rural America, summarizes internet uses in rural areas of the United States in 2002. It indicates, "Internet use by rural and urban households has also increased significantly during the 1990s, so significantly that it has one of the fastest rates of adoption for any household service."

Another area for inclusion of the Internet is American farming. One study reviewed data from 2003 and found that "56 percent of farm operators used the Internet while 31 percent of rural workers used it at their place of work." In later years challenges to economical rural telecommunications remain. People in inner city areas are closer together, so the access network to connect them is shorter and cheaper to build and maintain, while rural areas require more equipment per customer. However, even with this challenge the demand for services continues to grow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

One-to-one (communication)

One-to-one in communication is the act of an individual communicating with another. In Internet terms, this can be done by e-mail but the most typical one-to-one communication in the Internet is instant messaging as it does not consider many-to-many communication such as a chat room as an essential part of its scope (however, this may be disputed as instant messaging includes announcing presence information, which may be considered a part of a many-to-many communication system).

One to One also referred to the business movement during Web 1.0 which leveraged database technology for targeting products, ads, and services to specific users with particular profile attributes. The concept was supported by technologies such as BroadVision, ATG, and BEA. Amazon is a classic example of a company that performs "One to One Marketing" by offering users targeted offers and related products. Personalization is the term that later followed as a way of describing this evolution in Internet marketing. Drew Bartkiewicz and Bill Zujewski were two of the biggest industry advocates of the benefits and feasibility of One to One and later of personalization. Dr. Pehong Chen was the technologist who founded the software company, BroadVision, which enabled large companies to personalize their e-Business initiatives in the pursuit of One to One Marketing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Next Generation Internet

Next Generation Internet refers to a number of projects intended to improve Internet performance and/or content quality in regions of various sizes and location.

* China Next Generation Internet (CNGI), a five-year plan initiated by the Chinese government with the purpose of gaining a significant position in cyberspace through the early adoption of IPv6.
* Next Generation Internet Program (NGI), a United States Government project proposed in 1996 and completed in 2002.
* NGI-NZ Society, a group consisting mainly of educational or research institutions to promote New Zealand research, innovation and educational works are well represented in next-generation technologies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/

Network mapping

Network mapping or Internet mapping is the study of the physical connectivity of the Internet. Network mapping determines the servers and the operating systems run on them of internet-connected networks. It is not to be confused with the remote discovery of which characteristics a computer may possess (operating system, open ports, listening network services, etc), an activity which is called network enumerating and is more akin to penetration testing.



Large-scale mapping project

Images of some of the first attempts at a large scale map of the internet were produced by the Internet Mapping Project and appeared in Wired magazine. The maps produced by this project were based on the layer 3 or IP level connectivity of the Internet (see OSI model), but there are different aspects of internet structure that have also been mapped.

More recent efforts to map the internet have been improved by more sophisticated methods, allowing them to make faster and more sensible maps. An example of such an effort is the OPTE project, which is attempting to develop a system capable of mapping the internet in a single day.

The "Map of the Internet Project" maps over 4 billion internet locations as cubes in 3D cyberspace. Users can add URLs as cubes and re-arrange objects on the map.

Graph theory can be used to better understand maps of the internet and to help choose between the many ways to visualize internet maps. Some projects have attempted to incorporate geographical data into their internet maps (for example, to draw locations of routers and nodes on a map of the world), but others are only concerned with representing the more abstract structures of the internet, such as the allocation, structure, and purpose of IP space.

Enterprise Network mapping

Many organization create network maps of their network system. These maps can be made manually using simple tools such as Microsoft Visio, or the mapping process can be simplified by using tools that integrate auto network discovery with Network mapping. Many of the vendors from the Notable network Mappers list enable you to cusomize the maps and include your own labels, add un-discoverable items and background images. Sophisticated mapping is used to help visualize the network and understand relationships between end devices and the transport layers that provide service. Items such as bottlenecks and root cause analysis can be easier to spot using these tools.

There are three main techniques used for network mapping: SNMP based approaches, Active Probing and Route analytics.

The SNMP based approach retrieves data from Router and Switch MIBs in order to build the network map. The Active Probing approach relies on a series of traceroute-like probe packets in order to build the network map. The Route analytics approach relies on information from the routing protocols to build the network map. Each of the three approaches have advantages and disadvantages in the methods that they use.

Mapping Techniques

There are two prominent techniques used today to create Internet maps. The first works on the data plane of the Internet and is called active probing. It is used to infer Internet Topology based on router adjacencies. The second works on the control plane and infers autonomous system connectivity based on BGP data.

Active Probing

This technique relies on traceroute-like probing on the IP address space. These probes report back IP forwarding paths to the destination address. By combining these paths one can infer router level topology for a given POP. Active probing is advantageous in that the paths returned by probes constitute the actual forwarding path that data takes through networks. It is also more likely to find peering links between ISP's. However, active probing requires massive amounts of probes to map the entire Internet. It is more likely to infer false topologies due to load balancing routers and routers with multiple IP address aliases. Decreased global support for enhanced probing mechanisms such as source-route probing,ICMP Echo Broadcasting, and IP Address Resolution techniques leaves this type of probing in the realm of network diagnosis.

AS PATH Inference

This technique relies on various BGP collectors who collect routing updates and tables and provide this information publicly. Each BGP entry contains a Path Vector attribute called the AS Path. This path represents an autonomous system forwarding path from a given origin for a given set of prefixes. These paths can be used to infer AS-level connectivity and in turn be used to build AS topology graphs. However, these paths do not necessarily reflect how data is actually forwarded and adjacencies between AS nodes only represent a policy relationship between them. A single AS link can in reality be several router links. It is also much harder to infer peerings between two AS nodes as these peering relationships are only propagated to an ISP's customer networks. Nevertheless, support for this type of mapping is increasing as more and more ISP's offer to peer with public route collectors such as Route-Views and RIPE. New toolsets are emerging such as Cyclops and NetViews that take advantage of a new experimental BGP collector BGPMon. NetViews can not only build topology maps in seconds but visualize topology changes moments after occurring at the actual router. Hence, routing dynamics can be visualized in real time.

Notable network mappers

Notable network mapping software includes:

* HP OpenView
* Lumeta
* Nmap
* OPNET NetMapper
* PacketTrap
* Qualsys
* Scrutinizer
* Solana Networks
* SolarWinds
* Whats Up Gold

http://en.wikipedia.org/