There are various types of network problems that occur in an organization,which results in inaccessible devices,performance degradation, etc.These can be classified as:

Network Hardware failure : Includes faulty devices like switches,Ethernet cards,improper cabling etc.

Network configuration problems : Includes issues related to improper configuration of protocols

Malicious code : Includes issues as a result of the presence of worms/viruses on the network

In order to troubleshoot network problems from scratch you need to start checking by hardware – ie,physically check network cabling,network cables crossovers over electric cables,quality of switches routers etc. If the problem lies in the hardware this method of tracking is reasonably straightforward.

However,If the issue is related to any network configuration/malicious code then it will be more difficult to check out the issue. This is because there are a variety of different devices present on the network. In your network there will be different operating systems with various protocols,firewalls,routers,switches etc. Troubleshooting start with monitoring traffic continuously over a period of time to find the root cause of the issue. Monitoring should cover various parameters like protocols being used,bandwidth utilization etc. In this scenario,a good reliable network monitoring tool becomes a must to pinpoint such issues.

There are various network monitoring tools available on the Linux platform,one such simple network monitoring choice is Ntop. It is a very effective way to monitor the network, and has various functions from packet capture to displaying an analysis of the captures in a Web browser, in different modules:

*Packet capture : Ntop captures packets from predefined network interface and buffers them, and thus it reduces the possibility of packet drops.

*Packet analyzer: Ntop analyzes the packets one at a time, to extract various information like host’s operating system, a record of when the host appeared on the network for the first time,address resolution etc. All these information are cached and stored in an SQL database.

*Network flow measurement: This means matching captured packets with a predefined rule or criterion

*Plugins : Various plugins can be enabled or disabled at startup or from the web interface

*Webserver :All the captured,analyzed and measured information is displayed on a web page for easy navigation and inspection. By default,Ntop webserver runs on port 3000 for HTTP connections. Authentication is required to access data.

There are two modes of operation. It displays the network status on the users terminal when using interactive mode and in web mode it acts as a web server,creating a HTML dump of the network status.

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Hardware failures can lock up your system; no matter how stable the Linux kernel is. This topic finds a solution to the issues such as  the cursor doesn’t even move in X, Ctrl + Alt + Backspace or Ctrl + Alt + F1 and the likes don’t seem to work anymore, maybe even Num Lock doesn’t turn on and off when you press the button. Rebooting is the only option if you ever encounter this issue. This piece of work describes a way to reboot your system that will do things like terminating all processes, syncing the remounting the disks, in order to prevent damage as much as possible. This can save you from data loss.

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Choosing a control panel that suits your business requirements is important. Cpanel/WHM and Plesk both are very rich featured control panels but they are organized completely differently. In fact these two are the most dominant control panels on the web hosting market. This article will help you to choose between cpanel and plesk as it narrates both pros and cons of each control panel.

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As most of the mobile applications used today contain open source, 70% fail to comply with their  respective licenses. From a recent survey conducted by OpenLogic, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise open source software support, announced that 71% of Android, iPhone, and iPad apps containing open source failed to comply with basic open source licensing requirements. They scanned 635 leading mobile  applications in order to identify open source components and evaluate compliance with the relevant licenses.

Applications that contain open source components are required to comply with the rules of all relevant licenses, such as the GPL or Apache license. Applications that fail to comply may be subject to legal action or removal from app stores.Non-compliance with open source licenses is typically not purposeful, but rather caused by a lack of awareness and visibility into open source usage.

Very often developers and the companies bringing out new mobile software are not aware of open source and its constraints or might not even know that an app is using open source while open source compliance is not at all difficult. App developers need to pay attention to open source license compliance to ensure their apps are not impacted by legal actions.

Google Alerts were available from long back. Many of us have forgotten that it still exists.  It provides email updates, so the latest appropriate Google results (web, news, blog, videos, discussions etc.) based on your search keywords.

When you type query that you like to monitor, you will see a preview of the same.

You can use Google Alerts to:

• Monitor a unfolding news story
• Keep updated on your competitor(s) or any industry
• Get the latest news about events

Article Authored by Rosemary J Thomas
Author, Rosemary J Thomas, is the Business Development Executive with SupportPRO.
SupportPRO offers 24X7 technical support services to Web hosting companies and service providers.