Well, there is something you should realize. Working from home while using a wireless local area network (WLAN) may lead to theft of sensitive information and hacker or virus infiltration unless proper measures are taken. As WLANs send information over radio waves, someone with a receiver in your area could be picking up the transmission, thus gaining access to your computer. They could load viruses on to your laptop which could be transferred to the company’s network when you go back to work.

Believe it or not! Up to 75 per cent of WLAN users do not have standard security features installed, while 20 per cent are left completely open as default configurations are not secured, but made for the users to have their network up and running ASAP. It is recommended that wireless router/access point setup be always done though a wired client.

You can setup your security by follow these steps:

1. Change default administrative password on wireless router/access point to a secured password.

2. Enable at least 128-bit WEP encryption on both card and access point. Change your WEP keys periodically. If equipment does not support at least 128-bit WEP encryption, consider replacing it. Although there are security issues with WEP, it represents minimum level of security, and it should be enabled.

3. Change the default SSID on your router/access point to a hard to guess name. Setup your computer device to connect to this SSID by default.

4. Setup router/access point not to broadcast the SSID. The same SSID needs to be setup on the client side manually. This feature may not be available on all equipment.

5. Block anonymous Internet requests or pings. On each computer having wireless network card, network connection properties should be configured to allow connection to Access Point Networks Only. Computer to Computer (peer to peer) Connection should not be allowed.

Enable MAC filtering. Deny association to wireless network for unspecified MAC addresses. Mac or Physical addresses are available through your computer device network connection setup and they are physically written on network cards. When adding new wireless cards / computer to the network, their MAC addresses should be registered with the router /access point. Network router should have firewall features enabled and demilitarized zone (DMZ) feature disabled.

All computers should have a properly configured personal firewall in addition to a hardware firewall. You should also update router/access point firmware when new versions become available. Locating router/access point away from strangers is also helpful so they cannot reset the router/access point to default settings. You can even try to locate router/access point in the middle of the building rather than near windows to limit signal coverage outside the building.

There is no guarantee of a full protection of your wireless network, but following these suggested tips can definitely lessen your risk of exposing to attackers aiming at insecure networks.

How To Secure Your Wireless Network is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

Low fee fast online payday loans may be gotten with the help the banking establishment, but they may not really be as fast as some of the other alternatives. Banking institutions may want documented verification of your savings, wage, and they might probably do a credit history inspection to see whether you are a “perilous” customer to have deals with. For example it is as well complicated to get payday loans in the banking organization because you might desire quite low sum. The aim of the bank agent is to talk you into different other offers and banking cards that will need to be paid on protracted base, and not some short termed loans that you will pay back completely during your ensuing wage.

You might get payday loan from a number of various locations, though certain establishments and handling times will definitely be much quicker than others. You are able to appeal to a regional hockshop, surf online through a number of payday loan proposals or appeal to the banking institution with the attempt to receive the loan. The fastest method of obtaining your emergency funds is to log on line application and obtain the loan in a matter of minutes. Though eventually the decision is yours and it is going to depend upon your individual state and the kind of funds emergency you are now undergoing.

The easiness of the online application is cheering and you may realize the processes of payday loans very quickly. You have to choose a creditor, complete the form and wait for confirmation. Payday loans have been specially created so that they are as simple as possible, and the on-line application can be completed within few minutes. And now you know all the feasible methods and understand that online bargain will save your nerves and time.

In which Manner Will You Obtain Payday Loans? is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

The New England Journal of Medicine recently revealed that a 2000 article on Vioxx “omitted information about heart attacks among patients taking the drug. The deletions were made by someone working from a Merck computer.” A 1999 “publications strategy” prepared for Pfizer by a WPP Group agency listed 81 proposed articles, promoting Zoloft for everything from “panic disorder to pedophilia.” One physiologist hired by Elsevier’s Excerpta Medica says she was asked to “slant” a 2002 paper in favor of a Johnson & Johnson drug. Many journals ask for disclosure, but say their ability to weed out ghostwriters is limited. “I don’t give lie-detector tests,” the Journal of the American Medical Association’s chief editor told the Wall Street Journal.

Applications may be submitted in various categories to be determined. Each category has seven author classifications: family physicians and fellows primarily in academic medicine, family physicians primarily in clinical practice, family practice residents, medical students, international attendees, professionals primarily engaged in medical informatics and others.

Estimates suggest that almost half of all articles published in journals are by ghostwriters. While doctors who have put their names to the papers can be paid handsomely for ‘lending’ their reputations, the ghostwriters remain hidden. They, and the involvement of the pharmaceutical firms, are rarely revealed.

While many studies have shown that cyber-records can reduce errors, improve care and lower costs, the medical community is moving too slowly to adopt the new technology. Providers are loath to change their record-keeping ways because of concerns about the expense, fears about software glitches and a mind-set against radical departures in treating patients.

One important contribution of the current paper is to update the prior econometric work to the current managed care and policy environment, using a nationwide sample of medical groups responding to two surveys (1997 data) of the Medical Group Management Association: The Compensation and Production Survey and the Cost Survey. Second, the rich data set provided by the MGMA surveys allows us to account for the role of a variety of potential productivity “drivers” within the medical group: ownership form, presence of monitoring mechanisms, size of the group, physician specialty mix, and individual physician characteristics. Third, this research examines a wider range of ownership forms and specialty types of medical group practice-non-primary care single-specialty groups, primary care groups, and multispecialty groups–than previous empirical studies of physician productivity.

In contrast, the analyses of Gaynor and Pauly (1990) and Gaynor and Gertler (1995) were restricted to primary care groups and the partners hip form of practice. Fourth, by virtue of the broader array of specialty groups in the MGMA sample, the current study will be able to distinguish differential responses to financial incentives and organization design features among primary care physicians (PCPs), medical specialists, and surgical specialists.

Tag: Medical Paper

Applications medical paper submitted in various categories to be determined. is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

And if you remember those days of the late 70s and early 80s, you recall that the games relied on graphic improvements and better ways of shooting the enemy. It was more or less a solitary pursuit. With the rise of the Internet and online games however, lots of things changed, including the ability to download games and playing online games, making games a more social activity, with lots of players, or opponents playing each other from different countries. This may be the biggest change and the latest benefit that games have offered the world.

But what about the early days? How did it all start and what were the video games that defined the era?

The Innovators

Many people think that Pong was the home game that started it all, but really it was Magnavox and their “Odyssey” system in 1972. Although it was very simple, it was still the first. It had twelve simple games with graphic overlays. However, there was lots of room for improvement, and thats where Pong came into play.

Nolan Bushnell created Pong, along with Al Alcorn, the founder of Atari. Rumor has it that when the prototype was tested at a California bar, the machine broke down after two days, because it was so popular. The next logical step was to create a home version. So, one year later, Atari released Pong, complete with built in paddles, and a speaker. Of course, Pong was a huge success and represented a new stage in the evolution of gaming. Over sixty Pong knock-offs would be produced, but Atari dominated the market.

Next was the implementation of the microprocessor, which the entire industry adopted. As a result of this, more complicated systems could be developed. These systems produced groundbreaking and innovative graphical and auditory effects that had never been seen before. Consumers were eating it up. The industry was on fire. In 1981 alone, five billion dollars were spent on video arcade machines and another billion dollars was spent on home video game systems. Ataris VCS/2600 system remained the dominant player through 1982, when the gaming market experienced a crash.

What were some of the great games? How about Pac Man? Pac Man, the yellow blob that ate up dots and avoided squid-like ghosts, was a worldwide sensation and probably the biggest game of all time.

Space Invaders was another incredibly popular game. In fact, it really marked a turning point for arcade games, bringing them out of bars and into family friendly places like shops and restaurants. The premise of Space Invaders was to stop an alien invasion. This simple formula went on to become the most successful arcade game of all time.

Then there was Super Mario, which was huge as well. It involved an Italian anti-hero who was deliberately designed as a character that everyone could relate to. Soon thereafter came Zelda, Metroid, and other classics.

Rise and Fall of Atari

Atari was the hottest thing in the gaming world in the early 80s. Today, they are a relic of past glory. So what happened? Atari made some bad decisions, and although its a little complicated, its helpful to understand the situation. At that time in the computing world, magnetic mediums were implemented in the data storage used in Arcade machines. These mediums allowed for a higher memory capacity than ROM cartridges.

In 1982, Atari had the option to include a disk drive in their systems. The price difference would have been nominal, and the memory capacity would have been significant. Atari, however, thought that magnetic media was too fragile for the consumer to adequately handle. Atari’s “concern” for the customer backfired on them. In the previous years, there had been a very fine line separating arcade game quality from home game quality. With arcades utilizing storage capacities ten to forty-five times larger than home systems that fine line became a chasm. Arcade games seemed to be evolving exponentially, while home systems seemed “stuck in a time warp.

The public quickly became uninterested in video game specific consoles, and sales plummeted.
This would mark the end of Atari’s reign of the video game market.

The Rise of the New

In 1984, everything changed. The reason? Two innovations: The reduction in cost of Dynamic RAM (DRAM) chips which allowed more memory, and the production of higher power 8-bit processors, which lowered the prices of the previous chips. Sega, a new player in home gaming systems, entered the console market with their Master System 2. The Sega Master system would sell very well, but its success would be limited.

The other key player was Nintendo of Japan. The genius of Nintendo was their marketing prowess, as they poured millions into advertisements. These advertisements hit consumers at the perfect time, as evidenced in their sales. In fact, Nintendo couldnt manufacture enough systems to keep up with demand. After all was said and done, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) would become the highest selling system in history. They would also become the most notorious, as they were involved in the intimidation of retailers, competing companies, and other suppliers and partners.

Over the next five years Sega and Nintendo would battle for dominance, going back and forth. The consumer definitely benefited from this rivalry.

Today, its between PlayStation 2, the Xbox and the GameCube. Xbox has taken the step to merge the past and present, where Xbox “Live Arcade” is a console system that has a “download-like” characteristic where you can buy games via the console itself. One thing in the video game industry will always remain: the classic games of yesterday were great games, helped define an era, and will always be fun.

A Look Back At Video Game History Do You Remember Pac Man, Space Invaders And Super Mario Brothers? is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

Antivirus Protection

New viruses are invented every day, and system security is a concern for every business. Malicious software can damage your system to the point where it will not even boot up. The latest versions of Windows are the favorite targets of malicious programs such as spyware and viruses, and it is helpful to use 2 or more antivirus/anti-spyware programs to prevent destruction or theft of your data.

Spyware Scanner

The clues that spyware is on a computer include a barrage of pop-up ads, a hijacked browser,a sudden or even repeated change of your computers Internet home page, the appearance of a new toolbar or new screen icons, malfunctioning keys, random error messages, and most of all, sluggish computer performance. Any sytem with access to the internet is prone to this problem, but there is software to block spyware installation. In addition, make sure all employees using the office network do not download from unknown sites, and set your internet browser security at “Medium” or higher. Install individual firewalls to prevent uninvited users from accessing your network. A firewall blocks unauthorized access to your computer and will alert you if spyware already on your computer is sending information out. Purchase an anti-spyware program from a vendor you know and trust. Set it to read on a regular basis, at least weekly and if possible each time you run your computer. Delete any programs the anti-spyware program detects on your computer.

Computer Maintenance

The best way to avoid having to use file recovery software is to be sure that no corrupt data is stored on your computer. Companies like Norton sell disk optimization programs keep your network running at top speed, correct problem files and maximize the available space on your hard disk. Run disk optimization and anti-virus programs at least once a week.

Hard Disk Recovery

There are disk recovery applications specifically geared to recovering files of a certain format, like graphics files as opposed to word document files, and there are general-purpose programs to hunt for any type of misplaced file regardless of the format. There is no program on the market that can guarantee recovery of every lost file, but you are able to increase your chances for recovery by selecting the appropriate program for the file you are trying to save.

Do-it-yourself programs are a lot less expensive than hiring a data retrieval company that specializes in information recovery, and to save money you should at least attempt to utilize of this type of program before calling a professional.

In addition to recovering deleted files, there exists information recovery programs that can restore files after you have formatted the drive, after a power failure, natural disaster, or even files damaged by a computer virus.

RAID

RAID is short for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks, a category of disk drives that employ 2 or even several drives in combination to improve data storage fault tolerance and performance. RAID disk drives are frequently installed on servers but can also run on individual computers. Because of the duplication of data, it is possible to recover files from one or another disk when the need arises.

As you might expect, RAID disk repair is quite a complicated process. However it is one of the most foolproof methods of data storage because the RAID architecture strategically distributes information randomly across the array. However, this sort of architecture demands the services of a recovery professional.

Data Protection And Hard Disk Recovery Go Hand In Hand is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

As a PC Specialist, people will rely on your specialized computer training and skills to keep the office running smoothly. You must have the following certifications:

PC Specialist Certificate
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Microsoft Certified Professional

* What kinds of certifications should I consider for a Software Engineer career?

The software engineer designs and develops systems to control and automate manufacturing, business, or management processes. To obtain a position as a Software Engineer, you must have:

A four-year degree in a computer-related discipline is required for most software engineering positions.

Certification in various software applications is suggested.

Training programs are available at community colleges, vocational schools, technical institutes and in the Armed Forces.

Earning and maintaining computer certification is a good way for software engineers to keep their skills up to date. In addition to Microsoft, Novell, Cisco and other high-tech companies, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society offers relevant computer certifications.

* What kinds of certifications should I consider for a Systems Analyst career?

These workers figure out how to use computers to get things done. They tell businesses and other organizations which computers and software to buy, and they decide how to get those tools to work together. To qualify on this position, you must have:

A four-year college degree in computer science, information science, or management information systems.

Microsoft Certification and Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)

* What kinds of certifications should I consider for a Systems Engineer career?

Systems engineering is like putting together a puzzle, matching varied pieces together to make one cohesive whole. Here are some certifications you need to comply:

BS in systems engineering or other related engineering discipline or an equivalent combination of education and work related experience.

Novell certifications

Earning computer certification at a prestigious educational institution is impressive. But, if you don’t have that kind of money, you may take computer certification training courses anywhere and anyway you wish and then pay to take the exams. Passing the exams is what earns computer certification.

* What kinds of certifications should I consider for a Technical Instructor career?

As a technical instructor, you need to be mature and very oriented towards people. To be considered, you must have the following certifications:

A four-year degree in a computer-related discipline is required for most software engineering positions.

CompTIAs Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+) certification.

* What kinds of certifications should I consider for a Wireless Specialist career?

Career certification programs are critical for aspiring Wireless Specialists. Many are looking for programs that have a complete engineering curriculum that concentrates entirely on wireless application. Some of these are the following:

Certified Wireless Professional includes application for wireless development, its networking elements and security, and embedded systems. Number of hours needed to complete the certification depends on the institution offering the program, but in most cases these certifications requires minimum of 200 hours lecture in class room and an average of 200 hours in laboratory practice.

Cisco Security Professional Design Certifications merely concentrates on the perimeter security of the data in the web site, largely to avoid being hacked. Different versions of Web security courses such as DVS 1.0 and DPS 1.0 are available for reference.

Certification Q&A: Types Of Certifications To Consider For Computer-Related Careers is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

Most people are unaware of one of the more recent developments in interactive Internet use. This new technology brings all the benefits of the Internet and television together to create your own personalised viewing experience. In simple terms Internet television means that you can watch TV straight from your laptop or desktop PC.

Internet TV allows you to you maximize the use of your computer and your Internet connection. I expect you have probably thought that there must be more you could do with your personal computer or laptop. You know that typing the occasional letter, transferring your MP3 collection to your iPod or playing the odd game or two online is hardly making use of its full potential. Now you can explore a trusted method of entertainment with access to unlimited viewing and you don’t even have to stop your usual computer activities.

If you are someone who cant get enough of watching programs on television, think about how Internet television will open up new options for free viewing. You can catch up with current news stories, watch real time sports action, keep up to date with stock market movements or enjoy a little light comedy. You are provided with a wide variety of entertainment possibilities that continues to grow, gaining in popularity every day.

At the time of writing, FIFA World Cup 2006 is just around the corner and, for many, Internet TV will provide access to free live football streams. Viewers will be able to keep up with the latest action from all the international football games involving teams including Brazil, Argentina, France, England and many more. Japan’s third largest TV broadcaster, Tokyo Broadcasting System, has recently announced plans to air World Cup programmes over the Internet and on mobile phones.

If you use the Internet for any kind of research (even if it’s only helping the kids with their homework), you no longer have to view what you find in the usual format of text and pictures. Now you can see this information through streams of live or pre-recorded video enabling you to see details that simply wouldn’t be visible in a series of pictures.

5 Features of Internet Television:

1. Stations are available internationally. Currently over 150 countries have Internet access so you can rest assured that your country has at least one Internet TV station you can watch.

2. No additional hardware is required. In the past, watching television on your computer would require the fitting of a PC TV card but this is no longer necessary. Improvements in the telecommunications industry have made broadband connections more widely available and cheaper than ever before allowing more and more people to view high quality streaming media on their computer.

3. Anyone with an Internet connection can watch. A minimum connection speed of 56K is recommended and watching at this speed should give you a reasonable picture. Higher connection speeds will improve the picture quality (dependant on the server capabilities) and the fastest connections can enable you to view programmes in DVD quality.

4. New channels are added all the time. Major players in the Internet industry have recently started showing significant interest in this rapidly expanding market. Google is developing Google TV and has signed up American channel UPN and is in talks with the BBC in the UK to provide content. AOL is launching IN2TV which will show thousands of hours of programmes from Warner Brothers across 6 different channels and Yahoo has plans to show Internet TV in Japan which could lead to a worldwide service if successful.

5. Personalize your experience. Normal televisions have fixed channels which depend on the local stations or the cable operators. Internet television gives you the opportunity to bookmark your favorite stations so you can get back to them quickly without having to flick through everything else available. There is usually the option of viewing in either full screen mode or in a smaller window enabling you to get on with other things on your computer while watching.

You too can enjoy all the benefits of Internet television. The world really is at your fingertips now you have discovered this new, hassle-free way of watching TV.

An Introduction to Internet TV is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

Probably the last question you need to ask yourself. Weigh up between image (size, shape, style, colour), performance (play time, memory, compatibility, gizmos, other functions) and quality (useability, interface, design, battery life). Work out what’s important, and Google or eBay will do the rest for you (or if not, then your younger brother or sister will also suffice). There is always a cheaper price for something, but there is always more hassle to get something that you want exactly. If you’ve ever bid for an eBay item, then found something way cheaper than what you’ve just bought, then you’ll know what I mean. Look, if you’re going to spend money (any amount of money), then it’s important to at least pick something that works long enough for you to at least look the part, and one that you won’t throw out the window because that’s all it’s good for. Therefore, battery life, memory, interface and compatibility should not be taken lightly.

Part IV – So what do I do with it?

You’ve got yourself an MP3 player, so what’s next. Well, you can use it as a fashion accessory, play some MP3 music, or just leave it sitting in the closet until a better model comes out. It’s hard to say unless you’ve got one, and once you’ve got one, you’ll work out what to do with it. Sometimes it’s an expensive lesson to learn, but most times when you spend money for something, you invariably find a use for it, even if it’s just another item on the eBay used section.

Useful advice? Well, don’t just take my word for it, because even bad advice needs to be taken to be believed. Take these suggestions into account when you are choosing your mp3 player, and you’ll be well equipped.

4 Tips For Choosing An Mp3 Player, Part 2 is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

A digital camera is only as good as the pictures it takes. Experienced photographers spend hours touching-up images to achieve the best visual results and preparing the pictures for printing. Digital photographers make countless choices deciding which camera and settings to use to take a picture, and what software and which tools to use to enhance the picture afterwards. At each post-processing step, the tools you use to enhance the picture affect the image, enhancing or degrading the result.

Regardless of your choice of photographic software, one thing is certain. The computer and image editing software are an essential part of the digital workflow. Computer-edited digital pictures appear in newspapers and glossy magazines, billboards and advertisements. If you have just one image, spending an hour in Adobe Photoshop to get the perfect print makes sense. If you take hundreds of images, however, taking care to enhance each individual image consumes so much time and effort that many prefer to forget the whole idea. But what if you had a proper tool to make your digital workflow simple, quick and effective?

SnapTouch (www.snaptouch.com) takes care of the entire digital workflow quickly and efficiently. SnapTouch takes care of every step after you take a picture from helping you transfer pictures from the camera into the computer to preparing already enhanced images for printing.

Transferring images from a digital camera might be easy, but SnapTouch also makes it smart. It can automatically sort pictures depending on the day they were shot, naming and placing them into folders accordingly. Specify your own transfer scenario, and your digital pictures will be sorted, named and placed depending on your very own criteria.

Correcting and enhancing images is the second step of your digital workflow. During this step, you compensate and correct gamma and exposure, adjust brightness and contrast, rotate and flip pictures, remove red-eye and resize your pictures for Web viewing or printing. SnapTouch is designed to handle jobs to enhance bunches of multiple images while maintaining the highest quality through the entire workflow.

The third step of your digital workflow depends on what you’re planning to do with the image. If you’re up to making a Web album or archiving images on a disk, use SnapTouch to stamp your pictures by imprinting the date they were shot, naming the pictures or embedding your signature. You can specify your own font and color for the stamp, making your digital pictures appear as works of art.

If you’re going to print a multitude of images, consider the different aspect ratios of your digital pictures and the paper they will be printed on. The two common aspect ratios are 4:3 and 3:2. Why gamble on what will be cut out of your photographs in the printing lab when you can specify your own crop in no time? SnapTouch allows you to specify the aspect ratio of the paper you’re printing on, and processes your images with a moving fixed-aspect frame. By specifying the frame position you are making crops showing your main subject without cutting out important features.

SnapTouch is a digital photographer’s workhorse allowing you to process batches of hundreds of digital pictures in a straightforward workflow. Combining advanced features and unique automation with unprecedented ease of use, SnapTouch is a must-have tool for advanced amateurs and digital photo professionals.

A Better Workflow for Digital Photographers is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News

IP address
(Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that certain electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP)in simpler terms, a computer address. Any participating network deviceincluding routers, computers, time-servers, printers, Internet fax machines, and some telephonescan have their own unique address.
An IP address can also be thought of as the equivalent of a street address or a phone number ( compare: VoIP (voice over (the) internet protocol)) for a computer or other network device on the Internet. Just as each street address and phone number uniquely identifies a building or telephone, an IP address can uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on a network. An IP address differs from other contact information, however, because the linkage of a user’s IP address to his/her name is not publicly available information.
IP addresses can appear to be shared by multiple client devices either because they are part of a shared hosting web server environment or because a network address translator (NAT) or proxy server acts as an intermediary agent on behalf of its customers, in which case the real originating IP addresses might be hidden from the server receiving a request. A common practice is to have a NAT hide a large number of IP addresses, in the private address space defined by RFC 1918, an address block that cannot be routed on the public Internet. Only the “outside” interface(s) of the NAT need to have Internet-routable addresses.
Most commonly, the NAT device maps TCP or UDP port numbers on the outside to individual private addresses on the inside. Just as there may be site-specific extensions on a telephone number, the port numbers are site-specific extensions to an IP address.
IP addresses are managed and created by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The IANA generally allocates super-blocks to Regional Internet Registries, who in turn allocate smaller blocks to Internet service providers and enterprises.

DNS Address:

On the Internet, the Domain Name System (DNS) associates various sorts of information with so-called domain names; most importantly, it serves as the “phone book” for the Internet: it translates human-readable computer hostnames, e.g. en.wikipedia.org, into the IP addresses that networking equipment needs for delivering information. It also stores other information such as the list of mail exchange servers that accept email for a given domain. In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, the Domain Name System is an essential component of contemporary Internet use.

Uses :

The most basic use of DNS is to translate hostnames to IP addresses. It is in very simple terms like a phone book. For example, if you want to know the internet address of en.wikipedia.org, the Domain Name System can be used to tell you it is 66.230.200.100. DNS also has other important uses.
Pre-eminently, DNS makes it possible to assign Internet destinations to the human organization or concern they represent, independently of the physical routing hierarchy represented by the numerical IP address. Because of this, hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain the same, whatever the current IP routing arrangements may be, and can take a human-readable form (such as “wikipedia.org”) which is rather easier to remember than an IP address (such as 66.230.200.100). People take advantage of this when they recite meaningful URLs and e-mail addresses without caring how the machine will actually locate them.
The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility for assigning domain names and mapping them to IP networks by allowing an authoritative server for each domain to keep track of its own changes, avoiding the need for a central registrar to be continually consulted and

History :

The practice of using a name as a more human-legible abstraction of a machine’s numerical address on the network predates even TCP/IP, and goes all the way to the ARPAnet era. Back then however, a different system was used, as DNS was only invented in 1983, shortly after TCP/IP was deployed. With the older system, each computer on the network retrieved a file called HOSTS.TXT from a computer at SRI (now SRI International). The HOSTS.TXT file mapped numerical addresses to names. A hosts file still exists on most modern operating systems, either by default or through configuration, and allows users to specify an IP address (eg. 192.0.34.166) to use for a hostname (eg. www.example.net) without checking DNS. As of 2006, the hosts file serves primarily for troubleshooting DNS errors or for mapping local addresses to more organic names. Systems based on a hosts file have inherent limitations, because of the obvious requirement that every time a given computer’s address changed, every computer that seeks to communicate with it would need an update to its hosts file.
The growth of networking called for a more scalable system: one that recorded a change in a host’s address in one place only. Other hosts would learn about the change dynamically through a notification system, thus completing a globally accessible network of all hosts’ names and their associated IP Addresses.
At the request of Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System in 1983 and wrote the first implementation. The original specifications appear in RFC 882 and 883. In 1987, the publication of RFC 1034 and RFC 1035 updated the DNS specification and made RFC 882 and RFC 883 obsolete. Several more-recent RFCs have proposed various extensions to the core DNS protocols.
In 1984, four Berkeley students Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle and Songnian Zhou wrote the first UNIX implementation, which was maintained by Ralph Campbell thereafter. In 1985, Kevin Dunlap of DEC significantly re-wrote the DNS implementation and renamed it BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain, previously: Berkeley Internet Name Daemon). Mike Karels, Phil Almquist and Paul Vixie have maintained BIND since then. BIND was ported to the Windows NT platform in the early 1990s.
Due to BIND’s long history of security issues and exploits, several alternative nameserver/resolver programs have been written and distributed in recent years.
How DNS Work In The Theory :
The domain name space consists of a tree of domain names. Each node or branch in the tree has one or more resource records, which hold information associated with the domain name. The tree sub-divides into zones. A zone consists of a collection of connected nodes authoritatively served by an authoritative DNS nameserver. (Note that a single nameserver can host several zones.)
When a system administrator wants to let another administrator control a part of the domain name space within his or her zone of authority, he or she can delegate control to the other administrator. This splits a part of the old zone off into a new zone, which comes under the authority of the second administrator’s nameservers. The old zone becomes no longer authoritative for what goes under the authority of the new zone.
A resolver looks up the information associated with nodes. A resolver knows how to communicate with name servers by sending DNS requests, and heeding DNS responses. Resolving usually entails iterating through several name servers to find the needed information.
Some resolvers function simplistically and can only communicate with a single name server. These simple resolvers rely on a recursing name server to perform the work of finding information for them.

IPv4:

Internet Protocol version 4 is the fourth iteration of the Internet Protocol (IP) and it is the first version of the protocol to be widely deployed. IPv4 is the dominant network layer protocol on the Internet and apart from IPv6 it is the only protocol used on the Internet.
It is described in IETF RFC 791 (September 1981) which made obsolete RFC 760 (January 1980). The United States Department of Defense also standardized it as MIL-STD-1777.
IPv4 is a data-oriented protocol to be used on a packet switched internetwork (e.g., Ethernet). It is a best effort protocol in that it does not guarantee delivery. It does not make any guarantees on the correctness of the data; It may result in duplicated packets and/or packets out-of-order. These aspects are addressed by an upper layer protocol (e.g., TCP, and partly by UDP).
The entire purpose of IP is to provide unique global computer addressing to ensure that two computers communicating over the Internet can uniquely identify one another.

Addressing :

IPv4 uses 32-bit (4-byte) addresses, which limits the address space to 4,294,967,296 possible unique addresses. However, some are reserved for special purposes such as private networks (~18 million addresses) or multicast addresses (~1 million addresses). This reduces the number of addresses that can be allocated as public Internet addresses. As the number of addresses available are consumed, an IPv4 address shortage appears to be inevitable, however Network Address Translation (NAT) has significantly delayed this inevitability.
This limitation has helped stimulate the push towards IPv6, which is currently in the early stages of deployment and is currently the only contender to replace IPv4.

Allocation :

Originally, the IP address was divided into two parts:

* Network id : first octet
* Host id : last three octets

This created an upper limit of 256 networks. As the networks began to be allocated, this was soon seen to be inadequate.
To overcome this limit, different classes of network were defined, in a system which later became known as classful networking. Five classes were created (A, B, C, D, & E), three of which (A, B, & C) had different lengths for the network field. The rest of the address field in these three classes was used to identify a host on that network, which meant that each network class had a different maximum number of hosts. Thus there were a few networks with lots of host addresses and numerous networks with only a few addresses. Class D was for multicast addresses and class E was reserved.
Around 1993, these classes were replaced with a Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) scheme, and the previous scheme was dubbed “classful”, by contrast. CIDR’s primary advantage is to allow re-division of Class A, B & C networks so that smaller (or larger) blocks of addresses may be allocated to entities (such as Internet service providers, or their customers) or Local Area Networks.
The actual assignment of an address is not arbitrary. The fundamental principle of routing is that address encodes information about a device’s location within a network. This implies that an address assigned to one part of a network will not function in another part of the network. A hierarchical structure, created by CIDR and overseen by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and its Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), manages the assignment of Internet address worldwide. Each RIR maintains a publicly searchable WHOIS database that provides information about IP address assignments; information from these databases plays a central role in numerous tools that attempt to locate IP addresses geographically.

IPv6:

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer protocol for packet-switched internetworks. It is designated as the successor of IPv4, the current version of the Internet Protocol, for general use on the Internet.
The main improvement brought by IPv6 is a much larger address space that allows greater flexibility in assigning addresses. While IPv6 could support 2128 (about 3.4?1038) addresses, or approximately 5?1028 addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion people[1] alive today. It was not the intention of IPv6 designers, however, to give permanent unique addresses to every individual and every computer. Rather, the extended address length eliminates the need to use network address translation to avoid address exhaustion, and also simplifies aspects of address assignment and renumbering when changing providers.

Introduction :

By the early 1990s, it was clear that the change to a classless network introduced a decade earlier was not enough to prevent IPv4 address exhaustion and that further changes to IPv4 were needed.[2] By the winter of 1992, several proposed systems were being circulated and by the fall of 1993, the IETF announced a call for white papers (RFC 1550) and the creation of the “IP, the Next Generation” (IPng Area) of working groups.[2][3]
IPng was adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force on July 25, 1994 with the formation of several “IP Next Generation” (IPng) working groups.[2] By 1996, a series of RFCs were released defining IPv6, starting with RFC 2460. (Incidentally, IPv5 was not a successor to IPv4, but an experimental flow-oriented streaming protocol intended to support video and audio.)
It is expected that IPv4 will be supported alongside IPv6 for the foreseeable future. IPv4-only nodes (clients or servers) will not be able to communicate directly with IPv6 nodes, and will need to go through an intermediary

Features of IPv6 :

[edit] To a great extent, IPv6 is a conservative extension of IPv4. Most transport- and application-layer protocols need little or no change to work over IPv6; exceptions are applications protocols that embed network-layer addresses (such as FTP or NTPv3).
Applications, however, usually need small changes and a recompile in order to run over IPv6.

Larger address space :

The main feature of IPv6 that is driving adoption today is the larger address space: addresses in IPv6 are 128 bits long versus 32 bits in IPv4.
The larger address space avoids the potential exhaustion of the IPv4 address space without the need for network address translation (NAT) and other devices that break the end-to-end nature of Internet traffic. NAT may still be necessary in rare cases, but Internet engineers recognize that it will be difficult in IPv6 and are trying to avoid it whenever possible. It also makes administration of medium and large networks simpler, by avoiding the need for complex subnetting schemes. Subnetting will, ideally, revert to its purpose of logical segmentation of an IP network for optimal routing and access.
The drawback of the large address size is that IPv6 carries some bandwidth overhead over IPv4, which may hurt regions where bandwidth is limited (header compression can sometimes be used to alleviate this problem). IPv6 addresses are harder to memorize than IPv4 addresses, although even IPv4 addresses are much harder to memorize than Domain Name System (DNS) names. DNS protocols have been modified to support IPv6 as well as IPv4.

Stateless auto configuration of hosts :

IPv6 hosts can be configured automatically when connected to a routed IPv6 network. When first connected to a network, a host sends a link-local multicast request for its configuration parameters; if configured suitably, routers respond to such a request with a router advertisement packet that contains network-layer configuration parameters.
If IPv6 autoconfiguration is not suitable, a host can use stateful autoconfiguration (DHCPv6) or be configured manually. Stateless autoconfiguration is only suitable for hosts: routers must be configured manually or by other means

IPv6 scope :

IPv6 defines 3 unicast address scopes: global, site, and link.
Site-local addresses are non-link-local addresses that are valid within the scope of an administratively-defined site and cannot be exported beyond it.
Companion IPv6 specifications further define that only link-local addresses can be used when generating ICMP Redirect Messages [ND] and as next-hop addresses in most routing protocols.
These restrictions do imply that an IPv6 router must have a link-local next-hop address for all directly connected routes (routes for which the given router and the next-hop router share a common subnet prefix).

Links:

Find IP Info: link http://www.ip-adress.com
Find DNS, IPv4, IPv6 : link: http://www.iplobster.com
Find IP Address: link http://www.myip.dk

How To Find Your IP Address . DNS Address . IPv4 . IPv6 is a post from: Baronie Cranen Donck Technology News