Secure Remote Support » Wireless

AT&T buys application developer Plusmo

Joe — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:21:30 +0000

Phone giant AT&T sees big opportunity in building its own applications.

The phone company Wednesday announced it’s buying privately held Plusmo for an undisclosed sum to help it build widgets and apps for mobile phones, PCs, and TV. Details of the transaction were not available.

Plusmo builds applications and widgets for mobile phones. But because it uses common Web development standards it should be easy for AT&T to use its technology to build applications across multiple operating systems. Once the acquisition is complete, Plusmo will become part of AT&T Interactive, AT&T said in its press release.

While most people don’t think of AT&T as an application developer, the company has developed some of its own mobile apps. For example, it has developed several apps for the iPhone App Store, including a YellowPages app. It has also created applications for mobile phones other than the iPhone.

The acquisition of Plusmo should help AT&T develop new applications more quickly and more cheaply. It could also allow for over the air updates for mobile devices. But AT&T is also planning to use the technology to develop applications for its broadband customers and TV subscribers.

Plusmo says it offers a service that delivers more than 20,000 mobile widgets to consumers. It has also developed numerous sports-oriented applications offered on several platforms. The company has relationships with handset manufacturers, publishers, and carriers, according to AT&T.

Wireless Security: Protecting your password

Joe — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:37:54 +0000

Your passwords are crucial to your wireless network security and should not be revealed to unauthorized individuals. Do not leave your password lying around or written in an obvious location. When entering your username and/or password, make sure people are not milling around and looking over your shoulder. Be very careful of responding to emails asking for passwords. Most legitimate companies do not ask for passwords via email due to the lack of security. These tips are useful for both wireless security and wired security.

If you’re interested in more information about your security online please connect with one of our secure remote support specialist to help you with all your computer support needs.

IEEE Standards

Joe — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:02:55 +0000

The wireless world consists of three standards. The three are 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g. Each of these has their pros and con’s. Allow us to being with the first, which is the 802.11a standard.802.11a operates on the 5 GHZ band and has a maximum data rate of 52Mbit/s. As the device or user travels farther from the signal it is common for data rates to be reduced to 48, 36, 24, 18, 12, 9 and then 6Mbit/s. While the data rate for 802.11a is 54Mbit/s, the signal strength is far from comparable to the 802.11b standard. The problem with 802.11a signals is that they are easily absorbed by walls and other objects that surround the signal.

802.11b operates on the 2.4 GHz band and has a max data throughput of 11Mbit/s. Common interferences for 802.11b consist of microwave ovens, cordless telephones, baby monitors, and Bluetooth devices.

802.11g operates on the same frequency as the 802.11b standard, 2.4 GHz. The difference between the two is that the 802.11g standard has a max throughput of 54Mbit/s compared to the 11Mbit/s of 802.11b. One of the advantages of the “G” networks is that it is fully compatible with 802.11b hardware. Similar to the “B” network, the 802.11g standard suffers the same interferences as 802.11b networks.

802.11n, which is the newest of standards, boasts a max data throughput of 74 Mbit/s. The 802.11n network operates on the 5 GHz and 2.4G GHz frequency. The “N” standard has not been finalized but is expected to be in the fourth quarter of 2008. Although devices already exist with “pre-N” technology, it is thought that the final version will not be much different. To address the changes, a firmware update should correct this.

If you’re interested in learning more about your computer, contact our technicians through our website! There they can tutor you other various things about your computer and help you with remote technical support.

Protect Your Wireless Network

Joe — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:02:09 +0000

In order to protect your home wireless network, it would be ideal to use more than one method. In this article I will explain the different measures each user can take to get the most effective security out of a consumer device (such as a Linksys) router/access point.

One of the first steps to securing your wireless network would be to set an encryption key. This key would stop unauthorized people from accessing your network. This is often done by people who “war drive” and log on to unsecured networks. Unfortunately, when your network remains unsecured to war drivers, you have the chance to have your data compromised along with a few other things. In regard to network keys, there are many different settings or options that may be used. When setting up the encryption, you might be prompted to use WEP, WPA, or WPA2. Each of these methods has different ways of protecting your data. I will spare you the technical details for now. In short, WPA and WPA2 would be your best; however, if WPA is not available, you can use WEP.

In conjunction with wireless encryption, users may also turn off SSID broadcast. What is the SSID you may ask? The SSID is the name of your network. The wireless access point broadcasts the SSID so that users can find the network with ease and connect by simply double clicking on that particular “SSID name” in the available wireless connections window. As an added layer of protection, I recommend turning SSID broadcast off. This will make it a little harder for someone to find your network. The only downside to this would be that any other user beside yourself would need to know the SSID before connecting to your wireless network. This would be done in the wireless network preferences when creating a connection.

Finally, we will touch on MAC filtering. Some wireless access points have this option and some don’t. For access points the ones that do, I strongly recommend using this feature. The way this works is simple, it is basically like an access control list. Each piece of hardware (in this case your network card or wireless card) is assigned what is called a MAC address. This is a unique address that identifies the hardware manufacturer and the type of device it is. In the options for your wireless access point you can set which MAC addresses have the option to connect. This will simply weed out any unauthorized MAC address such as a war driver from accessing your network.

You might be asking “How does one attain a MAC address?” Simple! Click Start, go to run, type “cmd”, and then hit enter. This should open a command line with a blinking curser. At this point, type ipconfig/all and hit enter. Find your wireless card and look at the MAC address. Enter the address into your access control list, apply the changes and PRESTO!

If you’re still unsure how to complete this process to secure your computer, and personal files, please contact our support team. They will look at your wireless network for free and advise you on all of the things you can do to secure yourself! For the best in computer repair visit our main site.