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Is the Blockchain the Future of Cybersecurity?

It is predicted that blockchain will dramatically change the cybersecurity of any business, making it possible to store information without the risk of damage, theft, or data loss….

How 5G Will Impact the Cloud Computing World?

Technologies are getting all geared up to take the edge off hindrances that pull the corporate domain backward. The year 2020 has welcomed 5G technology to experience the power of unprecedented speed that could open the doors to new opportunities and potentials….

The post Data Center Content Roundup! appeared first on Colocation America.

It’s the early ‘80s and ~99 percent of the population of the world has no clue about ARPANET, IP Addresses, and all that’s to come related to the Internet.

At this point in time it was professorial—an esoteric function used by government agencies and universities. All that is about to change, but not before one of the core functions of the ARPANET.

On New Year’s Day, 1983, ARPANET switched from their NCP protocol to TCP/IP, which was considered more flexible and more powerful.

There it is! Finally we get the hallowed initialism of ‘IP!’

Now, while TCP/IP was indeed more powerful and flexible (we’ll get into that soon), it came with a near, wholesale-rework of the ARPANET infrastructure. The transition forged the way to what we now call the Internet, but for now it meant a temporary loss of functionality and a whole new slew of complexity that needed to be ironed out.

Luckily, the world’s top minds were already on the case!

How TCP/IP Came to Be

Robert E. Kahn and Vinton Cerf are credited as the forefathers of TCP/IP, but many other people helped them along the way.

In the spring 1973 Kahn and Cerf, who developed the existing NCP protocol, joined forces with the goal to create the next ARPANET protocol generation.

By the summer of the next year, Kahn and Cerf worked out the foundation of TCP/IP by reformulating the way the ARPANET functioned. Instead of the network being responsible for the reliability, it was instead delegated to the hosts by using a internetwork protocol which hid the differences between local network protocols.

Cerf gave much of the credit to the work done by Hubert Zimmermann and Louis Pouzin who designed the CYCLADES network, which heavily influenced his and Kahn’s work.

The new protocol was implemented as the Transmission Control Program, the first part of TCP/IP and was published in 1974.

At the start, TCP handled both datagram transmission and routing, but as the protocol expanded, other researchers started to recommend that these two functions be split into layers.

One of these researchers, Jonathan Postel of the University of California’s Information Sciences Institute and an editor for the Request of Comments (RFCs) which is a document series capturing the development of the Internet.

Postel has stated:

“We are screwing up in our design of Internet protocols by violating the principle of layering”

Basically, the monolithic design of TCP would soon become inflexible and unable to scale efficiently. Therefore TCP was split into two protocols, TCP & the Internet Protocol (IP).

What is TCP/IP?

Due to the immense technical jargon that follows in this section, we’ve done our best to be as concise as possible and link to resources where you can further explorer the more technical aspects of TCP/IP. After all, this is a historical piece!

TCP/IP is commonly referred to as the ‘Internet protocol suite” and is comprised of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) & the Internet Protocol (IP).

To understand how the Internet protocol suite functions as a whole, we should first break down TCP & IP independently.

Internet Protocol (IP)

The main function of the IP is addressing hosts, putting data into datagrams (for transmission), and routing those datagrams from the source-host to the destination host, which can be across one or more IP networks.

When first introduced, IP was a connection-less datagram serviced which worked concurrently with TCP, which was more connection oriented (thus, the Internet protocol suite).

Each datagram has a header and a payload. The IP header includes both the source and destination IP address and other metadata which is needed to ensure delivery across the network. The payload is the data that’s being transmitted.

The first major version of IP was Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) which has stuck as the predominant protocol of the Internet to this day. But IPv4 is running out and is being replaced by IPv6. You can read more about that in our What Happened to IPv5 piece.

For the sake of keeping this historical and not too technical, please refer to our “Understanding IP Addresses” series for how addressing works and all that wonderful octet binary-decimal fun!

Transmission Control Program (TCP)

While IP is in charge of the delivery of data, TCP keeps track of that data’s segments, or the units of data divided to make for efficient routing through the network.

As an example, when a webserver is sending a file to you, TCP segments that data file into a sequence of octets and forwards them to the Internet layer (we’ll get into layers in a second).

The same thing occurs on your end when receiving the file, the TCP on your network reassembles the data packet and the file can be read by your machine.

The best way to define what TCP segments do is to quote the research done by the Information Sciences Institute prepared for DARPA:

“Processes transmit data by calling on the TCP and passing buffers of data as arguments. The TCP packages the data from these buffers into segments and calls on the internet module [e.g. IP] to transmit each segment to the destination TCP”

As you can see, TCP & IP protocols must work in unison and that’s why they’re almost exclusively put together as TCP/IP or The Internet Protocol Suite.

What makes TCP/IP unique from NCP is that it specifies how data should be packetized, routed, transmitted, addressed, and recieved. This is done in layers.

From lowest to highest the layers are as follows:

• The Link Layer which communicates methods for data within a single network segment or link.
• The Internet Layer which provides the internetworking between independent networks
• The Transport Layer which handles the host-to-host communications
• The Application Layer which provides process-to-process data exchanges for applications

For a much more detailed explanation of these layers, please read RFC1122, “Requirements for Internet Hosts — Communication Layers” by the Internet Engineering Task Force, authored by Robert Braden.

The Adoption of TCP/IP and How It Forged the Path to the Modern Day Internet

Cerf’s research group worked on the wrinkles of TCP/IP from 1973-74 and worked out TCP specification.

When DARPA contracted with BBN Tecnologies, Stanford University, and the University College London, as mentioned in Part 1 of the series, these groups began to work on the implementation of TCP/IP to the ARPANET. This is when TCP/IP v4 was developed and in 1975 a two-network TCP/IP communications test between Stanford University and University College London was performed.

It took another two years before a three-network test was performed and it took all the way until 1983 before TCP/IP was stable enough to replace NCP on the ARPANET.

However, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t being used at all. In March of 1982, The U.S. Department of Defense made a statement declaring TCP/IP as the protocol standard for all military computer networking—a huge shot in the arm for the overall implementation.

In fact, TCP/IP was so strong that in 1985 the Internet Advisory Board held a workshop to talk about the commercial use of the protocol.

Now being referred to as the Internet and becoming increasingly commercial, you better believe something needed to be done to categorize all the new devices, all with their own unique IP Addresses and that’s when groups like the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) starts to get involved and IP Addresses become a part of business lexicon and eventually everyday lexicon.

And we’ll cover all of that in The History of IP Addresses Part 3.

The post History of IP Addresses Part 2: How TCP/IP Changed Everything appeared first on Colocation America.

RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Independent Disks.” Yeah, I would use the acronym too. Also, it’s not the bug spray. Just clearing that up.

There are multiple levels of RAID which all do different things, but it all boils down to one thing: data redundancy. Getting you your data faster and/or backing up your data in the case of emergency. https://www.youtube.com/embed/eE7Bfw9lFfs

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s good to know that RAID was invented back in 1988 to combat the costs of the high-performing disk drives back in the day. The argument was that an array of more inexpensive disks can outperform a single expensive disk.

Before we get into the “nitty-gritty,” you can click here to view a list of unfamiliar terminology that could help you understand RAID just a little bit better.

Raid Configurations

RAID 0

TL;DR: – minimum of two disks – fantastic, striped, performance – no redundancy – not for critical systems

RAID 0 is intended for fast read and write speeds giving the user terrific performance. RAID 0 is a bit different because despite its name, there is no redundancy. Instead, the data is “striped” across the drives which means each disk holds a piece of the overall information.

While this does allow for faster read and write speeds, it also means that if one of the drives fail, there is no way to recover any of the data on any remaining working disks.

RAID 0 is the preferred RAID configuration for gamers, where speed is of the utmost importance.

RAID 1

TL;DR: – minimum two disks – good performance – redundant (through mirrored blocks)

RAID 1 is a setup of at least two drives that contain the exact same data (as seen in the image above). RAID 1 provides what’s called “fault tolerance” meaning when one drive fails, the others will still work.

This is therefore a favorite for those who need high reliability.

The downfall, as you might have guessed, is that it doesn’t offer even close to the same write speeds as a RAID 0 configuration. When data is saved, it must be written to each drive, which, as you might have guessed again, means the write speed can only be as fast as the slowest drive in the array. Subsequently, storage space is also dependent on the smallest drive in the array.

Think of RAID 1’s efficiency as the number of drives divided by the number of drives. Two divided by two is one (one for storage and the other for backup). A five drive configuration still only has one drive’s worth of information (but four backups—talk about redundancy!).

RAID 5

TL:DR: – minimum three disks – good, striped performance – good redundancy (distributed parity) – most cost-effective option for performance and redundancy

The most popular setup, RAID 5 uses a similar striping method as RAID 0, and also has a “parity” distributed across the drives.

Using a logic gate known as Exclusive Or (XOR), data is pieced together in the event of a single drive failure, using the parity information stored on the other drives.

This function runs while the other drives continue their normal operations which means zero downtime in the event of a drive failure. This is why RAID 5 requires at least three drives.

RAID 5 loses 33 percent of storage space (using three drives) for that parity, but it is still a more cost-effective setup than RAID 1. The most popular RAID 5 configurations use four drives, which lowers the lost storage space to 25 percent.

RAID 10

TL:DR: – minimum of four disks – mirrored striping means excellent redundancy and performance – the best option for extremely critical applications (like databases)

RAID 10 consists of a minimum for four drives and has all the advantages of RAID 0 and RAID 1 (albeit at a slightly higher cost).

RAID 10 has the performance characteristics of a RAID 0 configuration, but instead on relying on single disks for striping, a mirrored array is used which provides that all-welcoming redundancy. This means that RAID 10 can provide the speed of RAID 0 with the redundancy of RAID 1, which is why you’ll sometimes see it written as RAID 1+0 (or 10).

How Does RAID Work?

RAID can be created using several different technologies which not only creates them, but manages them.

Hardware RAID

Hardware RAID is dedicated processing system, using controllers or RAID cards to manage the RAID configuration independently from the operating system.

Advantages: Performance and availability.

Since its on its own dedicated hardware, the RAID controller doesn’t take processing power away from the disks it manages. Which means more space and speed can be used to read and write data. Because of that, the RAID managing system should always be ready at bootup making it available more often than not.

Disadvantages: Proprietary and cost.

If the system fails, you’re usually locked into the vendor. Meaning you’ll have to get the exact model again to ensure the RAID system performs according to how you set it up. Thusly, those systems are not cheap, so you’ll have to factor cost into the RAID equation if you go with hardware RAID.

Software RAID

Unlike hardware RAID, software RAID does use the processing power of the operating system in which the RAID disks are installed.

Advantages: Flexible, open-source, cheap.

Since the OS manages nearly everything, you don’t have to reconfigure any hardware. Especially for Linux systems, RAID is open-sourced meaning there’s little divulgence between operating systems. Oh, and open source means that software RAID keeps your costs down .

Disadvantages: performance

Since some processing power is taken by the software, read and write speeds of your RAID configuration can be affected by it. It’s usually minimal, but it is something to consider.

Hardware-Assisted Software RAID

There is a third option called hardware-assisted software RAID which is really just fake RAID. HASR uses a type of firmware on the controller or card within the motherboard to manage RAID, yet uses the CPU to handle most of the processing.

Advantages: Not many.

Really the only advantage to HASR is that RAID is brought up early in the boot process, which may not have been possible with software RAID.

Disadvantages: performance and support.

Much like software RAID, the RAID process must share resources with the rest of the OS. The effects performance, but that’s not the real problem here. HASR really only supports RAID configurations of RAID 0 or RAID 1. The higher classes of RAID aren’t possible with HASR. This is why most try to avoid it, but it can be useful in home media storage or other personal RAID configurations.

Terminology

Below are some common, yet probably unfamiliar terms when dealing with RAID:

• Striping – the process of dividing the disk-writes to the array over multiple underlying disks. This splits the data into “chunks” and each of those “chunks” are are written into at least one of the underlying devices.
• RAID Level – RAID levels refer to the common relationship of the storage devices. Drives can be configured in many ways, leading to different performance and redundancy and they all have a name (RAID 0, RAID 5, etc.).
• Parity – parity is the redundant data that’s recovered from other disks when one drive fails. Parity is distributed across available drives which increases performance and redundancy. In other words, parity is used to reconstruct the data on the array with a drive fails.

Choosing the right RAID configuration for your needs is solely dependent on your business wants and goals. You’ll have to factor in things like redundancy, cost, speed, and reliability, but hopefully this guide can help you along the way. If you have anything to add or have any questions please feel free to comment below.

Note: Most images come from esds

The post What Is RAID Storage? appeared first on Colocation America.

Data Storage on the Cloud

What’s nice about the cloud is that nearly all facets of everything—people, businesses, groups of people, larger businesses—can take advantage of the cloud. It doesn’t favor big businesses over small, or the picture-taking narcissist over the quiet “only use their computer for taxes” people.

The cloud is all loving, all caring, and all knowing.

Wait, what was that last part? Don’t worry about it.

As you probably know, the cloud is the same thing as every other way to store data—except that it’s compartmentalized and shared amongst all users. So, if you store your pictures on iCloud, chances are that you’re not using all the space on a server’s hard drive. Therefore, Apple sections of a bit of that hard drive space for you, and sections off the rest among others.

Obviously, this can raise serious security concerns, but hey, doesn’t everything nowadays?

The cloud’s popularity is clearly related to how cost-effective it is for not only the user, but the provider as well. Since you’re not using all of the hard drive, you don’t have to pay for all the space. And since the provider doesn’t have to provide a hard drive for each user, they save money on hardware costs.

But as we’ve discussed many times on this blog, if you really want to protect your data—you should probably stay on the ground.

Storing Your Data Locally

Storing your data locally is a great way to have full control over your data at all times. This works great for the everyman and even for some small businesses. But if you have a lot of data, that means a lot of overhead costs: IT people, servers, server space, server cooling, etc.

That’s where colocation comes into play, which is like a long-distance way of storing locally, but at a fraction of those overhead costs. But we’ll get to that later.

Anyways, local data storage does not have to be reliant on the Internet in order to retrieve information. This means is can be a faster and more secure way to save all your data.

Of course, transferring all of your locally stored files over once you purchase a new machine can be laborious and time-consuming. And having multiple backup hard drives, without a label machine can get a little risky as well. There’s always a risk that something could go wrong. But at the same time, all your data is nice and safe in your clearly fireproof housing, right?

5-D Data Storage—What Is It?

We wrote a little piece on this earlier in the week and it’s so fascinating to us that we thought we’d revisit it.

I bet you thought, much like I did, that things could only be constructed in three dimensions.

Wrong.

Apparently, some smart scientists have discovered a way to store tons of data in five dimensions on one of the least likely materials you could think of for this type of thing: glass.

Those same scientists are referring to 5-D data storage on glass as an eternal data storage solution. Go figure.

Here’s a quote by one the founder of this technology, Dr. Peter Kazansky of the University of Southampton (UK):

“Normally, you don’t think about whether something can live forever. But it seems that, with our technology, we’ve managed this. If we record some data or documents, they’ll live forever. That could be interesting for future civilizations. We can now claim that information is immortal.”

To learn more on this subject, you can watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ItNT9BGDB4o

Or read our feature-length article here.

Storing Data on DNA? What?

Wait, what (again). Yes, De-oxyribo Nucleic Acid. That stuff you learned about way back when. That stuff that makes you, you. Did you ever think how powerful that stuff is? How much data that stuff stores to make sure everything in your body is actually supposed to be your body?

Two researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) apparently thought the same thing and then went on to successfully store 739 kilobytes of data inside the very strands of human DNA.

That truly deserves a “what?”

The whole study, which you can read more about here, is very complicated and far above what I could ever hope to comprehend, but here’s a nifty chart to stop your brain from becoming numb in the meantime:

Unfortunately, this kind of technology is very expensive, pre-alpha stage, and they are still working out the kinks. As the paper states:

“Before DNA can become a viable competitor to conventional storage technologies, researchers will have to surmount a host of challenges, from reliably encoding information in DNA and retrieving only the information a user needs, to making nucleotide strings cheaply and quickly enough.”

Fun fact: your brain named itself.

Good Ol’ Colocation

Now let’s come down from the high of those super-cool, super-futuristic ways to store data and get back into reality (read: boring).

Remember when we talked about how storing your data locally could lead to overhead costs? Well, colocation is the solution.

Colocation is taking your server and placing it inside a data center where it shares power, network, and cooling costs with other servers. The server is still yours, you’re just renting the space.

For small to large businesses, this option is usually far cheaper than maintaining an in-house data center. Plus you get the added benefit of a 24/7 support staff, and protection from natural disasters. No one else, except you and the staff, has access to your server. It’s a win-win.

Also, it’s very important to make sure your data is backed up, no matter which data storage solution you choose. But that’s an article for a different day.

Until then, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your favorite or unique ways you store your data in the comments below. We’d love to hear!

Data storage seems like such an archaic, drag-you-through-the-mud kind of topic. But it doesn’t have to be. I mean, it usually is, but we can change that. So, if you’ll accompany me through this data storage journey, we’ll come to a very happy medium of you discovering reliable, somewhat-futuristic, or even ways you didn’t even know about to store your data. Let’s begin!

Data Storage on the Cloud

What’s nice about the cloud is that nearly all facets of everything—people, businesses, groups of people, larger businesses—can take advantage of the cloud. It doesn’t favor big businesses over small, or the picture-taking narcissist over the quiet “only use their computer for taxes” people.

The cloud is all loving, all caring, and all knowing.

Wait, what was that last part? Don’t worry about it.

As you probably know, the cloud is the same thing as every other way to store data—except that it’s compartmentalized and shared amongst all users. So, if you store your pictures on iCloud, chances are that you’re not using all the space on a server’s hard drive. Therefore, Apple sections of a bit of that hard drive space for you, and sections off the rest among others.

Obviously, this can raise serious security concerns, but hey, doesn’t everything nowadays?

The cloud’s popularity is clearly related to how cost-effective it is for not only the user, but the provider as well. Since you’re not using all of the hard drive, you don’t have to pay for all the space. And since the provider doesn’t have to provide a hard drive for each user, they save money on hardware costs.

But as we’ve discussed many times on this blog, if you really want to protect your data—you should probably stay on the ground.

Storing Your Data Locally

Storing your data locally is a great way to have full control over your data at all times. This works great for the everyman and even for some small businesses. But if you have a lot of data, that means a lot of overhead costs: IT people, servers, server space, server cooling, etc.

That’s where colocation comes into play, which is like a long-distance way of storing locally, but at a fraction of those overhead costs. But we’ll get to that later.

Anyways, local data storage does not have to be reliant on the Internet in order to retrieve information. This means is can be a faster and more secure way to save all your data.

Of course, transferring all of your locally stored files over once you purchase a new machine can be laborious and time-consuming. And having multiple backup hard drives, without a label machine can get a little risky as well. There’s always a risk that something could go wrong. But at the same time, all your data is nice and safe in your clearly fireproof housing, right?

5-D Data Storage—What Is It?

We wrote a little piece on this earlier in the week and it’s so fascinating to us that we thought we’d revisit it.

I bet you thought, much like I did, that things could only be constructed in three dimensions.

Wrong.

Apparently, some smart scientists have discovered a way to store tons of data in five dimensions on one of the least likely materials you could think of for this type of thing: glass.

Those same scientists are referring to 5-D data storage on glass as an eternal data storage solution. Go figure.

Here’s a quote by one the founder of this technology, Dr. Peter Kazansky of the University of Southampton (UK):

“Normally, you don’t think about whether something can live forever. But it seems that, with our technology, we’ve managed this. If we record some data or documents, they’ll live forever. That could be interesting for future civilizations. We can now claim that information is immortal.”

To learn more on this subject, you can watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ItNT9BGDB4o

Or read our feature-length article here.

Storing Data on DNA? What?

Wait, what (again). Yes, De-oxyribo Nucleic Acid. That stuff you learned about way back when. That stuff that makes you, you. Did you ever think how powerful that stuff is? How much data that stuff stores to make sure everything in your body is actually supposed to be your body?

Two researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) apparently thought the same thing and then went on to successfully store 739 kilobytes of data inside the very strands of human DNA.

That truly deserves a “what?”

The whole study, which you can read more about here, is very complicated and far above what I could ever hope to comprehend, but here’s a nifty chart to stop your brain from becoming numb in the meantime:

Unfortunately, this kind of technology is very expensive, pre-alpha stage, and they are still working out the kinks. As the paper states:

“Before DNA can become a viable competitor to conventional storage technologies, researchers will have to surmount a host of challenges, from reliably encoding information in DNA and retrieving only the information a user needs, to making nucleotide strings cheaply and quickly enough.”

Fun fact: your brain named itself.

Good Ol’ Colocation

Now let’s come down from the high of those super-cool, super-futuristic ways to store data and get back into reality (read: boring).

Remember when we talked about how storing your data locally could lead to overhead costs? Well, colocation is the solution.

Colocation is taking your server and placing it inside a data center where it shares power, network, and cooling costs with other servers. The server is still yours, you’re just renting the space.

For small to large businesses, this option is usually far cheaper than maintaining an in-house data center. Plus you get the added benefit of a 24/7 support staff, and protection from natural disasters. No one else, except you and the staff, has access to your server. It’s a win-win.

Also, it’s very important to make sure your data is backed up, no matter which data storage solution you choose. But that’s an article for a different day.

Until then, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your favorite or unique ways you store your data in the comments below. We’d love to hear!

The post The 5 Best Ways to Store Your Data appeared first on Colocation America.

There’s been some scuttlebut recently about transfer protocols that we thought we’d write up a little something to help internet users and website builders alike. In this blog, we’re going to discuss what FTP is, how it works, how it can help you, and the main difference between it and other transfer protocols like HTTP.

Let’s go!

What Does FTP Stand For?

FTP stands for File Transfter Protocol. And what it does is transfer files between computers. A fun fact about FTP is that it can be either a noun or a verb. As a noun, it stands for the program that sends files and as a method for sending the files. As a verb it would be as a means to send or receive (fetch) files.

So, basically, it’s just a means for sending files, securely, from one machine (typically a server) to another. FTP is mainly used for the transfer of large files.

How Does FTP Work?

If you are looking to build a website, you will have to learn how to use FTP. FTP or file transfer protocol, is basically a client that allows you to transfer files from one location to another.

In a website context, you’ll be using FTP to transfer files on your computer to files on the server that your site is being hosted on. FTP clients have many options, but the following are five things you need to know to get started.

FTP Account

The first step of using your FTP client is setting up an account. In order to make an FTP client work with your hosting, you’ll have to login to your hosting account. Find the link in the hosting control panel where you can control the FTP options, and create a username and password. Make sure that you write down the hosting server address. We’ll talk about some FTP programs a little bit below, so please be aware that this is typically the path to follow, but some programs may be different. If you want to start now, give Filezilla a try!

Adding Sites to Your FTP Client

Once you’ve set up the information on your hosting control panel, you can start adding your site or sites to your FTP client. Go to the site manager and create a site profile. You’ll have to put in your username, password and hosting server address to complete the profile. Now your FTP client will be connected to your hosting account. Just make sure you click connect. Make sure your password is strong. If it’s easily guessable, all your information is up for grabs. This is how your website will be generated, if that’s what the purpose of your FTP is. All your CSS and other things can be hosted on your FTP client to be accessible from anywhere, i.e. so that you can host your website independently from where your local FTP files are.

Changing File or Directory Permissions and Attributes

Permissions and attributes are important for security measures as well as installing scripts. You can make changes by right clicking a file or folder and clicking properties. A window box will open up showing you the directory value, which is shown as 3 numeric numbers (usually 755). It will also show you read, write and executable options. The default settings are usually set up so that users cannot edit the file or folders.

Making Edits to Files

If you are working with an HTML or PHP file, you’ll frequently find yourself making edits to the code. Rather than editing on your desktop and rewriting the previous file, you can actually edit the file on the server. All you have to do is make sure that the admin has read and write privileges, and click edit to make the changes.

Creating New Folders and Batching File Downloads/Uploads

To create a new folder, all you have to do is to click the “add new folder” option in your client and name it. You can also download and upload multiple files at a time rather than doing one file at a time. Simply hold shift and click on the files you want to move. This will highlight the files. Then, transfer the files where you want them to go or drag and drop the highlighted files if the FTP client allows that option.

Let’s take a break and give a little metaphor here. FTP accesses your website differently than an internet user would. That makes sense because your website would have different entrances, just like a department store. While the customers come in from the front entrance, the FTP would knock on the shipping bay doors and be let in through the back (where customer aren’t allowed).

Batching allows you to do something else while you wait for files to be downloaded or uploaded. However, trying to move a whole folder can create problems with many FTP clients. When you want to transfer a whole folder, it’s a good idea to create a separate folder name and transfer all the individual files into that folder name. This will reduce download/upload time, reduce crashes, and make it easier to continue where you left off if something happens.

What Is an FTP Program?

An FTP program is the organizer of what data wants to be transmitted through FTP. The most popular FTP hosting software would be Filezilla which has useful features such as search and keeps everything well organized. The security of your ftp host software is important as well. Most popular software will be quite secure, Filezilla being no exception.

On an FTP program, users upload the data that they want to access from anywhere and secure it with a password. They can use that password to access and download the files from just about any machine.

What’s the Difference between FTP and HTTP?

While they are basically unrelated, FTP and HTTP do similar things.

HTTPis designed and intended for web browsers. It allows resources to get pulled from a website and displayed onto your screen, and it allows for data to be inputted onto the website itself.

Both you, the client, and the server, the website, transfer data back and forth (cookies). Now, when you’re interacting with a website and you want to download something, the website gathers that data from an FTP server and connects you, through HTTP, to that server to download it.

HTTP, is just another way data is transferred across machines, but FTP is still required to download large files. HTTP just can’t do it. That’s why websites keep themselves light to ensure faster browsing speeds.

Hopefully now you know a little bit more about FTP systems and how they interact with users around the internet. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us and we’d love to help you! Comment below!

The post How Does FTP Work and How Can It Help You? appeared first on Colocation America.

Maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about and would like a little more explanation. Well, if blade servers are the best fit for you and you didn’t know it, you could be losing money.

Let’s see what they’re all about.

What Is a Blade Server?

Blade servers are an easy-to-use, fast, power-efficient modular solution which provides exemplary performance, equal to or greater than, standard rack-mount servers. So, how do blade servers work?

The blade server is designed to offer uncompromising performance while lessening your need for cooling and space. While standard rack-mount servers can run on a power cord and a network cable, blade servers are designed to save space, minimize power costs, among other applications. Despite its compromises, blade servers still have all the required functionality to be considered a computer.

A blade chassis, which houses multiple blade servers, supplies power, networking, cooling, etc. Together, blade servers and blade chassis form the blade system.

While traditional servers have limitations in regards to size (e.g. the minimum for one rack unit—1U—is 19″ tall and 1.75″ tall), blade servers do not have these limitations. The most common construction of rack-mount servers is 42U per cabinet, which caps the amount of devices able to fit inside.

This is the predominant benefit of a blade server: reducing size requirements while maintaining performance. Quantities of up to 180 servers per blade system have been recorded—that’s 1440 servers per rack! For a more visual representation of blade servers vs rack servers, watch the video below: https://www.youtube.com/embed/RQl8daewS74

What Are Blade Servers Advantages and Disadvantages?

Space, power, and cooling should be your major focus in deciding whether or not to consider blade servers or conventional rack servers. Be aware that the server may not suite your needs fully.

Here are some pros and cons of blade servers:

Advantages:

• Density — One can fit a greater number of servers per rack than traditional rack servers, so you save on space.
• Cables — Blade Chassis typically have dedicated switch slots, which will greatly reduce the number of cables for the number of servers.
• Manageability — A blade server generally come with integrated management tools.
• Scalability — Adding or swapping additional servers is simple and quick, rather than messing with the rails of a rack server.
• Utility Savings — Space, power, and cooling costs are considerably less per storage unit.

Disadvantages:

• Flexibility — Rack servers generally have PCIe slots which allow for greater adaptability rather than blade servers which typically have proprietary slots.
• Upfront Cost — Usually costs more upfront.
• Options — They do not have as many drives or options per server
• Chassis Size — Blade chassis are massive and can be difficult to rack.

How Can a Blade Chassis Help Me?

Adoption of blade servers has been a relatively slow process. Proponents of the hardware catch up with the efficiency of higher-density servers. When the data is more concentrated, as lesser amount of energy is used. While the evolution of silicon technology has paved the way for a more effective and compact processors, continuing requirement for treatment also increase.

Simply speaking, more treatment is fit into identical spaces. With more computational power that’s obtainable, more powerful applications are matured using the available computing power to do so.

This extra power creates heat, which ought to be removed. And that’s what the blade server does for you. It effectively reduces heat (cooling and power costs), without sacrificing processing power.

For in-rack cooling solutions, there is significant additional infrastructure required. This infrastructure is an operation risk because of things like increased presence of fluid-carrying pipes near the servers—or the requirement that maintenance is performed on these cooling systems ought to be completed on the rack.

When dealing with mechanical refrigeration systems using refrigerant or liquid under pressure, and something goes wrong, it cannot be easily containable. What would initially be included in the mechanical equipment rooms would instead be drawn to the racks themselves.

So, not only would would the server save upfront costs on cooling and power, but also the hidden-costs of a unfortunate heat-related mechanical failure.

What Type of Workload is a Blade Server Best Suited For?

If you have decided that a blade server is the right choice for you, the next step is to know what they are best suited to do.

• Virtual Desktop — the server virtual desktop reaches all users from basic to advanced (who might require high-graphical performance).
• Big Data Applications — includes database and transaction processing supporting a wide range of solutions.
• Webpage Serving & Caching
• SSL Encryption of Web Communication
• Streaming Audio & Video
• Popular Operating System Support

Basically, the hardware can be whatever you want it to be—just like a normal rack server. For a more technical solution, check out how HP builds their blade servers.

The post Warning: You’re Losing Money by Not Using Blade Servers appeared first on Colocation America.

There are two types of facilities that are used for network to network interconnections and their ambiguity is often used interchangeably. The MMR is typically a small space, approximately 5,000 square feet, located in a major carrier hotel. For spaces larger than a MMR, carrier-neutral data center can be a stand-alone building, detached from carrier hotels. Even though terms are quite vague, there remain key differences when examining the two categories of interconnection requirements.

These rooms are gateways to the Internet and allow quick, reliable, and cost-effective connections between the buildings tenants. Telecommunications organizations and providers are able to connect to each other and peer, or exchange information, without incurring local loop fees. MMRs are filled with cages and cabinets containing servers and switches linked by thousands of cable connections. These physical connections are what allow the world’s information to be transmitted to individual computers.

Without peering, individuals would only be able to link to sites hosted by their own ISP. These Meet-Me Rooms are located inside data centers or carrier hotels. They are a small, yet integral part of the structure. In these spaces, telecommunication companies can install network equipment, facilitate network connections and take advantage of cost efficient solutions for back-up power and security.

MMRs Are Broken down as Such:

• MPOE—main point of entry — Short for minimum point of entry, the closest practical point to where the cables of a telecommunications service carrier (i.e., a phone or cable company) cross a property line or where its wiring enters a multi-unit building. The MPOE of a multi-unit building is typically 12 inches inside the building’s foundation.
• POE—point of entry
• POP—point of presence
• NAP—network access point
• DMARC—demarcation point — a way to make it easier for email senders and receivers to determine whether or not a given message is legitimately from the sender, and what to do if it isn’t. This makes it easier to identify spam and phishing messages, and keep them out of people’s’ inboxes.

What Is the Design of a Meet Me Room?

Tenants and users often include ISPs (Internet service providers), exchange companies (local), cable companies and e-commerce companies. Since the Meet-Me Room can distribute traffic at a low cost, large, high-bandwidth users such as hospitals and universities can benefit.

Ownership: The stand-alone, carrier-neutral data center can be privately owned or leased for 15-30 years by the operator. Another option is to be a tenant in a larger carrier hotel on a 5 year lease. Operated by building management, Meet-Me Rooms are never stand-alone facilities. Found in carrier hotels, they are normally directly under a management contract with another firm.

Size: Meet-Me Rooms tend to be smaller because originally, fibers would be run from a tenants suite to patch panels in an MMR to be interconnected, which requires little space. With time, these rooms have grown in size and are starting to resemble data centers, including features such as cages.

Customer: Mix Clients of MMR’s are the operators of large networks, such as RBOCs and major content providers. Carrier-neutral clients include operators of large networks and also enterprise customers and smaller network operators.

Service Offerings: MMR service offers the basics, typically providing a remote hand. They also maintain power, cooling and cross-connects. Carrier-neutral data centers offer the basics, but also extra amenities such as managed servers/hosting. The larger data centers will try to keep sales at a minimum of 5-10 racks per client, while MMR’s sell half racks or quarter racks (in addition to full racks), because of their smaller space.

Interconnection: Meet-Me Rooms have a primary purpose, to interconnect tenants. Carrier-neutral centers however, are rich in interconnection. MMRs allow any tenant of the building to interconnect, even if they have not leased cabinets inside the MMR. This is beneficial for clients who only need to make a small number of interconnections. On the other hand, carrier-neutral data centers often reserve the right to allow only tenants of the data center itself to interconnect. Since most of these centers are stand alone buildings, this form of interconnection is accepted.

The post Why Are Meet Me Rooms Critical to a Data Center? appeared first on Colocation America.

It was the same thing with computers as well. Keeping loading times low for software, games, and applications is a primary concern for new computer buyers; and the first thing a consumer is going to look at is how fast is the processor and how much Random-Access Memory (RAM) the machine has.

But which is better? More RAM or a faster processor? Surprisingly many people do not know the answer so let’s settle the debate once and for all!

(Spoiler alert: it’s the processor gasps)

But first, as always, a little background is needed.

What Is Random-Access Memory (RAM)?

RAM is what computers use when they need to access something quickly. For instance, whatever version of the Windows Operating System (OS) you’re using will always be loaded on your computer’s RAM at startup. That makes sense because the OS is what makes a computer operable.

We’ll get into detail below, but you can check out this video on the subject if you don’t like words: https://www.youtube.com/embed/SOyzN62rZ40

Things like your internet browser, documents, pictures, and games all load from your hard drive to your RAM when they’re initially started up (funny enough, this process is done by your…processor). This is why your Random-Access Memory differs from the much larger hard drive memory—so that programs can be operated much more quickly.

That leads to why it’s called Random-Access. Any of this pre-loaded data can be accessed randomly, which is to say that the computer doesn’t have to go through the preceding bytes of memory first. Any byte of memory can be accessed at any time.

You can think of RAM as being the short-term memory of your computer with the hard drive being the long-term memory. Much like when you’re working on a project, there are things that your brain can gather quickly because it knows you might need that information for what you’re currently working on. But if you need to access something completely different, maybe you can’t think of it as quickly because it’s stored in your long term memory.

And, just like a hard drive, there are different types of RAM—let’s check them out.

Main Types of RAM

The two main types of RAM are:

• Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM)
• Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM)

The difference between the two are in how they refresh, or speed. SRAM is faster because DRAM needs to refresh quite often (thousands of times per second) whereas SRAM doesn’t.

In terms of seconds, DRAM gives access times of about 60 nanoseconds. SRAM does the same in 10 nanoseconds. Since the speed difference is so great, one would expect SRAM to be the most common type of RAM, but it’s not because it’s quite expensive.

Now that we know a bit about RAM, let’s move on to learning a bit about processors.

What Is a Central Processing Unit?

The Central Processing Unit (CPU), or processor, is the integral part of your machine. It is, in fact, the computer of your computer.

There are a few companies, like Intel or AMD, which provide the majority of processors to most machines and there are many different types of Intel or AMD processors, each able to deliver various speeds.

A great basic description of how a processor works can be found on wikipedia: “a CPU executes an instruction by fetching it from memory, using its ALU to perform an operation, and then storing the result to memory.”

The faster a processor is able to do that, the faster your computer will be. This is because it takes the processor to load and retrieve information from RAM. In essence, you could have unlimited RAM, but if your processor can only handle a certain workload, you’ll notice no speed difference.

So, What’s Better: More RAM or a Faster Processor?

That’s not to say that having 2GB of RAM with a top processor would work the same as having 16GB of RAM. But if you think you have a decent about of RAM (typically these days 4GB and higher), but your computer is running slowly. Think about upgrading your processor.

That’s great in theory. But swapping out processors could foul up different parts of your machine. That’s why you should check how much RAM you’re using in the Task Manager and see if it’s a RAM problem or a CPU problem.

If you’re not using much RAM, it’s time for a better CPU (and probably a better machine). At that point, adding more RAM will have little impact in solving the problem.

It’s like this: RAM is the size of the desk, but the processor is the person sitting at the desk.

The post What’s Better: More RAM or a Faster Processor? appeared first on Colocation America.

First let’s get a little technical (if you’d like to skip to the “explain like I’m 5” version, please go to the “Why Do Files Not Download at the Same Speeds I Get on a Speed Test?” header):

Bit and a Byte: What’s the Difference?

If you’re an avid reader of our blog (god bless you), you may remember our three-part series on Internet Protocol (IP) jargon. In that, we explained a little bit about how binary works so that one could better understand the different blocks of IPv4. Well, we’re going to draw from that knowledge a bit (no pun intended (alright, maybe a little)) to explain the difference between a bit and a byte.

What Is a Bit?

A bit stands for a Binary Digit. That is, the only two numbers in binary, a 0 or 1. Bits are awfully small as far as programming is concerned and are rarely used in such matters (although it can and does happen).

Bonus: thanks to Reddit user white_nerdy for pointing out that the first CPU, the Intel 4004, used a 4-bit bus!

What Is a Byte?

According to catb.org, a byte is defined as “a unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures this is invariably 8 bits.”

In other words, a byte represents a single character’s worth of information. This would be any number between 0 and 255. If you want an easy way to remember it, it kind of sounds like eight. Byte, eight.

Now that you know the difference between a bit and a byte you may be wondering, if you’re not a programmer, why it even matters. Welcome to the world of speed tests and abbreviations.

Why Aren’t Files Download at the Same Speeds I Get on a Speed Test?

One of the most common gaffs when it comes to customer-ISP relationships is the understanding of “MB/s” and “mbps.” If you’re any good at abbreviations you’ve probably already deduced that “MB/s” is megabytes per second and “mbps” is megabits per second (for more information on kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, etc. check this out).

So most of the time megabytes are used for file size and megabits are used for download speeds. So when one sees a file downloading at 3 MB/s and they’re paying for what they think is 25 MB/s download speeds, they’ve simply confused the matter. What they’re really paying for is 25 mbps or megabits. To save you some math, 1 megabyte (MB) is roughly equal to 8.4 (let’s just call it 8) megabits (mb).

Note: Network speeds were calculated in bits long before there was even an Internet to download files. This and for obvious marketing reasons are why ISPs still sell speeds in bits and not bytes.

So, if you wanted to calculate how fast a 20 megabit per second modem can download a 10 megabyte, the calculation would be as follows:

10*8/20 = 4 seconds.

So, in the above example of the frustrated internet user, their file is actually downloading at around 24 megabits per second (mbps)—only one bit less than what they’re paying for.

Obviously, internet speeds will vary and different times of the day, so you won’t always get the speeds you’re paying for—that’s just how the world works unfortunately.

What Other Factors Could Affect Internet Speed?

There are many reasons you wouldn’t be getting the speeds you’re paying for besides the traffic fluctuations during certain times of the day.

One reason could be the speed or capacity of the server at the other end of the file transfer. If it can only be sent at 3 MB/s, that’s what you’ll get regardless of the speeds you’re paying for. To test a server to see if it’s slow or if you are slow check out our speed test page.

Related to this, is the geographical location of where you’re downloading the file from. If you’re downloading it across an ocean, it’s going to take longer than if you’re downloading off of a server 100 miles away.

Typically, however, an ISP will just buy a 100 mbps connection (see the section on our speed test page about hops for more information) and share it between users. That’s why if one guy decides to download heavy files, the other people on that connection are going to suffer. We say, screw that guy.

We hope you learned much about bits and bytes—enough, at least, to get to a point where we can stop bolding them.

If you have any questions or concerns, please comment below or contact blog@colocationamerica.com.

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