My Journey to Gmail

After three years of dipping my toes in the pool, I finally jumped in both feet first.  Google has been my primary tool for web site analytics, chat/instant message, blogging, rss reader, voice/voicemail, bookmark synchronizing and search alerts.  But I've been holding onto Microsoft Outlook for dear life.  It was familiar but also problematic and error prone. 

The straw that broke the camel's back was my last computer upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 64 bit.  I realized that the need to restore my e-mail and accounts on my computer was too much of a pain.  If I needed to sync my outlook contacts, it was via a usb cable, not over the wireless data network.

After configuring Google's Gmail to pull my POP3 e-mail, importing my Outlook contacts and enabling e-mails to be sent from my business e-mail, I was off and running.  Google makes this process simple.  The hardest part was getting use to labels versus Outlook folders.  Gmail gives you the ability to label e-mails with names similar to dropping mail into folders.  Rules can be set up to label e-mail as in comes in just like Outlook and archive messages do they don't show up in your inbox.  E-mail searching is much faster and  now have the ability to add and share multiple calendars to keep track of personal and business obligations.  Google Mobile App for the blackberry allows me to sync selected calendars and contacts to my mobile device.

Google Apps comes in a business and personal usage edition.  The business version cost $50 per user per year which isn't a bad price considering you get increased e-mail and file  storage at 25GB of e-mail per user and 10GB storage plus 500MB per user for shared storage.

Google has had their share of outages which makes many businesses leery of Software as a Service  (SaaS) applications.  Determine your threshold for e-mail and document downtime versus your expense of hosting your own solution and software.  Keep in mind that you need a good, fast internet connection, maybe two incase the first one fails.  Google Apps may not be the right fit for all small businesses and should consult with your trusted technical advisor before making the switch.

Aaron Magruder

amagruder@nonstopnetworks.net

(816) 846-0676

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net

Visit our Resource Center and Blog,  Join the Kansas City Small Business Technology Community, Meet Us on Facebook, Find Us on LinkedIn and Follow on Twitter.

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.

Explore Your Options

Recently, I have seen so many small businesses purchases the first product or service that solves their immediate problem without exploring multiple options or considering long term plans.  The natural response is they don't know the options.  Know that there are always options.  Ask the person trying to sell you their product what other options are available.  If they are honest and want to build trust, they will discuss them with their along with pros and cons.  Take that information and contact their competitor or another vendor that makes similar products to discuss their options. 

Compare, Compare, Compare

Take the data that includes price, support, features, growth and other important factors to you and compare them side by side.  This will give you a clearer picture of what fits your business today and 3 years from now.

Hosted Services (Software as a Services / Saas) or Local Installation

SaaS is becoming ever popular with Google, ZoHo and Hosted Voice Over IP (VoIP) services. The main attractions are 1)Upfront cost is less, 2) No hardware or software to implement and 3) Upgrades or feature enhancements are rolled out to all customers.   SaaS does have it's place but there is an on-site local product or service alternative.  They have advantages to. 1)You own the product, no one can take it away or shut it down 2)Quicker to implement changes and enhancements and 3) Many 3rd party software integration capabilities that can't be done with a hosted provider.

Conclusion

We all just want our immediate problems to go away.  Stop and thing about  your companies long term needs, Total Cost of Ownership and compare multiple solutions for your overall needs.

Aaron Magruder

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net

(816) 846-0676

Visit our Resource Center and Blog,  Join the Kansas City Small Business Technology Community, Meet Us on Facebook, Find Us on LinkedIn and Follow on Twitter.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.

March Madness: The Network Killer

ATTN Business Owners: Don't make this IT's problem.


ATTN IT Departments: Business Owners will make this your problem.


It never fails. Calls start flooding in about slow response times of critical applications. What just happened? Every year employees stream March Madness over the internet killing the companies internet bandwidth. The company policy doesn't state they can't stream media over the internet so it becomes your problem to solve. Been there, done that.


What do you do now?

1. Tell people that complain about performance the entire sales department is watching March Madness and to go complain to them. (Not Politically Correct)
2. Shut down all streaming media in and out of the network at your internet gateway. (Not a good idea, many angry executives)
3. Ask people politely to stop streaming the game over the internet as it is affecting production. (This may work for some people, but not effective.)
4. Set up TV's around the office to allow people to watch the games rather than watching over the internet. (This is a very effective solution if your office has cable TV)
5. Throttle streaming media in and out of the network to 25-50% of your available internet bandwidth. This will allow people to get actual production work done, keep the streamers happy, human resources doesn't have to deal with the problem and executives don't have to hear about the problem.

How do I do limit the bandwidth March Madness consumes?

1. If you have a proxy server in your network, they have the ability to classify traffic by type. i.e. Streaming Media. You can limit a type to a specific bandwidth usage.
2. No proxy, Cisco Routers have the ability to rate limit, shape or QoS traffic types.
3. No Cisco Routers. The solution won't be as affective, but most small business internet gateways have the ability to deny traffic by ip address and possiblly URL.
4. OpenDNS can filter by category. Unfortunately this an allow Podcast / Sports or deny which would leave several other sites blocked as well.

Conclusion


There are several ways to prepare for the effect March Madness will have on you network. First, if you have a proxy server use it. If not, contact your CIO and human resources to see if a policy can be put in place around March Madness streaming. Make sure corporate communications broadcast it 3 times before it starts. If not, document, document, document that fact that you informed everyone of the situation and side effects that will occur.

Aaron Magruder

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net

(816) 846-0676

Visit our Resource Center and Blog,  Join the Kansas City Small Business Technology Community, Meet Us on Facebook, Find Us on LinkedIn and Follow on Twitter.

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.

What does Net Neutrality mean to Small Business?

Have you heard of Net Neutrality yet?  In short, it is the principal or idea of keeping all traffic on the internet for any person or source equal.  i.e. Big business web traffic gets no more priority on the internet as your small business instant message traffic. 

The FCC defined net neutrality more broadly in 2005, coming up with four principles—dubbed the “Four Freedoms”—to be applied on an individual basis:

1. Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

2. Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

3. Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

4. Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers. 

The FCC is in favor of Net Neutrality while others believe that you should be able to pay or charge for priority on the internet.  Where would this leave small, startup or rural businesses?  Would they be able to compete with their larger competitors using the internet?

Comcast was one of the first to be brought to court by the FCC for limiting the flow of a filing sharing application called BitTorrent.  (http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-technology/20100108/US.TEC.Comcast.FCC.Internet.Rules/ ).  They argued that it was their multibillion dollar infrastructure and should have the right to protect it and other subscribers from being affected by peer to peer file sharing. 

Obama has stated he is in favor of Net Neutrality (http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9806707-7.html) but no laws have been made to date.  The Comcast dispute may be the first to be take in front of Congress to resolve with legislation.

Please share your thoughts on Net Neutrality?

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net

Visit our Resource Center and Blog,  Join the Kansas City Small Business Technology Community, Meet Us on Facebook, Find Us on LinkedIn and Follow on Twitter.

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.

Eliminate Your Weakest Link, With Small Business Technology

Do you remember the game show "The Weakest Link"?  A group a people answered questions in turn and at the end of the round the person with the least amount of right answers (the weakest link) was eliminated.  Your business is no different.  It has weak links.  Something or someone that is causing slowdowns, delays, inefficiencies or the inability to grow.

Don't think  you have any weak links?

• How much has your travel cost increased?
• How many hours in missed or inaccurate billing to you have a month?
• How many clients, customers or patients missed their appointments because they forgot?
• How much do you overpay employees due to inaccurate time recording?
• How long does it take you to fill staff shortages?
• How many potential customers called your competitor because you weren't able to answer their call?

These are just a few examples.  You know your business better than anyone.  What is your biggest pain point?

Now that I've identified our weak link(s), what's next?

There are a number of technologies out there to solve small business problems.  It is up to you to identify the biggest time waster(s), problem(s), issues(s), cost(s) that your business is facing.  Sometimes there are free tools or applications to solve the issue, sometimes there will be an upfront investment.  The return on investment (ROI) may be 2 months or 2 years. 

Now that you have identified your small business problem, Google it with the word technology after it or call your trusted technology advisor.  There are going to be many possible solutions.  Do your research, obtain cost/time estimates and calculate your ROI.  Implement strategies first that have the highest ROI and are the easiest or quickest to complete.  Second, knock out the projects that will take a little more time and require more resources.

Conclusion

There is always room for improvement.  Ask your employees how they would improve processes.  After all, they are the ones on the front line.  Take steps to automate as many daily task or functions as possible.  The less manual work, the more efficient your business will run.

Share you weakest link and technology strategy to strengthen your business.

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net

Visit our Resource Center and Blog,  Join the Kansas City Small Business Technology Community, Meet Us on Facebook, Find Us on LinkedIn and Follow on Twitter.

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.

Troubleshooting Slow Home or Small Business DSL or Cable Internet Connections

Simple steps to bypassing your home internet gateway to find out if your DSL or Cable Internet Service Provider is causing your slow internet connection.

Free Web Filtering and Anti-Phishing for Home and Small Business

We've talked about why content filtering is important to small businesses and a few solutions.  Some of the highlights are reducing wasted network resources such as internet bandwidth, minimizing legal risk and increasing employee productivity.  If you haven't read our content filtering blog in a while, please check out the risk section again?

Since that writing, we have discovered another options for Small Businesses that provide all the benefits discussed before and cost $0, zilch, nothing, free.  They do have a couple fee based options for additional functionality that are geared towards small business and another for K-12 and larger businesses.

Before we dive into the solution, it would be helpful to understand what Domain Name System, or DNS, is.  It is explained in this earlier blog.  In short, it is a phone book for the internet.  You look up a name and DNS give you the number to call.

OpenDNS provides the capability to block or allow access to specific web site categories such as social networking, nudity, drugs, games phishing, music, shopping and more - 25 Categories with the Free Services.  It does this by NOT returning the number to call when a website you asked for matches a preconfigured category.

I personally use OpenDNS for the anti-phishing function.  Phishing is the act of persuading someone to click on a link or website that looks like a trusted website in  hopes of obtaining your personal information.  You don't always notice that www.bankafamerica.com isn't www.bankofamerica.com, get redirected to the wrong site and put in your banking userid and password.  OpenDNS prevents against this type of attack by not directing you to known phishing sites.

To recap, if you are a small business, concerned with security, wasted resources, legal risk and employees waste company time on Facebook, OpenDNS is for you.  It is free and simple to implement.

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net

Visit our Resource Center and Blog,  Join the Kansas City Small Business Technology Community, Meet Us on Facebook, Find Us on LinkedIn and Follow on Twitter.

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice of a trusted professional.

Keeping Track of Schedules Driving You Mad?

Do you find it difficult to keep track of families, business, staff or co-workers activities?  What about tracking client appointments or scheduling people in the field?  It is frustrating to add the same event to multiple calendars and phones.  Small Businesses may not have the funds available to purchase Microsoft Outlook or Exchange E-mail server.  But they do need much of the functionality Exchange provides.

Google Calendars is a free, simple but comprehensive calendar that allows you to create a personal calendar for yourself plus additional calendars for other purposes such as Company Events, Family Activities or Holidays.  Each calendar can be made Public or Private as well as shared with specific family members or co-workers.  Additional security can be added to shared calendars to give people access to view only all the way to add/modify/administer the calendar.  Calendars can be combined and presented on a single page on your company web site.  This is extremely useful if you want to have a company events but also display other shared calendars to your customers.

Maybe you have Microsoft Outlook for your e-mail and calendar today.  No problem, Google Calendar has a sync tool that allows you to sync events, at a scheduled interval or manually, from Outlook to Google Calendar, visa versa or both ways.

How do you get your schedule to your mobile phone.  If you have a blackberry or other smartphone with a data plan, there are a couple options.  Google has apps for the Blackberry that allow you to view your Gmail, Calendar and more from a single interface.   The second is to use Blackberry Desktop Manager to sync your Outlook Calendar from your PC to your phone.  I personally sync from Outlook to my Blackberry but also have the Google Apps installed on my Blackberry.

Notifications for shared calendar is a great feature.  Receive and e-mail or SMT text message at a predefined interval keeps you on track.

This isn't a comprehensive list of Google Calendar features or an endorsement but free tools like this are out there for the small business.

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net | http://forum.nonstopnetworks.net

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice  of a trusted professional.

Common Security Tips to Keep You Safe on the World Wide Web

Here are a few common security tips that will help you avoid the majority of problems related to accessing the internet.


1.  Use a good antivirus program, schedule automatic virus definition downloads and daily scheduled scans early in the morning.  Create a task on your calendar to check the status of the definition downloads and scans.  If scans aren't running with the most up to date definitions, antivirus doesn't do much good.  I also emphasize "GOOD" antivirus software.  Don't buy the $5 or $10 antivirus software and expect it to work.  It doesn't.


2.  Enable Windows Automatic Updates, if you don't have any custom developed applications on your computer.  Most people use the basic web browser, Microsoft office and e-mail.  Most updates that are automatically installed won't interfere with these applications.  To enable automatic updates, open Internet Explorer, go to tools and Windows Updates.  After the page loads, you will have the option to enable automatic updates on the right hand side if it is not already enabled.  Vista already has this enabled by default.


3.  Don't open e-mail attachments from unknown people.  People can add links to e-mails and make them look like they go to one place but take you to another.  If you aren't sure what it is, don't click it. 


4.  Don't click on links in social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace that don't look right.  i.e. Here is a funny video of you or Have you seen this picture of you or You've got to see this.  These are all red flags.


5.  Require people or vendors to follow these simple rules before adding anything to or using  your network.  Many times vendors will add devices such as printer that run Windows without installing antivirus or anyway to apply security patches.  

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net | http://forum.nonstopnetworks.net

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice  of a trusted professional.

Simple, How I Get to the Internet and Troubleshooting Steps

Many small business owners, like yourself, or a member of your staff double as the "IT Guy".  Nothing wrong with this, but it does take time away from your business.  Learning how computers work, operating systems, applications and connecting everything together is no small task. 

Let's discuss a few common network troubleshooting steps to speed up the learning curve and maybe save you a call to your IT support company or Internet Service Provider (ISP).

First, we'll do a brief explanation of how a PC gets from point A to point B. 

Your computer is connected to a network either via an Ethernet cable or wireless connection.  Most small businesses or home users have a wireless router/gateway they purchased from one of the "Marts" or Tech Stores.  These wireless routers are preconfigured, ready for you to connect the WAN (Wide Area Network) port to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) DSL/Cable Modem and for your PC(s) to connect to the LAN (Local Area Network) port(s). 

After you connect your PC to the router/gateway, it grabs or pulls an IP Address via DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).  Think of an IP Address like phone number, it is a unique number that your computer can be reached at.

When you ask your computer access a website, it does it much like you would make a phone call when you don't know the number.  You pull out the phone book, scroll through the listings until you find the  number, then dial.  PC's use DNS, or Domain Name System, to find the number that correlates to the name you asked it for.  (i.e. www.google.com).  Your computer knows what DNS servers to ask because they were provided by DHCP, described above.  Your internet provider has DNS servers for your PC to make these name lookup request.

Now that your PC knows what number to call, it send this request out to the information highway by asking that router/gateway to forward the request to your Internet Provider or ISP.  Your ISP forwards it to the website and the website sends back the information that displays on your screen.

We have a basic knowledge of IP Addresses, DNS and that we get this information through DHCP, let's discuss a few troubleshooting steps.

Go to Start, Run and Type cmd, hit enter.  A small black box will come up.  In the box,

Type ipconfig, enter (Your IP Address will display along with Subnet Mask and Default Gateway, which is the router/gateway your purchased)

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : nsn.local

   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.100

   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1

Type ipconfig/all, enter (/all shows additional information such as your DHCP and DNS servers)

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : nsn.local

   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card

   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-22-69-3F-28-4A

   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes

   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.100(Preferred)

   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

   Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Friday, November 20, 2009 8:02:22 PM

   Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, November 23, 2009 8:02:36 PM

   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1

   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.100.1

   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 208.67.222.222

                                       208.67.220.220

   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Type ping Default Gateway  (Ping verifies that you can get to another device and get a valid response, in this case, verifies your local network is working)

C:\>ping 192.168.100.1

Pinging 192.168.100.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Reply from 192.168.100.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for 192.168.100.1:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 1ms

Next, Type nslookup website, you want to access.  Nslookup is similar to you looking up a phone number in the phone book.  You should see at least one number returned under the non-authoritative answer: section.

C:\>nslookup www.google.com

Server:  resolver1.opendns.com

Address:  208.67.222.222

Non-authoritative answer:

Name:    www.l.google.com

Addresses:  209.85.225.105

          209.85.225.147

          209.85.225.103

          209.85.225.104

          209.85.225.99

          209.85.225.106

Aliases:  www.google.com

Next, ping the website.  Keep in mind that not all websites allow ping so it isn't guaranteed to get a response.  If you get a response, you're ISP is working fine.

C:\>ping www.google.com

Pinging www.l.google.com [209.85.225.103] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=54

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=54

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=54

Reply from 209.85.225.103: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 209.85.225.103:

    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

    Minimum = 41ms, Maximum = 42ms, Average = 41ms

Question and Answer

Q.  What do I do if I can't ping my default gateway?

A.  Verify that your wireless connectivity is working or that your ethernet cable is connected from your PC to the gateway.  There should be a link light on both the PC card, or NIC, and the gateway that verifies a connection is made.

Q.  What do I do if there isn't a response to my nslookup request.

A.    Assuming you can ping your default gateway, try to ping the DNS Address that shows after an ipconfig/all.  If you can't, verify your connection from your router/gateway's WAN port to your cable/dsl modem.  If a link light shows on both ends, you can log into your gateway and verify that the WAN port has an IP Address assigned from your ISP.  If it doesn't, reset your gateway and call your Internet Provider.

Q.  What do I do if I can ping www.google.com but can't get to it in a web browser.

A.  If no web pages display, but you can ping them, this indicates a problem with your PC.  Try rebooting first, then call your trusted PC Repairman.

NonStop Networks, LLC

Cisco Unified Communications Solutions

http://www.nonstopnetworks.net | http://forum.nonstopnetworks.net

Focused on solving problems for small and medium sized businesses who are frustrated that their communication systems are letting them down, worried about security and concerned with rising technology cost.  Helping businesses communicate in real-time with customers and staff - anytime, anywhere.

There is no warranty in the information listed. It is always recommended that your seek the advice  of a trusted professional.