Communication & Information Technology

[sha]

Sun April 27, 2003 03:41 PM ET
By Daniel Sorid

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Within the next year, PC makers are expected to start selling a powerful new generation of home computers that run on 64-bit microchips.



But consumers might initially find little extra value in these PCs, despite their exponentially more powerful features.

Companies and researchers have long used 64-bit computers for such tasks as simulating nuclear blasts or managing big stores of customer data. These computers can crunch numbers far more deftly than the PCs on most people's desks.
In September, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD.N will introduce the first 64-bit chips for home computers, promising that the same power that works for nuclear engineers can be used by regular PC users to make games more brilliant and make video editing a snap.

Aside from the most power-hungry PC users, however, most people will likely benefit from holding onto their current machines a while longer, at least until more software supporting 64-bit chips is developed.

The most popular software for consumers, such as the Windows operating system and Microsoft Word, cannot yet take advantage of a 64-bit chip. A computer using the Athlon 64 chip will be able to run software designed for today's PCs, but it will not be much, if any, faster than any other computer.

A HIGHER COUNT

The power of a 64-bit computer stems from its ability to work with very large strings of numbers in one pass. The "64" in 64-bit refers to the number of digits the computer's brain, known as a processor, can handle at once.

Like a paint-by-numbers picture, the computer needs to map out every piece of memory it will use with a unique number. The more numbers the computer's brain can understand, the more areas of memory it can map.

As a result, 64-bit computers can accommodate vast amounts of computer memory -- far more than a home computer user currently needs to check e-mail or surf the Web.

In this sense, the advantages of a 64-bit computer are far more obvious to business users who need to pump up their data-serving machines with huge amounts of memory. In fact, PC makers are paying far more attention to selling 64-bit computers to businesses than they are to consumers.

Still, the ability to work with very large numbers can offer advantages to computer users who want to edit home movies, because movies require a large amount of memory. So do video games.

Such power users are on the minds of the programmers at Epic Games, a video game creator in Raleigh, North Carolina. The company plans to release a game in two years that will offer far more detailed graphics to users with 64-bit computers.

"In a couple years, we'll be shipping a game where there are major visible consumer advantages to having 64-bit," Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney said. "The time between now and then you'll see 64-bit start with the development companies, guys like us, and the really high-end consumers, who run 64-bit just because it's cool."

Yet for the most part, consumers will not immediately have a very big selection of software that takes advantage of a computer's 64-bit capabilities.

Another sign that 64-bit home computing may be years away from joining the mainstream is that Intel, which sells eight of every 10 microprocessors for personal computers, has not given its endorsement to the idea. While Intel is promoting a 64-bit chip for business computers, it has been cool on the idea of a 64-bit computer for the home.

AMD, on the other hand, sees its Athlon 64 chip as a chance to take the lead from Intel. That will depend on whether it can convince computer users to buy 64-bit computers even before there is much software out that can make use of such power.

(The PluggedIn column appears weekly. Comments or questions on this one can be e-mailed to daniel.sorid(at)reuters.com.)


Note: Taken from asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=263

[sha]

Detecting Hackers With-NETSTAT

By using netstat you will be able to find out the ip address of your computer and of the remote computer connected to your computer and most importantly you will be able to know what ports are open on our computer - this will help you know if your computer is infected by a Trojan.



Let us see how to launch netstat command. netstat is a MS-DOS based command, you can not use mouse to interact with this utility. To launch this command simply run MS-DOS prompt. To do this just click on "Run..." after clicking on Start button and then type command and press "Enter" key. Another way to run this command is by restart your computer in MS-DOS mode and also the best way.

A
Inffter that you be able to see this line in the black screen:

C:\Windows>

To launch netstat type netstat -a and press "Enter" key.

C:\windows>netstat -a

Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP level9:1080 level9.netfirms.com:http ESTABLISHED
TCP level9:1345 mail.level9.com:pop3 ESTABLISHED
TCP level9:1647 http://www.yahoo.com:http ESTABLISHED

Now let us see some other options available with the netstat command.

c:\windows>netstat /?

We will get the following output.

Displays protocol statistics and current TCP/IP network connections.

NETSTAT [-a] [-e] [-n] [-s] [-p proto] [-r] [interval]

-a Displays all connections and listening ports. (Server-side connections are normally not shown).

-e Displays Ethernet statistics. This may be combined with the -s option.

-n Displays addresses and port numbers in numerical form.

-p proto Shows connections for the protocol specified by proto; proto may be tcp or udp. If used with the -s option to display per-protocol statistics, proto may be tcp, udp, or ip.

-r Displays the contents of the routing table.

-s Displays per-protocol statistics. By default, statistics are shown for TCP, UDP and IP; the -p option may be used to specify a subset of the default. interval Redisplays selected statistics, pausing interval seconds between each display. Press CTRL+C to stop redisplaying statistics. If omitted, netstat will print the current configuration information once.

So if you want to check out whether your computer is infected with Back Orifice or NETBUS you will run command netstat -a and if it shows that your computer is listening on port 31337 or 12345. Then this proven that your computer now already been infected by the trojan horse.

Information -> : Level9 : Malaysia Premiere Information Security Portal

[sha]

Asia running out of IP-address room

Asia running out of IP-address room
By John Lui
CNETAsia
May 28, 2003, 9:29 AM PT

China, Korea and Japan are running out of time.

Governments and academics from the three countries are teaming up, putting aside troubled histories to avert a common disaster.



The issue: Asia's well of available IP (Internet Protocol) addresses is running dry rapidly. Without an IP address--a 32-bit string of numbers--a 3G phone, PC or handheld has no identity and cannot send or receive data.


When that final address is used up in a couple of years, the online world will grind to a halt. And perhaps, so will the economies of the three North Asian nations.

The shrinking pool
Asia's plight is especially dire because the region was assigned fewer addresses under the current IPv4 (version 4) scheme, drawn up over 20 years ago.

Renee Gamble, a program manager with market research firm IDC and specializing in IP and broadband issues, cited a few stark numbers.

With IPv4, China has only 22 million IP addresses for its population of 1.3 billion people. Last year, it had about 17 million Internet subscribers, and the figure will hit 62.5 million in 2007. Japan and Korea will also run out of addresses soon, she said.

What's worse, this doesn't include the coming wave of 3G phones and smart, data-enabled home devices, which will all need an address.

The U.S. and Europe are sitting pretty for now, because these regions grabbed most IP addresses. The Americans, for example, own 70 percent of all addresses, she said.

Authorities in North Asia are counting on a new addressing scheme called IPv6 to save the day, and it may be Asia that will lead the world in adopting it, she said.

An Asian problem
IPv6 uses a 128-bit number as so the range of allowable addresses is virtually limitless, said Gamble.

But beyond just allowing networks in Asia to grow, IPv6 has other benefits, she said.

With IPv4, a lot of address re-use occurs. A device picks up a new unused address from a shared pool each time it logs on. But because of IPv6's vast pool, each mobile phone and handheld can have its own permanent address, opening up new application possibilities. "IPv6 provides far superior performance, scalability, manageability and security than its predecessor," she said.

China and Japan will invest millions to develop IPv6. For example, June last year, both governments pledged US$32 million into network construction and testing, system development, application technology development and standardization, she said.

Elsewhere, the Nikkei Electronics news service has reported that Japanese firm Hitachi will become an Internet service provider (ISP) in China later this year. It will be the first in the country--and probably the world--to use only IPv6 addresses for customers.

It will rely on Hitachi's own IPv6-enabled network equipment, pointing to how the need to upgrade to IPv6 is being seen as an opportunity for Asian equipment makers.

However, Gamble said that non-Asian makers such as Nortel, Cisco, Nokia and others have supported IPv6 in their products for some years.

"Most vendors have worked to ensure their products have interoperability between IPv6 and IPv4 and because migration and deployment of IPv6 networks across the globe will be gradual, the two standards will coexist for many years to come."

"Also, solutions have been developed to allow IPv6 tunneling over existing IPv4 infrastructure, for example," she said.

A two-track Internet?
Still, there may come a time when there will be a dual-track Internet, separated by the Pacific Ocean.

"It is likely that a situation will emerge whereby Asia moves much more rapidly towards IPv6 while North America lags," she said. However, she added that around the world, as domain servers, switches and routers--the nuts and bolts of networks--get replaced over time; the Internet will become one flavor again.

But in the meantime, Asia may have to go it alone.

"Any wide scale migration to IPv6 in North America is still some years away," she said.

taken from : zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-1010666.html?tag=fdfeed

[haniff.hashim]

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