Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Understanding Alternate Data Streams (ADS) within file systems, particularly within the NTFS framework on Windows operating systems, is crucial for IT security professionals, software developers, digital forensic analysts, and anyone interested in data security. This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of ADS, exploring their technical aspects, legitimate uses, and security implications.

Link aggregation is a way of bundling a bunch of individual (Ethernet) links together so they act as a single logical link. A fundamental for effective switch management, if you have a switch with a whole lot of Gigabit Ethernet ports, you can connect all of them to another device that also has a bunch of ports and balance the traffic among these links to improve performance.

If you’ve ever been in charge of IP address assignment, you’ve come across the terms classful and classless addressing. If you haven’t, the main difference between classful and classless addressing is in the subnet length: classful addressing uses fixed-length subnet masks, but classless uses variable length subnet masks (VLSM).

Maintaining strong relationships with your customers is essential. As an MSP, your customers rely on you for their IT solutions, cybersecurity, and overall technological support. But beyond providing these services, creating a sense of appreciation and gratitude can enhance customer satisfaction, add value to the relationship, and boost loyalty. While grand gestures may seem appealing, sometimes it’s the small, thoughtful actions that can make the biggest impact.

The TCP/IP protocol sometimes shows its age. It was invented in an era when networks were very slow and packet loss was high. So one of the main considerations in early protocol design was reliability. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has built-in mechanisms for reliability that include validating a checksum on every packet, as well as detection and retransmission of dropped or out-of-order packets.

Is that a bird’s nest or is it spaghetti? Have you ever asked that question when looking into a IT wiring closet? At some point in your tenure as a network manager, you’ve likely been asked to inventory a network and create a network topology diagram.

For new networkers, Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) can be an intimidating topic. Many old-timers speak of spanning-tree in ominous tones, recounting the time when a “spanning-tree loop” brought down the network. Some managers strictly forbid anyone from changing anything related to the spanning tree, fearing a resulting service interruption. Some of the fear surrounding spanning trees is likely based on bad experiences, but some are based on ignorance—at least partly.

This month, I want to address a question I was sent from one of our MSP partners. As a smaller MSP looking to grow, they were wondering what they should focus on first: Marketing and lead gen to fill their sales pipeline? Or strategies to improve their organizational and operational efficiencies? They recognized that both areas are currently a source of weakness for their business.

Let me start by saying that spanning tree is a Good Thing. It saves you from loops, which will completely shut down a network. But it has to be configured properly to work properly. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a client call me, desperate with a terribly broken network, and I’ve responded, “Sounds like a spanning tree problem.” There are many ways things can go wrong with spanning tree. In this article, I’ve collected six of the recurring themes.