Advantage Consulting

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  • We help you leverage your technology investment by actively seeking areas to reduce costs, increase productivity and improve business operations.
  • All of our infrastructure designs and upgrades focus on maximizing hardware functionality, minimizing cost of ownership and ensuring that your company's goals and objectives are served as efficiently as possible.
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Wireless Routers Are Usually The Wrong Answer

Many people who lack IT expertise, try to extend their wireless networks by plugging a wireless router into a pre-existing Ethernet port. Although this can work, it often causes unexpected problems -- especially if you keep all of the manufacturer's default settings. A router's job is to forward network packets (pieces of information) from one device to another. Normally you would install an additional router when you want to create a new subnet on your network. Installing multiple routers on the same network (without properly configuring them to perform some specific function) often causes IP conflicts as well as slowing down network traffic. The correct way to extend a wireless network is through the proper configuration and deployment of wireless repeaters and access points.

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) Devices Can Not Replace File Servers

More and more small businesses are naively installing Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices to their networks as a cheap alternative to maintaining a file server. A recent security review of network-attached storage devices revealed that NAS devices were more vulnerable than even home routers, thanks to issues like command injection, buffer overflows and authentication bypasses. These security risks are difficult to address, because IT professionals are limited by the software which the NAS vendors install on their devices. A simple Linux file server is a much more secure and flexible option, and it doesn't cost that much more.

People are often lured to NAS devices by the apparently simple remote access features that allow files to be accessed remotely through the Internet. Although this seems like a simpler option that installing a Virtual Private network (VPN) this line of thinking is deceptive. It would be just as easy to make a real file server accessible over the Internet without a VPN -- but nobody would be crazy enough to do that because of the tremendous security risks. Making a NAS device accessible without a VPN creates the exact same risks -- people just don't stop to realize that fact.

You Are Probably Being Misled About The Speed Of Your Internet Connection

Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) advertise the "speed" of their Internet offerings with figures like 7 Mbps, 12 Mbps, 32 Mbps etc. Mbps stands for "Megabits Per Second" and is a measurement of capacity (a.k.a. bandwidth), not speed. The actual speed of your connection is determined by a quantity called "latency." Latency is a measurement of delay. For purposes of this discussion, latency is the amount of time it takes for a data packet to travel from its original source to its final destination. Together, latency and bandwidth define the speed and capacity of a network. Two different Internet connections can have the same bandwidth (for example 20 Mbps) but one can be twice as fast as the other if it has half the latency. Most DSL and cable connections have a latency of 10 to 20 milliseconds (ms) as compared to a T1 connection which has a typical latency of 2 to 5 ms.

The bandwidth figures that ISPs present as "speed" are not completely meaningless. If two internet connections have the exact same latency, the one with twice the bandwidth will be twice as fast -- that's because it has twice the capacity with the same delay.

Now that you know all this, you can make much wiser decisions when shopping for Internet service, right? Well, actually, not so much. Try calling a few Internet Service Providers and ask them for the latency associated with their various bandwidth options. You'll discover that ISPs simply will not quote a latency figure for you. Most of the people you talk to won't even know what it is. Moreover, the latency of an Internet connection can change depending on how your ISP routes data to your connection on any given day; the longer the path, the greater the latency (delay.)