Archive | Network

Network Drive Control is a free program for Microsoft Windows devices to configure network-specific drive mappings. One of the issues that you may experience when it comes to mapped network drives on a Windows machine is that Windows tries to connect to all on start if configured this way. There is no network-specific option that […]

If you are using the popular VPN service Private Internet Access (PIA) and monitor outgoing network connections on your devices, you may have noticed that the program rubyw.exe attempts to connect to various Internet servers when you initiate the VPN connection to Private Internet Access. This happens only if you are using the PIA software […]

The popular Wi-Fi survey and discovery application NetSpot has been ported from Mac OS X to Windows. It is available as a free, limited version only currently. If you are using wireless Internet at home, you probably know that reception can differ a lot depending on the room you are in and other factors, such […]

Like 802.11n, the IEEE released a draft of the amendment before its final release. These early devices are known as “Wave 1”. Unless you 11ac router is less than a year old, it falls into this category. The final release was in January 2014 and the subsequent equipment known as “Wave 2”. The majority of […]

There is no such thing as perfect security. Given enough knowledge, resources, and time any system can be compromised. The best you can do is to make it as difficult for an attacker as possible. That said there are steps you can take to harden your network against the vast majority of attacks. The default […]

Today, WiFi is everywhere: coffee shops, restaurants, retail, hotels, sports venues, etc. We can access it from our laptops, tablets, and smartphones. At home there may be game consoles, smart home devices, and set top boxes. I have several ChromeCast devices. They turn your TV into a wireless network device that you can stream movies […]

In 1947, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN agency, designated certain bands of the RF spectrum as ISM. The idea was to have an international standard of frequencies that were reserved for Industrial, Scientific, and Medical equipment. Ironically, telecommunications was not the original purpose. Before we discuss any particulars, I just want to note […]

QuickMon is a powerful monitoring and alerting software for Windows that you can use to monitor specific local or remote events and receive alerts about them. The program is not the easiest to work with as you need to understand what monitor packs, agents and collectors do before you can get started using it. Note: […]

It may sometimes be useful to boot one or multiple computer systems from a network computer instead of locally. Maybe you want to boot another operating system or an update but the computer has no disc drive and only a slow USB 2.0 option or none at all. Or you may need to maintain computer […]

Advanced Network Configurator addresses the decade old problem of configuring Windows PCs to connect to computer networks using a single network adapter. The main issue that you will encounter is that it is time-consuming to modify network related values for the adapter whenever you change networks. Say, you use a laptop at home and at […]

How do you know which programs on Windows have established connections to the Internet or are accepting them? Some programs may reveal the information to you directly while others may not reveal those information to you. This is especially true for shady applications and those that are outright malicious. If you want to know if […]

Fixing remote network issues can be quite the time consuming tasks. While it is sometimes a matter of making a quick change to the configuration of one system, it can at other times lead to hours of painful troubleshooting. The Windows operating system ships with tools to aid users in the process. Windows Network Diagnostics […]

Most Internet users strive to have a reliable network connection to the Internet, as it enables them to enjoy what it has to offer without most of the issues that may occur otherwise. If you are a gamer, you may want to avoid lag more than anything else, while P2P users may dislike throttling and […]

Most programs that you use to connect to servers or site on a local network or the Internet display only basic information when a connection attempt fails. These basic information are usually not enough to find out why the connection failed, and while it sometimes helps to try again, you often need to troubleshoot the […]