#computer network design

[itsupportandconsulting]

The Essentials of a Small Business Computer Network

In today's digital landscape, a reliable computer network is the backbone of any successful small business. Whether you're a startup or an established company, a well-designed and properly maintained network can streamline operations, enhance communication, and support growth. 

Components of a Small Business Computer Network

A small business computer network comprises various interconnected devices and components that enable seamless communication and data sharing. These components include:

Routers: Routers serve as the central hub, connecting devices within the network and providing access to the internet.

Switches: Switches facilitate data transfer between devices within the network. They improve efficiency by delivering data only to the intended recipient.

Access Points: Access points enable wireless connectivity, allowing devices to connect to the network without using physical cables.

Firewalls: Firewalls protect the network from unauthorized access and cyber threats by monitoring incoming and outgoing traffic.

Servers: Servers store and manage data, applications, and resources that are accessed by devices within the network.

Workstations: Workstations are individual computers employees use for their tasks and activities.

Cloud Services: Cloud-based solutions offer scalability, remote access, and data backup options.

Ensuring Security and Data Protection

Small businesses must prioritize network security to safeguard sensitive data and maintain customer trust. Implementing the following measures can help protect your network:

Firewall Configuration: Configure firewalls to filter traffic, block unauthorized access, and prevent malware intrusion.

Encryption: Encrypt data transmission to ensure that sensitive information remains secure during communication.

Regular Updates: Keep network devices and software updated with the latest security patches or versions to address vulnerabilities.

Access Control: Limit access to network resources based on user roles and permissions to prevent unauthorized data access.

Employee Training: Educate employees about security best practices, such as strong password management and recognizing phishing attempts.

Backup Solutions: Implement regular data backups to mitigate the impact of data loss due to hardware failure or cyberattacks.

Scalability for Growth

As your small business grows, your network should be able to accommodate increased demands. Consider the scalability of your network by:

Network Design: Design a flexible network architecture that efficiently adds new devices and resources.

Bandwidth Management: Ensure sufficient bandwidth to support increased traffic and data transfer as your business expands.

Equipment Selection: Invest in network equipment that supports scalability and can handle higher workloads.

Cloud Integration: Utilize cloud services for applications and storage, allowing you to scale resources according to your needs.

Future Planning: Anticipate future growth and technology trends to ensure your network remains relevant and adaptable.

A well-designed small business computer network is more than just a technical infrastructure; it's a strategic asset that drives efficiency, collaboration, and growth. By understanding the components, prioritizing security, and planning for scalability, you can create a network that confidently empowers your business to navigate the digital landscape. As technology evolves, a strong network foundation will remain essential for small businesses seeking to stay competitive, connect with customers, and achieve their goals in an increasingly interconnected world.

[acstation206]

thinking about that one neon pink computer dog from the Diggs Tailwagger pilot for Cartoon Network…

[100-art]

Liquid Crystal Art

[rockmiyabideusexmachina]

Megaman Production Art Scan of the Day #719:

Lan's Bedroom Computer Desk Setup Item Design Sheet [Rockman Netto's Desk (Rough Draft)]

Notations include: - Printer - Light Stand - Monitor - Touch Panel Keyboard - Mouse - Hard Drive - PET Docking Station

Full Resolution Scan: https://imgbox.com/utMY2LII

[almanzart]

(via "Vintage Geometric Floral Pattern in Brown and Beige" Mouse Pad for Sale by Almanzart)

[orcelito]

I do find it so funny that I will graduate college days away from my birthday. Like my birthday is literally in between the end of the semester ("graduation") and commencement

It really will be like a joint graduation & birthday party for me lmao

[soapdispensersalesman]

[windsails]

escapism gets a bad rap but i think we can actually use it proactively to build a better world and simply enter that world. if the escapism fantasy is realistic enough, there’s no reason why we couldn’t actually treat the escapism fantasy as a blueprint and manifest it materially. we just need resources proportional to the scale of the escapist fantasy itself

to be completely honest nobody should have to live in a world they don’t want to live in, there should be social tools to distribute realities to each according to their needs, within reason. each world could have its own constitution initialization program, a server instance

we’ll still have to all do work to maintain the infrastructure of such a system but, that could be accounted for! personally i want to live in a peaceful reality with hiking and beaches and books, and computers

i want to spend my days simply appreciating every single moment and making art. and i don’t mind helping out with IT infrastructure and some light gardening

[horseracetests]

ive never drawn m3rv bcus trying to design a guy who wanted to be a digital gaia avatar so bad it put itself in a computer is a lot of work, but its out there in my mind palace

[arielluva]

drawing my time traveler character bc she was the only good thing to come out of my concept art/3d modeling class (i learned nothing about character design or 3d modeling and this character was the only assignment actually about character design that we did (i did my senior project on character design and learned way more about it than a whole semester long class that was supposed to teach me it))

im also going insane trying to track down the shoes i used for inspiration for hers but alas i cant find them

[momentofgirlnertia]

books i want to read

Hands-on networking with Internet technologies / Douglas E. Comer ; Web site by W. David Laverell.

Comer, Douglas; Laverell, W. David

©2005

Fundamentals of game design / Ernest Adams, Andrew Rollings.

Adams, Ernest (Ernest W.); Rollings, Andrew, 1972-

©2010

[sysig]

I thought I was done being feral about Tamagotchis but no, it was just a lull

[jcmarchi]

For healthy hearing, timing matters

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/for-healthy-hearing-timing-matters/

For healthy hearing, timing matters

When sound waves reach the inner ear, neurons there pick up the vibrations and alert the brain. Encoded in their signals is a wealth of information that enables us to follow conversations, recognize familiar voices, appreciate music, and quickly locate a ringing phone or crying baby.

Neurons send signals by emitting spikes — brief changes in voltage that propagate along nerve fibers, also known as action potentials. Remarkably, auditory neurons can fire hundreds of spikes per second, and time their spikes with exquisite precision to match the oscillations of incoming sound waves.

With powerful new models of human hearing, scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research have determined that this precise timing is vital for some of the most important ways we make sense of auditory information, including recognizing voices and localizing sounds.

The open-access findings, reported Dec. 4 in the journal Nature Communications, show how machine learning can help neuroscientists understand how the brain uses auditory information in the real world. MIT professor and McGovern investigator Josh McDermott, who led the research, explains that his team’s models better-equip researchers to study the consequences of different types of hearing impairment and devise more effective interventions.

Science of sound

The nervous system’s auditory signals are timed so precisely, researchers have long suspected that timing is important to our perception of sound. Sound waves oscillate at rates that determine their pitch: Low-pitched sounds travel in slow waves, whereas high-pitched sound waves oscillate more frequently. The auditory nerve that relays information from sound-detecting hair cells in the ear to the brain generates electrical spikes that correspond to the frequency of these oscillations. “The action potentials in an auditory nerve get fired at very particular points in time relative to the peaks in the stimulus waveform,” explains McDermott, who is also associate head of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

This relationship, known as phase-locking, requires neurons to time their spikes with sub-millisecond precision. But scientists haven’t really known how informative these temporal patterns are to the brain. Beyond being scientifically intriguing, McDermott says, the question has important clinical implications: “If you want to design a prosthesis that provides electrical signals to the brain to reproduce the function of the ear, it’s arguably pretty important to know what kinds of information in the normal ear actually matter,” he says.

This has been difficult to study experimentally; animal models can’t offer much insight into how the human brain extracts structure in language or music, and the auditory nerve is inaccessible for study in humans. So McDermott and graduate student Mark Saddler PhD ’24 turned to artificial neural networks.

Artificial hearing

Neuroscientists have long used computational models to explore how sensory information might be decoded by the brain, but until recent advances in computing power and machine learning methods, these models were limited to simulating simple tasks. “One of the problems with these prior models is that they’re often way too good,” says Saddler, who is now at the Technical University of Denmark. For example, a computational model tasked with identifying the higher pitch in a pair of simple tones is likely to perform better than people who are asked to do the same thing. “This is not the kind of task that we do every day in hearing,” Saddler points out. “The brain is not optimized to solve this very artificial task.” This mismatch limited the insights that could be drawn from this prior generation of models.

To better understand the brain, Saddler and McDermott wanted to challenge a hearing model to do things that people use their hearing for in the real world, like recognizing words and voices. That meant developing an artificial neural network to simulate the parts of the brain that receive input from the ear. The network was given input from some 32,000 simulated sound-detecting sensory neurons and then optimized for various real-world tasks.

The researchers showed that their model replicated human hearing well — better than any previous model of auditory behavior, McDermott says. In one test, the artificial neural network was asked to recognize words and voices within dozens of types of background noise, from the hum of an airplane cabin to enthusiastic applause. Under every condition, the model performed very similarly to humans.

When the team degraded the timing of the spikes in the simulated ear, however, their model could no longer match humans’ ability to recognize voices or identify the locations of sounds. For example, while McDermott’s team had previously shown that people use pitch to help them identify people’s voices, the model revealed that that this ability is lost without precisely timed signals. “You need quite precise spike timing in order to both account for human behavior and to perform well on the task,” Saddler says. That suggests that the brain uses precisely timed auditory signals because they aid these practical aspects of hearing.

The team’s findings demonstrate how artificial neural networks can help neuroscientists understand how the information extracted by the ear influences our perception of the world, both when hearing is intact and when it is impaired. “The ability to link patterns of firing in the auditory nerve with behavior opens a lot of doors,” McDermott says.

“Now that we have these models that link neural responses in the ear to auditory behavior, we can ask, ‘If we simulate different types of hearing loss, what effect is that going to have on our auditory abilities?’” McDermott says. “That will help us better diagnose hearing loss, and we think there are also extensions of that to help us design better hearing aids or cochlear implants.” For example, he says, “The cochlear implant is limited in various ways — it can do some things and not others. What’s the best way to set up that cochlear implant to enable you to mediate behaviors? You can, in principle, use the models to tell you that.”

[rockmiyabideusexmachina]

Megaman Production Art Scan of the Day #648:

Desktop Computer Item Design Sheet [#13 Desktop Computer]  

Notations include:

- Height comparison to Papa (Yuuichirou)

Full Resolution Scan: https://imgbox.com/TAeHIFEZ

[projectchampionz]

DESIGN AN ENHANCED INTRUSION DETECTION MODEL IN A CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT. 

DESIGN AN ENHANCED INTRUSION DETECTION MODEL IN A CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT ABSTRACT Cloud computing is a new type of service that provides large-scale computing resources to each customer. Cloud computing systems can be easily threatened by various cyberattacks because most cloud computing systems provide services to so many people who are not proven to be trustworthy. Therefore, a cloud…

[american-baidu-yandex-contact]

Computing Organizational Design Maps in each component