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TRACEROUTE

There were some undersea cables cut some days back and reports claimed places like Dubai and some other middle east were out of internet service .

So how to tell if the country u looking for is still online or not ?

It’s very simple . Run a Traceroute.

This simple network utility traces the hops internet packets take as they work their way across the internet towards your destination. It also measures how much time the journey from point A to point B takes, both in total and for each hop between nodes.

If your packets reach their intended destination then you'll know tat ur destination is up .

Right .. Let’s see how that works now …

Step 1: Find a Test Server

To do a proper traceroute, you need to pick a server that's actually in the destination country.However, there's no guarantee that any particular site is hosted by a server in the country its domain name indicates. Corporations especially tend to have servers spread out over several countries. Official government sites are almost always a sure thing that s hosted inside the country.

Step 2: Trace It!

1. Click on the Start button and choose Run.

2. In the text box, type cmd. This will bring up a command line prompt.

3. Type tracert hostname, where "hostname" is the web address of the server you want to test.

You can also use an IP address by typing tracert x.x.x.x, where the "x.x.x.x" is replaced by the IP address of the server.

4. Now u can watch the packets fly across the nodes .

Step 3: Analyze the Result

As your packets travel from point A to point B, you'll see each hop appear on its own line. Traceroute should display the address and name of each server or router along the way and the amount of time (measured in milliseconds) the packets take to travel between your desktop and that particular node. Eventually, you'll see your packets reach their destination. Here's an example of some raw traceroute data:


All Right ! ! U ve got the result . It may look like somethinhg above which I got while trying .

But how to interpret the results …

The times displayed are 3 pings from your desktop directly to that node, not the time its taking between the previous node and the current one

Asterisks (* * *) indicate a timeout. If you see a line with just asterisks on it, that means that the hop between nodes took longer than 200ms. Several lines of timeouts mean the packets are being held up in infinite loops or lost somewhere along the way.

  • Note some points on the traceroute will show a timeout because administrators have restricted pings, and this may not necessarily indicate a fail point.

Ur ping test is successful if u get a ping reply packet from the destination u wanted to test.

Optimize BitTorrent


Encrypt to Your BitTorrent Transfers:

The encryption used by many popular BitTorrent clients today s RC4 encryption . It will obfuscate not only the header but the entire stream, which makes it considerably more difficult to detect that you're using BitTorrent.

Azureus - To turn on encryption, head to the Tools menu. Select Options, then Connection, then Transport Encryption. Check the "Require encrypted transport" box and select RC4 in the "Minimum encryption" drop-down menu.

µTorrent - Open up the Preferences panel and select the BitTorrent tab. Select Protocol encryption and then choose between "enabled" and "forced."

"Enabled" option to allow unencrypted connections when no encrypted clients exist. It will give you more connections, but it won't be as effective at defeating traffic shapers.

BitComet -Head to the Options menu and choose Preferences. Then go to Advanced > Connection and select "Protocol encryption." There are options for "auto detect" and "always."

Change the Way the BitTorrent Protocol Behaves:

The BitTorrent protocol has a distinct handshake. To control uploading by seeders, ISPs have learned to look for this handshake. The recent releases of both µTorrent and Azureus include a "Lazy Bitfield" feature to hide seeders from ISPs.

When Lazy Bitfield is enabled, the handshake is changed to make a BitTorrent seeder initially appear to be a non-seeding peer (sometimes called a leecher). This is done by sending a bitfield indicating missing pieces. Then, once the handshake is done, the client notifies its peer that it now has the pieces that were originally indicated as missing.

Azureus - To turn on encryption, head to the Tools menu. Select Options, then Transfer. Enable Lazy-Bitfield here.

µTorrent Lazy Bitfield is controlled in the Advanced section Preferences: peer.lazy_bitfield.

Change Your BitTorrent Port Number:

The default port for BitTorrent transfers is port 6881, with some clients using different ports within the range of 6881-6999. As a result of ISP interference, all clients allow you to change the port number (or port range, sometimes) used for BitTorrent transfers. The setting is in the Options or Preferences for your client .

But remember ,Whenever you change your port, you need to adjust your router to allow incoming connections. The process of locating the current port being used and then configuring your router to match. This is Port Forwarding . (I ll brief up about port forwarding if u need to know anything about it) .

Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Microsoft is now coming up with lots of new offers /products .

It is mainly concentrating on extending flexibility to their products to compete with its rivals (mainly to cope up with open source things) and to make it available on the go .

Its new releases are now compelling the users who tend to migrate away from it , stay with it .

After Skydrive , Silverlight , Startkey etc . now it is , (and DreamSpark program , which s currently not available in India , but hope it’ll be here soon)

An online extension of Microsoft Office .

Some of the features :

Anywhere Access

· Save 1000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place

· Access them from almost any computer with a Web browser

· No more flash drives or sending yourself documents via e-mail

Share with Others

· Invite people to your workspace

· You control who can view, comment, and edit your documents

· Stop manually merging versions from multiple people

Extend the Microsoft Office Experience

· Open and save files directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

· Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook

· No need to learn a new program

Watch this video illustration from Microsoft

http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0710/31052/current.htm

Yeah … It‘s free .

The URL is http://workspace.officelive.com/

Intel vs AMD : Choosing your dual core processor


Yeah, with dual core pcs seen everywhere , you might jus start to think of getting one for yourself, yeah the majors being Intel and AMD .... as AMD is gaining popularity day by day and in very few months or even days it might be the one which is used widely !!!
you may just ask me why, just see this awesome technical head on review of the two dual-core processors on various areas such as day-to-day computing , Gaming, Multitasking, Photo editing, mp3 encoding, Video encoding, and finally Price & Performance ...

Guessed the results ???

Here they are , ( courtesy - Cnetreviews)
Day-to-day computing - AMD
Gaming                               - AMD
Multitasking                     - AMD
Photo editing                   - AMD
mp3 encoding                  - AMD
Video encoding               - AMD
Price & Performance     - AMD

and here's some from tom's hardware
Data compression with WinRAR: AMD system has 29.5% better performance;
MP3 encoding of the CD:                   AMD system has 4.7% better performance;
DivX encoding of the DVD:               AMD system has 28.2% better performance;
3D game Farcry:                                    AMD system has 21.4% better performance.

a point to note here from tom's :: Despite the clock rate of the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ with 2.4 GHz, which is lower than the Intel Pentium 840 EE with 3.2 GHz, the AMD system is able to hold its own.

don't believe me ?

see the review yourself here       -- http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html
& here's Dual core Stress test     -- http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/03/dual_core_stress_test

now i'm happy that i myself have a AMD dual core CPU  :-D

INTEL or AMD - Make your Choice !!