Jul 30


AutoScan-Network is a network discovering and managing Tool. No Special configuration is required to scan your network.

Main Features:
•Multithreaded Scan
•Automatic network discovery
•Realtime detection of any connected equipment
•Supervision of any equipment /service (router, server, firewall, smtp, http, pop)
•Automatic detection of known operatic system (brand and version)
•Intruders detection (in intruders detection mode, all new equipments blacklisted) •
•Telnet Client •
•Vnc Client

How to install autoscan-network in ubuntu / Debian
Download the package from Here
Unzip the tar.gz file in a folder
Official site here
then execute the .bin file
( installation is very simple just double click on files)

Mar 03

EDIINT AS2 is a very popular B2B protocol. Apart from file transfer, I think this is currently the most popular B2B protocol. Although EDIINT was initially meant to replace EDI over VAN connections by EDI over the INTernet (EDIINT), the AS2 protocol can transport any data in an asynchronous manner.

AS2 provides:

  • Firewall friendly as it uses HTTP(S) underneath
  • Straightforward: adds a number of HTTP header field and MIME based message structure
  • Reliable: send message until you get a 200, duplicates are filtered based on message-id
  • Signing: based on S/MIME message structure and PKCS7 signing (self signed certificates are often used in practice)
  • Encyption: also leveraging the S/MIME message structure
  • Non-repudiation: signed acknowledgement or message receipt, called the Message Disposition Notification
  • Any payload: EDI, XML, binary, text
  • Many implementations: free commercial versions available at low price and one or two open source implementations


As is typical in B2B scenario’s, AS2 servers are mostly located behind firewalls that only allows inbound connections from well know IP addresses.

AS2 and its family
AS2 has some family: AS1, which goes over SMTP. And a younger brother AS3 which uses FTP as its transport. And now a 4th child joins the family: AS4! AS4 uses uses ebXML messaging v3 as its transport. But what the heck is ebXML?

ebXML
ebXML was an initiative to define *the* new B2B standard for the 21st century: new transport layer, new message definitions, XML schema building blocks, process layer, protocol profiles and so on. ebXML didn’t really take off, mostly because it was considered some sort of threat to the Web Services story. A pitty that the WS-* world and ebXML world weren’t able to come together in 2001. ebXML gained a bit of popularity in some European countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, where it is used on a limited scale.

Work continued very quiet and a new version of the transport layer was released in 2007: ebXML Messaging v3. ebXML Messaging v2 and v3 are actually SOAP over HTTP(s) with some extra whistles.

Conclusion
The feature of AS4 is pulling or polling. Polling is one of the reasons why file transfer is so popular: it is “asymmetric” and allows one side to stay behind a closed firewall. ebMS 3.0 supports polling and AS4 das well. Well done! WS-Polling was a similar initiative in the WS-* world to introduce polling.

But AS4 will not become that popular in my opinion. The spec is rather “heavy” and ebMS 3.0 has very little traction. I’m not aware of any implementation. I would have preferred an extension of AS2 with support for polling, completely independent of the ebMS and WS-* specs. And so we’ll simply continue using file transfer (SFTP, FTPS) as our most popular polling mechanism.

Notes:
- Brik, thanks for pointing me to AS4
- Pictures are from a talk I gave on AS2
- Interesting link for those speaking Dutch: ebXML en ebMS: veilig en betrouwbaar berichten uitwisselen

Dec 21

Writen by Syed Feroz Zainvi

The article summarizes the Hyperthreading technology as best as possible in just ten steps.

1. Hyperthreading (HT) is term coined by Intel for Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT).

2. Hyperthreading is meant for dual-core or multi-core processors like Pentium 4 with HT or Xeon MP.

3. The technology aims at better utilization of execution units in a processor which otherwise would be idle.

4. This technique is better than its predecessor Multithreading and Superthreading in the sense that in each instruction cycle, a processor can execute instructions from mutliple threads.

5. Hardware implemetation of Hyperthreading is not very complex as reported by Intel “Implementing HT took only 5% more die space in Xeon”.

6. Implemeting HT needs hardware resources to be divided into Replicated(e.g. Instruction Pointers), Partitioned (e.g.Queues) and Shared (e.g. Caches)

7. For actual performance gain, your applications have to hyperthreaded i.e. you have to parallelize your code.

8. Hyperthreaded applications use Shared Memory Programming Model. Most famous Shared Memory Programming standard is OpenMP (Open specifications for Multi-Processing), an effort initiated by Silicon Graphics Inc. and now supported by major industry players. OpenMP library is available for C,C++ and Fortran on both Windows and Unix platforms. OpenMP programming constructs consists of few compiler directives for parallelizing the code.

9. There are compilers and other automating tools that support shared memory parallel programming libraries like OpenMP. Some examples are Intel C++ Compiler, Intel VTune Performance Analyzer and High-Level tools from KAI Inc.

10. Hyperthreading does not necessarily increase performance. With wrong mix of code, it can even decrease performance.

Syed Feroz Zainvi has obtained M.Tech. (Comp Sc & Engg) degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (INDIA). His areas of interests are distributed computing, computer graphics and Internet Technologies. Currently, he is involved in Software Project Planning, Development and Management. His other interests include writing for magazines and contributing utility softwares on Magazine’s CDs. He also have flair for teaching computer science with new teaching methodologies.

His web-page URL is http://www.zainvi.tophnors.com