The Right Anti-Virus Solution

October 16, 2011 1 Comment

There is a great deal of confusion amongst individuals, businesses, and other organizations as to which Anti-Virus solution is right for them. On the outset, I would just like to say that no one Anti-Virus is perfect against every kind of a attack. Some AVs are better than others at fighting against Trojan viruses, while others are good at detecting root-kit viruses. Let’s go through various AV solutions for the home and the business/organization markets.

Home Anti-Virus

The home AV market is easier than most people think. A lot of people think they need to pay for an anti-virus solution in order to be protected better. My experience leads me to a different conclusion. I’ve tried a number of paid and free AV solutions, and I can safely suggest that for most people a free anti-virus will be sufficient. One of the most often questions I get asked is “If a free anti-virus works just as good as a paid one, then why do they offer it for free?”. That’s a valid question, and I tell them that most of the free AV programs out there either advertise to you, or they want to you upgrade to their paid version later on – which you don’t have to.

Here’s a list of the top three free anti-virus solutions that I think are very good for home use:

  1. AVG Free Anti-Virus – My preferred choice for myself and my clients.
    Download here: http://free.avg.com
  2. Avast Free Anti-Virus – A very solid and good choice for home users.
    Download here: http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download
  3. Avira AntiVir Personal – Works great with the boot up CD when your system is inaccessible.
    Download here: http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

Business/Organizational

Organizations have a different requirement for implementing AV solutions. As opposed to the home anti-virus solutions being free, I would recommend organizations purchase an AV solution as it would be coming with more support which their business requires. Typically organizations need robust AV solutions that come with multiple licenses and that have a customer support centre for customers to call when in need of help. Robust means that the AV solution should be fully integrated with the software components of the operating system, such that e-mail, downloads, firewall access, and software execution should all be under the control of the anti-virus. This approach may use a lot of system resources, but for businesses and other organizations it is critical to have computer systems as secure as possible. Multiple licenses are something that should be considered when purchasing a AV solution for your business/organization. Multiple licenses provide you the legal right to install the ant-virus software on as many computers as the license allows for. A call centre for the AV vendor should be present in case you need to call them up for any help regarding their software.

I would recommend the following Anti-Virus solutions for businesses and organizations:

  1. Kaspersky Anti-Virus – Very robust and comes with multiple licenses.
  2. Norton AntiVirus – Very good support system and good detection abilities.
  3. ESET Nod32 Antivirus – A very resource friendly AV that has good detection abilities.

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Internet as Critical as Food and Shelter

September 25, 2011 Leave a comment

Cisco Study Finds Internet as Crucial

A Cisco survey of college students and young professionals has found that respondents indicate that the Internet is as crucial to them as food, shelter, and even air. The second of its annual Connected World Technology Report underscores the importance that the Internet serves for a generation that hasn’t been without the connectivity of the Internet. The report found that a full one-third believe the Internet is as critical to their lives as food, water, shelter and air. Also, another half said that it was “pretty close” to that level of importance.

Cannot Live Without

Interesting to note that 55% of respondents said that they could not live without the Internet and 64% said that they would choose the Internet over having a car. Scott Gainey, director of product marketing for Mobility Solutions at Cisco, said the company chose this particular demographic for the survey to help companies gain insight into the future of work. “What do companies need to be ready for?” he said. “They need to prepare for not just the technology shift but the attitude shift as well.”

Pencil and paper, as written about before on this site, were the dictators of communication. Information and technology has changed the landscape of communication and productivity is synonymous with the Internet. When the Internet shuts down, so does productivity and the modern workplace has to reflect that. Colleges and universities are still somewhat lagging behind in using the Internet and telecommunication resources to their fullest. This report surveyed college students as well and indicates that much of the course curriculum should be Internet based.

Cyber Socialism

It’s important to note  that the workplace and the classroom only reflect a growing trend that runs as an undercurrent which is social media. For respondents the Internet is more important than dating, going out with friends or listening to music — at least for 40 percent of the survey respondents. This number says a lot about the human being a “social animal”. Does this mean in the future we would not need to verbally speak to each other? Who knows?

Other Findings

  • Many respondents cite a mobile device as “the most important technology” in their lives
  • Seven of 10 employees have “friended” their managers and coworkers on Facebook
  • Two of five students have not bought a physical book (except textbooks) in two years
  • Most respondents have a Facebook account and check it at least once a day

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Poor IT Service At The Hands of Retail Giants

September 13, 2011 4 Comments

This news report shows why people benefit from coming to computer repair and IT services at Soulistech, as opposed to going to the money grabbers at other major retail repair shops such as Best Buy and Staples.  Channel 3, KCRA performed a simple test to see the effectiveness of computer repair services at these major chains. They used their own IT consultant to produce a simple hardware problem by turning of the hard drive from the BIOS, which gave a disk not present error. Then the team took the computer to three major retail computer shops, namely Best Buy, Staples, and Circuit City, and reported on the results of their service.

The results proved the inefficiencies of these major retailers in repairing simple computer problems and should thus be an eye-opener to everyone of why you should bring your computer to Soulistech Computer Repair, instead of taking it to useless chain stores.

To display the channel 3 team’s results, Best Buy got a D grade for poor customer service and for not solving the actual problem. Circuit City got an F grade for losing all the data on the hard drive and for charging for a repair that was totally irrelevant to the problem; and Staples got a B for finding the actual problem, but misdiagnosing it first and charging for it, which they later returned.

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IBM’s Watson and the New Medical Diagnosis

July 22, 2011 Leave a comment

IBM’s Watson

In February of 2011, IBM set a series of Jeopardy matches between the show’s highest ranked contestants against its $100 million computer named Watson. With the ability of natural speech recognition and specialized algorithms that could parse through 200 million pages of data in under three seconds, Watson was able to defeat the top contestants with a resounding win.

Games aside, the practical medical application of Watson goes far ahead. Where once Google substituted for quick searches on symptoms and possible causes, Watson has effectively replaced that search engine approach with a question and answer based diagnosis. Its diagnosis draws on the patient’s medical records as well as other combinations of scientific data that result in a ranking of possible diagnoses.

Different Than Google

Watson’s input is in plain English and not keywords. Moreover, it draws its possible diagnoses on the patient’s medical records, history of being prone to a disease, symptoms the patient is describing, and lab results. This technology doesn’t replace a doctor at all, it only aids the doctor. Remembering all of the results of certain symptoms and disease information can be overwhelming for doctors who are mostly already over-worked and on a tight schedule. Watson helps the doctor in picking up on certain clues and suggests a number of possible diagnoses. Dr. Herbert Chase, a professor of clinical medicine in biomedical informatics at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, says:

“There’s a lot of memorizing involved in medicine, and if you’re memorizing, you’re not analyzing…” (1)

Cost Savings

With Watson’s incredible success rate, it can reduce time and cost of diagnosis that otherwise would take doctors months to figure out. Dr. Chase suggests that Watson could also play a role in treatment and personalized medication. Watson’s ability to consult a database of genetic information and retrieve drug combinations that relate to the specific gene’s of the patient in question, result in greater efficiency for the medical practice.

Roll Out of Watson

IBM is working with several partners in trying to have Watson’s technology ready for medical use as early as 18 to 24 months from now. Watson’s potential of integrating with EMR/EHR systems can help propel medicine to a new field.

References
(1) http://www.backbonemag.com/Magazine/2011-05/watson-ibm-supercomputer-conquers-jeopardy.aspx

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Twitter For Business?

June 17, 2011 Leave a comment

After Facebook, Twitter has become one of the most widely used social networking site in the world. Placing mini blogs, or short status updates, that contain a message within 140 characters makes Twitter a unique tool for conveying messages to large populations, especially for businesses. So is the investment of time and effort worth it when it comes for businesses to use Twitter as an advertising tool or as a update channel? Let’s see…

Twitter VS Facebook

Facebook has established itself as the king of the hill when it comes to social networking. Businesses can have their business pages created and invite people to join them. These pages are generally “liked” (a like button that shows you and how many people like the page) by people seeing it from others or searching for them. They show a presence of the company in the Facebook community. Businesses can update their statuses and post videos, pictures, etc. to their page wall. This will be distributed to the walls of the people who have “liked” the page. This is an effective tool for communication and advertising.

Twitter uses the simple purpose of a short status update, within 140 characters, and conveys it to the wall (like Facebook) of the subscribers. You can choose to make your “tweets” (status updates) viewable to all or private. Businesses would probably choose the non-private option as it allows anybody to subscribe to the tweets and get the message updates, thus reaching the most people. The hard part in making an account for your business is getting people to subscribe. The number one way to make people sign on to your tweets is to become an active Twitter community member. This means that you interact with other members by sending them messages on their wall and letting people know that your active and not just a spammer. Another way to get people to subscribe is my following others. The more people you follow, the more will follow you in turn.

Special Advertising

If your company is interested in paid advertising, Twitter can be a great tool to reach the populous that you want targeted. Twitter offers something called “Promoted Tweets”. These are regular tweets that advertisers have paid to show up at the top of search results and hash tag topics (topics being discussed with a certain word tag). Promoted tweets are clearly labelled “Promoted”, yet they are treated like regular tweets. When Microsoft, for example, released Internet Explorer 9 and promoted its tweets in the Twitter world regarding the release of IE 9 its tweets regarding the web browser would show up in technology topics as well as in the Trends section. The Trends section in Twitter displays the topics that are currently a hot topic in the Twitter domain.

Twitter for Celebrities

Twitter has become a favourite amongst celebrities that communicate directly with their fans. Since many of these celebrities have millions of followers, it’s all the more becoming of paying these celebrities a lot of money to advertise your product or service by mentioning it in one of their tweets. For example, Kim Kardashian gets paid $20 000 per tweet if she is to mention a product or service by one of the advertisers. This is great advertising as stars have a heavy influence on fans and followers.

If your business can maintain its tweets stature, then Twitter is an profound place to advertise and keep in touch with your client base. However, if the routine of constantly updating statuses and keeping in touch with your followers is a daunting task, then Twitter may not be the best place to promote your business.

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Security for Your Business – Part 2

May 25, 2011 Leave a comment

Statistics of IT Security Threats

This article is a continuation of Security for Your Business – Part 1. We will discuss various statistics related IT threats and security concerns. This article points out clearly the importance and significance of securing your IT infrastructure. Do not hesitate in anyway from ensuring proper security measures, as not doing so can lead to damage and theft of your business data.

Phishing Scams

Phishing scams come under social engineering attacks. They provide a fake e-mail or website that looks like an authentic one and tricks you into putting your username and password. Once they capture your username and password, they now have access to your bank account or whatever website they are pretending to be.

A disputed study by Trusteer showed that spear phishing a hundred LinkedIn users resulted in a failure rate of 68%. That would mean that around 30% of those targeted with phishing attempts disclosed their personal data. That is significant enough for businesses to lose a substantial amount of money once their bank account information has been captured.

Cnet interviewed Michael Barrett, chief information security officer at PayPal (online payment processor) in April, 2011. This is what he had to say regarding the question of PayPal’s weakness to phishing attempts:

“I joined PayPal almost exactly five years ago and it’s fair to say the company had not realized at that point the true significance of phishing. But since that time we’ve put in place a number of defenses against it. It probably will never go away completely as a problem, but it can be substantially minimized. We’re at No. 8 on a list of most phished sites, which is better than being No. 1. I’m not satisfied with being No. 8 and I’d really like to obliterate the crime completely, but I realize that will take another five years to get to that state. A few years ago we started digitally signing all our outbound e-mail and we worked with Yahoo and Google so if they saw e-mail that purported to come from us but wasn’t signed they would block it. That has been stunningly successful. Now we’re trying to get the whole industry to take up that type of approach. But it will take several more years of pushing to get the rest of the industry to do that.” (1)

Malware

Malware is software that is damaging to your computer in various ways. Spyware is a type of malware that infects a computer and relays information of your computer use to different parties.

In 2007, Kaspersky Labs was seeing new malware samples every two minutes, but in 2010, just three years later, that had increased to one new sample every two seconds.

This is what InformationWeek has to say about small businesses and virus threats:

“Small business respondents’ other top concerns were Trojan applications (60%), malware designed by criminals expressly to steal data (59%), data leaks (56%), spyware (55%), and fake AV (52%). Spam and phishing threats ranked lowest. Most of today’s antivirus software suites protect against many viruses and worms. But when it comes to data-stealing malware, 21% of small U.S. business respondents said that their IT department could do a better job of protecting end users. Notably, only 47% of small businesses install security software to help stop such malware, 30% offer related security policies, and 28% provide relevant education or guidance.” (2)

Some are touting Cloud resources as the answer to fighting back malware spread. That remains to be seen.

Security Breaches – Hacks

It’s interesting to note that organizations attribute 59% of all security breaches to human error. This can occur if the network administrator has failed to set up the proper security barriers, or it can occur by inadvertently giving our information that a hacker can use to compromise the system.

About half of all organizations consider IT security a top priority. This stat indicates two scenarios. One, namely that there are pockets of IT infrastructures that don’t need high security. Perhaps these are small businesses that have a wireless network setup, and they don’t see themselves as a potential target from hackers. The network is small and their data isn’t all that critical. The second is that IT security is seen as a big issue for larger organizations. They have important data that cannot be leaked and as such they are prime targets for hackers. Hackers use stolen company data to sell to competitors and it is quickly becoming a lucrative business. Larger organizations need security for their systems and that entails purchasing the right equipment and having it administered properly.

The cost of an individual data breach – including lost business and the burden of responding to the incident – in 2010 increased 13% year-over-year for U.K. companies. That roughly equals $3 million for each breach, which is quite substantial. Needless to say, every organization, small or big, should pay close attention to its IT security needs.

Viruses

Small businesses still fear the virus according to a new survey of 1,600 end users in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and United States. Conducted by antivirus vendor Trend Micro, viruses are the leading concern for 63% of small businesses.

A CompTIA stat shows that 33% of law firms admit to experiencing a security issue such as a virus. That’s only law firms, if you total firms from other fields the number is much higher.

Conclusion

The presentation of stats and facts in this article is only intended to create an awareness of various cyber threats. Cyber security is a huge issue and should not be taken lightly.

References

(1) http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20052310-245.html#ixzz1MvDmlGv5
(2) http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/228200171

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Google Chromebook: The Future?

May 18, 2011 Leave a comment

Cloud Computing to the Next Level

There’s another player in the IT operating system (OS) market now, and it’s by Google. The Google Chromebook offers a web (or Cloud) OS that derives its applications from the Internet and thereby reduces the need for expensive hardware. Although the Cloud has been in existence for sometime now, Google offers a PC that is solely geared for a web interface. At the heart of the Chromebook is the Chrome web browser that acts as the portal to the whole web experience. No complications with installations, patches, or viruses as all of this is administered through the Internet with the full support of Google.

Business Mechanics

How does this benefit businesses? Google claims that businesses can save up to 70% off their IT costs by contracting Chromebooks (more or less a mini laptop) for $28/month. The supposition here is that with the tech support of Google in areas of software and hardware maintenance, businesses can dramatically reduce their costs. Is this probable? Probably not. Google’s upper bound number of 70% is obviously stretched, but there does seem to be some possibility of reducing a certain amount of IT operating costs. Businesses that rely on applications that are Windows based probably won’t jump to this side of the coin. But, businesses requiring basic office applications and portability may love this. Along side this, nobody likes to rent a laptop for an indefinite period of time. It would be cheaper for businesses to actually go out and purchase a brand new laptop than pay $28/month for ever. This generalization doesn’t apply to all business though.

New Take on I.T.

Google’s new idea is kind of interesting, but I feel it lacks the technical depth needed to win over IT professionals. It is likely to gain momentum as the whole Cloud infrastructure takes off, but there’s nothing to administer. I don’t see how IT professionals will like that. Also, what are the applications that Google is touting? Can it provide hardcore Photoshop like programs that many businesses need? Can it provide printer management in the local or remote sites? Certainly there are big holes to fill before Google can gain dominance in this area. Applications over the web or software-as-a-service isn’t for many businesses. It’s is hard to port hundreds of megabytes of data that a program requires in a fraction of a second that today’s local storage systems provide. Yes, office type apps can run, but not heavy duty programs like Adobe Premiere Pro, etc.

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Easy Networking for Your Business

May 4, 2011 Leave a comment

A Networked Business

A network is basically computers and devices, like printers and servers, hooked up to each other. This allows for easy file transfer and printing of documents. If there was no network in place, files and resources would not be available to all of the computer users in the company. Networking allows resources to be distributed to all or some of the computers. It allows for user management and consolidation of files. A larger version of a network is the Internet. The Internet consists of computers, users, and resources available to all or a select number of people, i.e. e-mail, Facebook, etc.

Two Methods to Network a Business

The challenge for many small and medium businesses is how to link the computers in the network to each other. There are two ways to do this:

  1. Wired
  2. Wireless

The method you choose will determine how fast your network runs and the level of physical security it has. Wired is preferable in my opinion because it allows for higher speeds and adds a level of security, as I will discuss later, that is not available in wireless networks. Wireless networks, for their part, spare businesses of having to wire their offices with cables and jacks in the walls and therefore spare them also of having high costs associated with cabling their buildings.

To Go with Wire or Wireless?

As I’ve mentioned, wired networking adds a layer of physical protection. What it does is it makes it mandatory for someone to be physically present in the premises and linked to the network through a physical wire. Wireless networking on the other hand can be hacked, if proper security measures are not taken, as it broadcasts the wireless signals in and outside of the business compound. Hackers can come in their car and pick up your wireless signals and can intrude. Wireless signals aren’t broadcast everywhere, and have a range of typically 50 to 100 meters. This is the basic disadvantage of wireless networking.

Wireless networks do offer a less expensive option for businesses when it comes to networking. Foregoing cables and jacks in the wall, they give businesses flexibility in terms of physical location of computers and printers. For small businesses a wireless router should do the job as it can handle up to 25 devices sufficiently. Anything more would require a dedicated router with a dedicated wireless access point (WAP).

Personal Experience

I have done both wired and wireless network setups. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. For small businesses requiring one unit, I would recommend to go with wireless as it saves businesses the hassles mentioned above. If there is room for cabling through the walls, then wired would be my first choice.

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Prospects of Tablet PCs

April 19, 2011 1 Comment

With the decline of first quarter PC sales in 2011, tablet PCs are becoming the new primary computing device. A recent survey conducted suggested that around 25% of computer users now use their tablet as their main device for checking email and surfing the Internet. So is it likely that the tablet PC will replace the good old desktop computer? Well, let’s have a look.

Neither a Laptop Nor a Smartphone

By far, the most popular tablet is the iPad. The price and software options make it the front runner of all tablets. That’s not to say that other tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Blackberry PlayBook aren’t worthwhile. I’m sure they have certain advantages, but Apple has really seemed to have knocked their device in this category off the playing field. In the past, laptops seemed like the right solution to a portable PC. Desktops were just that, they were meant to stay on top of your desktop, whereas laptops provided the student, the travelling business man, and the IT pro desktop mobility. Laptops now out-perform lower end desktops, and with that power comes a lot of heat being generated by the hardware. Some thought that the hot bottom surface of the laptop disqualified it from being called a “laptop” as it could not be comfortably placed on one’s lap. Hence, the secondary classification called notebooks. But laptops weren’t really notebooks either. They were heavy and had a screen that popped up and blocked your view of the meeting or the class lecture. Another solution proposed: netbooks. Small, light, and exactly what we need? Not really. They too were hard to use as the keyboard was typically small and during typing the hand would hit the mouse pad and mess up everything.

Here in comes the perfect in-between: the tablet. It’s actually way lighter and has the basic functionality of a laptop and a smartphone combined. The touch interface actually solves a lot. No need for a popup screen that blocks the view. An iPad can use its smartcover to prop it up so that one can write using the touchscreen (something one needs to get used to) and it doesn’t block the view.

Functionality and Use

The tablet seems to be the true notebook as its physical form resembles that of a real notebook. Like a paper pad or portfolio, it is easy to carry around from office to office or from class to class. The essential use of a tablet for a home user would probably come under using it as a casual email checking device or quick web browsing. Its ecosystem would probably entail a kitchen, living room, family room, and bedroom. Tablets are good for e-reading as well, so a quick check of the newspaper in the kitchen or a silent read in backyard would be one of its uses. That may not seem like much, but keep in mind that a tablet is an instant-on device. There’s no boot up time like a laptop or a desktop PC. So the quick access allows users in the home to not be hindered by a delay in turning it on. Tablets can also be used for viewing photo albums. Although media players and HTPCs allow the viewing of pictures on a TV, the feel and experience of a looking at high resolution pictures on a tablet is quite reassuring, kind of like flipping through a real photo album.

There are a host of business apps that allows creation from AutoCad to tracking statistics of sales and profit on the device. I believe development will yield better functionality and use in the coming years as tablets progress from their infancy to a wider range of implementations. I am setting forth a note taking process for my IT consulting business. My handwritten notes will be taken on my iPad and I will sync them with Google Apps. Here, I’m involving a digital process of record keeping and utilizing the Cloud at the same time. EMR systems are allowing doctors to take their notes on a tablet device and sync it with their server database as well as online Cloud storage. The flexibility of tablets is huge.

Future of Tablets

The prospects of tablet PCs seems to be bright. From the medical field to academics to professional business use, tablets will set a new paradigm in human interaction with technology. Tablets did make an early appearance in the year 2001, but they didn’t cook up a stir due to Microsoft’s lack of user interface cohesion. This rebirth, incited by Apple, seems to be more promising.

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IPV6 – The New Internet Scheme

April 18, 2011 1 Comment

Believe it or not, the Internet has run out of addresses. This means we need to transition to a new addressing scheme, IPv6, that facilitates our growing need for Internet addresses and that helps our businesses grow. To access company networks and the Internet, each device or computer is assigned a logical address. That basically means that the address assigned to the computer or device (ie. smartphone) is temporary and can be easily assigned to any other device regardless of physical location. The Internet addressing scheme is known as IP – Internet Protocol. We’ve been using version 4 of the IP addressing scheme ,also known as IPv4, for quite some time.

IPv4 Limitations

The main problem with IPv4 is that there aren’t enough addresses for all the computers and Internet devices in the world, and that can result in lost connectivity. An IPv4 address is composed of 32 bits, or 32 ones and zeros. Any combination would result in a specific address. These 32 bits are represented in decimal form in the following notation as an example: 192.168.1.101. This results in a total theoretical base of 4,294,967,296 addresses that can be used. Since, we have run out of these addresses we need a new scheme that provides us with more addresses. This new scheme is called IPv6.

IPv6, The Savior

IPv6 uses 128 bits and that gives us 212˄8 (approximately 340 undecillion or 3.4×103˄8) addresses. That’s enough for 5×10˄28 addresses for each of the 6.8 billion people alive (as of this writing). This, for now, solves our problem with the limited addresses that IPv4 yields. This also saves us from using NAT (Network Address Translation) technologies, which usually results in security problems for devices inside the company network. The IPv6 protocol header is more efficient for routing of network data than the IPv4 header. This results in more efficient processing of data. Mobility with IPv6 is better than IPv4; as it allows mobile devices to move between networks while keeping the same IP address.

How to Transition to IPv6

IPv6 is installed on all new Microsoft Windows operating systems. This includes Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. The network infrastructure itself also needs to be IPv6 capable. This means that the routers and layer 3 switches need to upgraded in order to process the extra address bits of IPv6. There are a number of techniques that you can use to gradually shift your business to using IPv6 from IPv4. Names and a brief description of each transition scheme is listed below:

Dual-Stack
This technique uses both IPv6 and IPv4 at the same time. Each network devices is usually capable of both protocol versions. If not, then it only communicates with those devices that are of its own protocol version. This method of transition is meant to slowly transfer control from IPv4 dependant devices to IPv6 devices.

4to6
These are IPv4 addresses that are mapped to an IPv6 address. The last 32 bits of the IPv6 contain the IPv4 address. This allows both IPv6 and IPv4 to run at the same time.

Tunneling
Tunneling involves encapsulating an IPv6 into a IPv4 header. The network uses two IPv6 points on an IPv4 infrastructure to transmit the data. There are many types of tunneling methods such as 6to4, Teredo, and ISATAP.

As you can see, there are a number of benefits and ways to transition your business from IPv4 to the new IPv6 addressing scheme. There is some security concern regarding IPv6 and the use of unidentified addresses to generate SPAM. IPv4 addresses that generate SPAM are blacklisted and are usually blocked, but since IPv6 opens up a new lot of available addresses, this can be used to generate SPAM. Although, eventually the IPv6 addresses would also be blacklisted, it may take sometime. Nevertheless, the transition to IPv6 is continuing, albeit at a slow and gradual pace, and the new avenues that it opens up for placing new devices on the growing Internet will be needed for some time to come.

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