Here is a small list of popular open-source downloadable (mostly free) technologies that help build/monitor enterprise/institutional networks:

Asterisk: Asterisk is a down-loadable VOIP Soft-switch. In other words, it is the IP PBX telephony software that can control all the phones in your company. You can connect IP Phones, analog phones, soft phones analog trunk lines (FXO, PRI etc), SIP trunks (Some of them may need hardware adaptors) and create a complete VOIP telephony infrastructure in your company. What’s more, there is no user based licensing and the number of concurrent calls it can handle is restricted only because of the hardware limitations. There are even predictive dialler’s based on asterisk that are available for setting up a call centre!

Zimbra/Mozilla Thunderbird/Evolution: Zimbra, interestingly offers a complete alternative to Microsoft Exchange when it comes to setting up an enterprise mail server. What more, you can use Zimbra’s own desktop client or more popular open source packages like Mozilla Thunderbird or Evolution instead of Outlook.

Linux: Linux, has been quite popular as the preferred operating system for enterprise servers. But the desktops were always on Windows/Mac. No other option? You would be surprised at how much functionalities are packed into some Linux based operating systems like Ubuntu (for example) that all you need to do is to install them (even as a parallel OS to Windows) and it comes inbuilt with most of the drivers required for immediate hassle free operation (Even my Samsung printer driver was in-built in Ubuntu!). With regular updates sent your way, its fast, secure, comfortable and best of all – free!

Openoffice: If you have not tried this, try it immediately. This is a perfect alternative to Microsoft Office. You can even save and read files in Microsoft Office formats. But I would love to see the day when .odt becomes the default format instead of .doc and files are sent across in that format. I have always wondered why people don’t use Openoffice! There is no reason not to!

OpenNMS/ Nagios: There are many open-source based softwares that monitor the performance of your network. I have named just two of them, and there are many more there on the world wide net. Some of them even offer GUI based network monitoring systems totally free of cost and with open source, you can integrate just about any program that allows you to do so – You have the source code!

OpenLDAP: Many companies already use LDAP directories to store the information about all their employees, their log-in credentials etc. OpenLDAP is the open-source based program that allows you to create such directoties whose elements may be dispersed around the world! Many network equipments (like Wi-Fi Controllers etc) can integrate and refer to such LDAP directories, which ensures that you don’t need to create seperate directories for each service you use on the network.

FreeRadius: A radius server is a AAA server which does Authentication, Authorization and Accounting functionalities. When you need to deploy an Radius Server for authentication, try FreeRadius. What more, they can fetch information/user-credentials from programs like the LDAP directories.

SpamAssasin: Email Spam is a pain area for most of the companies that use their own emal servers. Spam-assasin offers a specialist open-source based freely downloadable Anti-Spam alternative to most of the commercial programs available out there.

Xibo: Xibo is an open-source multi-display, multi-zone, fully scheduled digital signage solution controlled from a centrally managed web interface. Ofcourse, it is free to download!

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program is an interesting alternative to Photoshop. If you don’t have Photoshop, and want a free open-source program like that, why not try GIMP? It’s supported by a huge community and has a lot of features that make it a professional software package.

Snort: This is the Open-source based Network Intrusion Detection system. There is even an Open source based UTM (Unified Threat Management) program called Untangle that offers many of the security functionalities required for enterprise networks as a single package (Combining various open-source network security technologies).

We are not saying that the above technologies are a breeze to install and maintain, but once you attempt to do all that you can learn much more than just installing an off-the-shelf commercially available products. Open-source alternatives are not always ‘Free’ when you consider the time and efforts required to implement them (in some cases), so you might as well consider hiring a professional to implement open-source network technologies. But the best bet is to implement and learn them all yourselves, even if that process takes more time.

And yeah, the spirit of open-source software is to contribute back to the community. That means, using opensource software is just the first step!

This is not an exhaustive list, and hence I will keep updating them. But if you know some open-source technologies that helps in building/maintaining enterprise networks, please do suggest the same in the comments section.

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First, let us introduce Twitter: Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. It is like your messenger, but the communications are generally not one to one but your messages are visible to everyone in your contact list. Of course, you can also send private messages, but that’s not the main functionality. And yes, there is a limit of 140 characters per message and links are allowed (usually url shorteners are used for links).

It works like this: You need to sign up for a free account and start following other twitter users (You can search users based on keywords). Hopefully, other users will also follow you. The basic idea of Twitter is to keep updating all your followers what you are doing (Social networking), at a given point of time. Of course, Twitter has outgrown that concept long time back and now it is used to intimate the followers of some interesting link in the internet, or a quote which you liked or anything else (It helps to have a twitter account focussed on a particular topic, like photography for example so that like minded users can follow your account to get tips and latest updates/interesting links on photography). Even companies and webmasters have twitter accounts. Webmasters are using Twitter for updating their followers when a new article is released on their website and to share other interesting articles in their niche. Companies have twitter accounts to intimate their partners/customers about important announcements, press releases and even to get a customer feedback. If a big company wants a feedback about a newly released product, for example, it needs to search for that keyword(product name) in Twitter and all conversations containing that keyword in Twitter would be shown. What better way to do an instant market survey?

Since it has multiple applications, a lot of people are using Twitter around the world. You can even follow the tweets of this website (If you are interested in Network infrastructure, that is) by searching for our account name excITingIP in twitter, and clicking on ‘Follow’ button.

So, it made big news when Twitter was down for about two hours last week. Even Facebook was partially down. It was announced later on that the cause for the downtime was a DDoS – Distributed Denial of Service attack launched from multiple computers connected to the internet (most of them not being aware that their computer was being used for such a purpose). Every server has an upper limit to the number of connections that it can handle simultaneously. When there are unnaturally very high number of users trying to connect to the same server/ service at the same time, there is a congestion and excess requests would be turned down. So, some attackers on the internet launch huge number of simultaneous requests to connect to a server in order to deny other genuine users from accessing the service. Their intent could be anything from just showing off their skills or politically motivated – to stop some messages from being spread (this is the suspected motive in the case of Twitter).

There is more to Denial of Service attacks than just sending a large number of requests (Like SYN Floods) and there are ways to mitigate such threats via commercially available network security products. For more detailed information on Denial of Service attacks and how they are mitigated, click on this link.

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We had earlier blogged about the Silicon India’s Startup city event/ exhibition that was held on June 6th 2009 in Bangalore, India where a number of start up companies from India showcased their products and technology and was looking out for possible funding.

So, we have decided to write about some of them in a series called “Focus Startupcity” – where we want to introduce the company and the technology/ products that they bring/ hope to bring in the area of IT networking technologies.

Ennovasys is a Chennai (India) based start-up company which promotes their product – “Pistasuite”, which is a unified Location (Location Based Service – LBS) Engine which provides the necessary asset visibility data for supply chain process automation and increase in-transit visibility using technologies like mobile, GPS, Wi-Fi, Sensors and RFID.

What they do is, use their LBS software solution to track certain important assets of any company right from the manufacturing process, to the delivery. They can track a wide variety of assets like laptops, people, goods etc. They use multiple technologies like GPS, Wi-Fi, Cellular, sensors and RFID. They have a way to collect the information from diverse sources, they have a database, they integrate with an ERP solution and they also have a dashboard which gives a unified view of all assets across the enterprise.

It seems quite simple, but it is actually quite complicated. Implimenting a location based service based on a single service like Wi-FI in itself is a complicated process. So, what they are trying to achieve across multiple software platforms and multiple hardware platforms is indeed note worthy. We assume that the solution has been tested across multiple platforms as in most such solutions, integration is the key. The website could feature more information like test reports or case studies, but since it is a startup, probably they would be planning to have all that soon. And their website says that their focus is on Indian customers. So, some information on what kind of applications it has in various industry segments would be useful. Such solutions may need to be customized to suit the customer requirements.

So, we wish them “All the best” in their bold initiative. You could visit their website at Ennovasys.com

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Apart from the above, there are several keynote speakers speaking on emerging trends.

At 10:00 AM, there is a speech about Cloud Computing by Mr. Mukesh Prasad Singh, General Manager, FPS, Amazon India.

At 10:30 AM there is a speech on Sun’s startup essential program by Mr. Bakshish Dutta, GM – Startups and emerging markets, Sun Microsystems, India.

At 11:00 AM there is another session on Innovation and monetizing opportunities for mobile entrepreneur by Mr. Prakash Sayini, Nokia India.

At 11:30 AM there is a closing keynote speech by Mr. Sanjay Nayak of Tejas Networks.

In the afternoon session, there are presentations by the start-up companies according to their vertical.

There are a lot of start-up companies participating in this year’s event and there are quite a few of them in the Network infrastructure segment too. That is why we are excited to take up this invitation to cover this event. Take a look at the list of participants if you want more information.

So if anyone is reading this post in and around Bangalore and interested to attend this event, please register here. There are no registration charges. We think it is a good initiative and an excellent opportunity for everyone to know about the latest trends in the industry and have a glimpse at the newest innovations by young and budding entrepreneurs.

You can find further information in their official website:  http://www.siliconindia.com/startupcity_09/index.html

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