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Tag: network

What is Blockdag?

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BlockDAG is a blockchain project aiming to be the world’s most advanced Layer 1 blockchain, according to their website. They achieve this through a combination of factors:

  • Hybrid Consensus Mechanism: While it utilizes a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system for mining, BlockDAG suggests it also incorporates other features to enhance the network.
  • Speed and Scalability: They claim to offer industry-leading transaction speeds and the ability to handle a high volume of transactions.
  • Security: BlockDAG emphasizes its security measures without going into the specifics on their website.
  • Accessibility: They aim to make mining BDAG (their cryptocurrency) simple and accessible, even offering mobile mining through an app.
  • Smart Contract Development: BlockDAG positions itself as user-friendly for developers, including features like pre-built templates to create smart contracts.

Potential Advantages:

Based on the information available, BlockDAG seems to be targeting a well-rounded approach. If they can deliver on their promises, it could offer a combination of security, speed, and ease of use for developers and miners.

Keep in Mind:

  • New Project: BlockDAG is a relatively new project, so there’s limited information about its long-term viability or how it will perform compared to established blockchain platforms.
  • Promotional Content: Much of the information comes from the BlockDAG website itself, which is naturally promotional. It’s important to be aware of potential bias and conduct your own research before making any investment decisions related to BlockDAG or its cryptocurrency (BDAG).

Overall, BlockDAG has interesting features, but due to its recent launch, exercising caution and conducting further research is recommended.

What is a sneakernet?

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Sneakernet is a term used to describe the practice of physically transporting data files, often on portable storage devices such as USB flash drives or external hard drives, between computers or networks that are not connected to each other. The term “sneakernet” is a play on the term “ethernet”, which is a common computer networking technology.

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What is Blockchain?

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A blockchain is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography

Each block contains typically a hash pointer as a link to a previous block, a timestamp and transaction data. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. Functionally, a blockchain can serve as an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way. For use as a distributed ledger a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and a collusion of the network majority.

Blockchains are secure by design and are an example of a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance. Decentralized consensus has therefore been achieved with a blockchain. This makes blockchains potentially suitable for the recording of events, medical records, and other records management activities, such as identity management, transaction processing, documenting provenance, or food traceability.

The first distributed blockchain was conceptualised by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and implemented the following year as a core component of the digital currency bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for all transactions. The invention of the blockchain for bitcoin made it the first digital currency to solve the double spending problem, without the use of a trusted authority or central server. The bitcoin design has been the inspiration for other applications.

Source: Wikipedia

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What is MSNBC?

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MSNBC is an American basic cable and satellite television network that provides news coverage and political commentary from NBC News on current events

The network also carries a nightly opinion programming block during prime time hours. It is owned by the NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of the NBCUniversal Television Group division of NBCUniversal, all of which are owned by Comcast.

MSNBC and msnbc.com were founded in 1996 as a partnership between Microsoft and General Electrics NBC unit, hence the networks naming. Although they shared the same name, msnbc.com and MSNBC maintained separate corporate structures and news operations, with msnbc.com headquartered on the West Coast on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, and MSNBC in the NBC headquarters in New York. Microsoft divested its stake in the MSNBC channel in 2005, and divested its stake in msnbc.com in July 2012, rebranding the general news site as NBCNews.com and creating a new msnbc.com as the online home of the cable news channel. As of February 2015, approximately 94,531,000 households (81.2% of those with television) have the ability to receive MSNBC within the United States of America.

In the late summer of 2015, MSNBC revamped its programming. The moves were in sharp contrast to previous programming decisions at the network, with the entire lineup of opinionated afternoon programming being cancelled. Along with this, moves were made to sharpen the channels news image through a dual editorial relationship with its organizational parent NBC News. MSNBC Live, the networks flagship daytime news platform was expanded to cover over eight hours of the day.

Source: Wikipedia

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NAS Network Attached Storage

What does NAS mean?

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NAS means Network-attached storage

Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients

NAS is specialized for serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration. It is often manufactured as a computer appliance – a purpose-built specialized computer. NAS systems are networked appliances which contain one or more storage drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID.

Network-attached storage removes the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the network. They typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such as NFS, SMB/CIFS, or AFP. From the mid-1990s, NAS devices began gaining popularity as a convenient method of sharing files among multiple computers. Potential benefits of dedicated network-attached storage, compared to general-purpose servers also serving files, include faster data access, easier administration, and simple configuration.

The hard disk drives with NAS in their name are functionally similar to other drives but may have different firmware, vibration tolerance, or power dissipation to make them more suitable for use in RAID arrays, which are sometimes used in NAS implementations. For example, some NAS versions of drives support a command extension to allow extended error recovery to be disabled. In a non-RAID application, it may be important for a disk drive to go to great lengths to successfully read a problematic storage block, even if it takes several seconds. In an appropriately configured RAID array, a single bad block on a single drive can be recovered completely via the redundancy encoded across the RAID set. If a drive spends several seconds executing extensive retries it might cause the RAID controller to flag the drive as down whereas if it simply replied promptly that the block of data had a checksum error, the RAID controller would use the redundant data on the other drives to correct the error and continue without any problem. Such a NAS SATA hard disk drive can be used as an internal PC hard drive, without any problems or adjustments needed, as it simply supports additional options and may possibly be built to a higher quality standard (particularly if accompanied by a higher quoted MTBF figure and higher price) than a regular consumer drive.

Source: Wikipedia

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What does VPN mean?

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VPN means Virtual Private Network

A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network, such as the Internet

It enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. Applications running across the VPN may therefore benefit from the functionality, security, and management of the private network.

VPNs may allow employees to securely access a corporate intranet while located outside the office. They are used to securely connect geographically separated offices of an organization, creating one cohesive network. Individual Internet users may secure their wireless transactions with a VPN, to circumvent geo-restrictions and censorship, or to connect to proxy servers for the purpose of protecting personal identity and location. However, some Internet sites block access to known VPN technology to prevent the circumvention of their geo-restrictions.

A VPN is created by establishing a virtual point-to-point connection through the use of dedicated connections, virtual tunneling protocols, or traffic encryption. A VPN available from the public Internet can provide some of the benefits of a wide area network (WAN). From a user perspective, the resources available within the private network can be accessed remotely.

If you are interested in knowing how VPN works, you might want to take a look here. And since there are more and more VPN providers out there, you might want to take a look at the differences between paid and free.

Source: Wikipedia

More information on how VPN might work for you can be found here.

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