May 2009

Although some people are very familiar with VoIP, many people still do not really know what it is. VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. In simple terms, it is phone service delivered through a high-speed Internet connection. Historically, phone service was delivered through copper wire, which required telephone wire run to your home.

VoIP has evolved from a new technology to a standard service. You probably remember when the call quality of cell phones was horrible; now many people rely solely on cell phones for voice communication. The evolution of VoIP has been similar. In the beginning there were issues with call quality. As the technology has evolved, call quality has continually improved. Today most people cannot differentiate a quality VoIP service from a wired connection.

Why transition to VoIP?

• It simply costs a lot less
• There are many more advanced calling features available
• Features can be managed online
• There is no need for a telephone line
• VoIP is the future of telephone

What differentiates MontanaVoice^™ from other VoIP services?

• Our platform is provided and supported by the largest VoIP provider in the world.
• The platform has 99.994% reliability, only a 0.005% deviation from the reliability required of wired telephone services by the FCC.
• The service includes Quality of Service (QOS), meaning that voice transmission gets priority use of bandwidth over data transmission. Not all services include QOS, which is very important to call quality.
• Our service is very customizable to meet your needs. You’re not limited to standard packages.
• We offer discounted pricing to our Internet customers.
• Little Apple Technologies backs the service with live, local technical support 24/7.

Use your existing telephones. Keep your current phone number. Use it just like you use your current phone service. Start saving money right away!

People frequently get confused between WiFi and wireless Internet service. Because there can be security concerns with WiFi, sometimes people get the false impression that our wireless Internet service may not be secure. WiFi is the protocol used to connect a laptop computer to an Internet access point. Little Apple Technologies’ wireless Internet service provides the Internet signal to the access point. Some significant differences regarding security follow:

1.   LAT uses a proprietary wireless protocol, where WiFi does not. The components and software/firmware LAT uses are not for sale or published outside of the finished product. The components and software/firmware for WiFi are readily available and published to anyone who is interested.

2.   By default LATs’ wireless equipment uses Data Encryption Standard (DES) encryption, which was developed in the 1970s by the National Bureau of Standards with the help of the National Security Agency to provide a standard method for protecting sensitive commercial and unclassified data and officially became a federal standard in November of 1976.

3.   LAT can equip government agencies and other security sensitive entities with the latest approved standard Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES is a symmetric cipher defined in Federal Information Processing (FIPS) Standard Number 197 in 2001 as the federal government approved encryption algorithm. The NSA has approved 128-bit AES for use up to SECRET level and 192-bit AES for use up to TOP SECRET level.

4.   Unlike WiFi, LAT’s wireless equipment cannot be “sniffed”. Although a person could buy the same wireless equipment that we use, in order to eavesdrop on an LAT wireless link they would have to have their device authenticated, which is extremely difficult without access to the authentication server. Even if they did somehow bypass the authentication process, they would have to gain knowledge of and implement the precise timing mechanism used for communication.

LAT’s delivery of Internet is no less secure than wired services such as DSL or cable Internet. To manage security on WiFi, we recommend use of a VPN and WPA WiFi security protocols. It is important to understand that WiFi without password-protected access (such as may be available at an Internet café, for example) is open to sniffing, or eavesdropping.

Are you regularly backing up the important data on your computer? You'd be surprised how many people don't take time for this critical exercise. It often takes a catastophic event such as a hard drive crash for people to stop and think what it could have meant to them to have their data backed up. As computer repair technicians, we frequently work on computers that have had a hard drive failure or lost data due to a virus or user error. If you have any information stored on your computer that is important to you, do yourself the favor of protecting it by backing it regularly.

Regular backups can be performed with software such as EMC Retrospect using an external hard drive, tape, or other medium. For further protection, you may choose to backup your data off-site. Little Apple Technologies can provide this service and will gladly help you assess your backup needs and implement an appropriate solution.

The Beatles do Computers

Yesterday

Yesterday, All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly, There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a milestone hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.
I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now all my data's gone and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.
Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.