In this issue:

Carrier Scale Ethernet

Topics in Radio Communications

Integrated Circuits for Communications

Free WiMax Tutorial

Femtocell Networks: A survey

Evolution And Standardization of the Smart Antenna System for Software Defined Radio

On TCP Performance Enhancing Proxies in a Wireless Environment

Ethernet as a Carrier Grade Technology: Developments and Innovations

Scaling Provider Ethernet

Provider Link State Bridging

GMPLS Controlled Ethernet: An Emerging Packet-Oriented transport technology

Synchronous Ethernet: A method to Transport Synchronization

Ethernet Ring Protection For Carrier Ethernet Networks

and etc.

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The Firewall Services Module (FWSM) is a high-performance stateful-inspection
firewall that integrates into the Cisco 6500 switch and 7600 router chassis. It
monitors traffic flows using application inspection engines to provide a strong
level of network security. The FWSM defines the security parameter and enables
the enforcement of security policies through authentication, access-control
lists, and protocol inspection. This is a key component to anyone deploying
network security. Many customers have been deploying the firewall services
module without specific knowledge on how it functions. They have taken their
experience with the PIX firewall and applied it to the FWSM, but there are
significant differences between the two products. Cisco Secure Firewall Services
Module (FWSM) is designed to help  understand how the FWSM functions and the
differences between it and the PIX. It also helps you through the design,
configuration, implementation, and administration of the FWSM by providing
practical examples using best security practices.

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In this issue:

Techlog

PCW Forum

Full Disclosure

15 Ideas for Microsoft - How to revent a tech behemoth

Plugged In

Gadget Freak

Beta Watch

GeekTech

ISP Bandwidth Limits Return - Cable Services curb heavy users

Skeptical Shopper

On your Side

Digital SLR Cameras - New Models From Canon and Sony go to the top of the chart

HP TouchSmart IQ506 PC

Top 5 42-Inch HDTV

Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12

Top 10 Color Laser Printers

Pure Digital FLip Mino

and etc.

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It started with punk. Hip-hop, rave, graffiti, and gaming took it to another
level, and now modern technology has made the ideas and innovations of youth
culture increasingly intimate and increasingly global at the same time.

In The Pirate’s Dilemma, VICE magazine’s Matt Mason — poised to become the
Malcolm Gladwell of the iPod Generation — brings the exuberance of a passionate
music fan and the technological savvy of an IT wizard to the task of sorting
through the changes brought about by the interface of pop culture and
innovation. He charts the rise of various youth movements — from pirate radio
to remix culture — and tracks their ripple effect throughout larger society.
Mason brings a passion and a breadth of intelligence to questions such as the
following: How did a male model who messed with disco records in the 1970s
influence the way Boeing designs airplanes? Who was the nun who invented dance
music, and how is her influence undermining capitalism as we know it? Did three
high school kids who remixed Nazis into Smurfs in the 1980s change the future of
the video game industry? Can hip-hop really bring about world peace? Each
chapter crystallizes the idea behind one of these fringe movements and shows how
it combined with technology to subvert old hierarchies and empower the
individual.

With great wit and insight — and a cast of characters that includes such icons
as the Ramones, Andy Warhol, Madonna, Russell Simmons, and 50 Cent — Mason
uncovers the trends that have transformed countercultural scenes into burgeoning
global industries and movements, ultimately changing our way of life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matt Mason began his career as a pirate radio and club DJ in London,
going on to become founding editor in chief of the seminal magazine
RWD. In 2004, he was selected as one of the faces of Gordon Brown’s
Start Talking Ideas campaign and was presented the Prince’s Trust London
Business of the Year Award by HRH Prince Charles. He has written
and produced TV series, comic strips, and records, and his
journalism has appeared in VICE magazine and other publications in
more than twelve countries around the world. He recently founded the
nonprofit media company WEdia with his wife, Emily. He lives in New
York City.

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This book teaches IT professionals how to analyze, manage, and automate their
security log files to generate useful, repeatable information that can be use to
make their networks more efficient and secure using primarily open source tools.
The book begins by discussing the “Top 10″ security logs that every IT
professional should be regularly analyzing. These 10 logs cover everything from
the top workstations sending/receiving data through a firewall to the top
targets of IDS alerts. The book then goes on to discuss the relevancy of all of
this information. Next, the book describes how to script open source reporting
tools like Tcpdstats to automatically correlate log files from the various
network devices to the “Top 10″ list. By doing so, the IT professional is
instantly made aware of any critical vulnerabilities or serious degradation of
network performance. All of the scripts presented within the book will be
available for download from the Syngress Solutions Web site.

Foreword

Logs, logs, logs. Ever since I started taking my first steps in the world of security,
it has been clear that “the log” plays a crucial—and sometimes undervalued—
role in the security management of any IT infrastructure.This fact
alone explains the plethora of tools, applications, and solutions whose only purpose
is to generate, analyze, and report on logs. Entire software companies were
built on nothing but a few valid ideas on how to analyze logs or how to process
and aggregate information coming from different logs. I myself spent a
great deal of time in this field while developing the Microsoft Log Parser tool
to tackle some of these problems.
Despite the proliferation of log-generating, processing, and reporting tools,
and partially because of it, however, obtaining something useful from “the log” is
still a somewhat obscure, complicated, and confusing wizardry, caused by, I
believe, the fact that computers are still far from being as smart as we wish
they’d be.Wouldn’t it be nice if your security sensors told you immediately
what’s going on as an event was happening, rather than generate a huge log of
seemingly worthless data? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could instruct your
Web servers to show you a trend related to a variable over the past 10 weeks
rather than have to retrieve, correlate, and aggregate gigabytes and gigabytes of
log files?
Unfortunately, that’s not the case—yet—with the current state of software
engineering. Most of the time, the developer of an IDS can’t come up—rightfully
so—with a list of all the possible questions you might want to ask the IDS
in the future, so the solution is simple: let’s log everything, and when users
come up with new questions, they can go back to the archive and ask the question
directly to “the log.”This is especially true in the world of security, where
in most cases a single “event” can not be deemed of security importance unless
correlated with other “events” occurring at other key places in your network.
In these times of cheap storage and increased processing power and network
traffic, however, asking a question to “the log” becomes more and more
similar to executing a data-mining query. Most of the times “the log” does contain
the answers you are looking for, but they’re buried under countless useless
entries, and scattered across innumerable, heterogeneous log files; as Jake
Babbin, the lead author of this book, elegantly puts it, the answers you are
looking for are patterns in chaos. And the news is that someone has to find those
patterns. And it might be you.
The purpose of this book is to show you exactly how to do that, at the
same time tackling all the various problems pertinent to log generation, storage,
processing, and reporting.
Once the right security sensors are in the right places, Jake shows you how
to generate reports that both provide management with the data needed to
evaluate the ROI of your security infrastructure, while simultaneously feeding
vital data to your security staff.The information that needs to be analyzed in
these processes comes from different sources (e.g., intrusion detection systems,
firewalls,Web servers) and different platforms. As a result, the logs generated by
these sources are formatted in different ways and contain different information.
Still, Jake manages to provide a unified view of this Babel of logs, showing you
how to overcome the inherent “language barriers” with both commercial and
low-cost solutions.
In addition, you will find that these solutions are discussed in true Syngress
style, with real-world examples and working scripts developed.They’re also
used in production systems by the author and his staff.
Whether or not you are the one charged with asking questions to “the log,”
after reading this book, you will agree that finding the patterns in chaos is actually
not as daunting as you would have believed, and that creative solutions like
the ones adopted by Jake will go a long way in making your job, and your
quest, easier.

—Gabriele Giuseppini
Developer of Microsoft Log Parser
Security Business Unit, Microsoft Corporation

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