ABS Internet - IT Support, Network Support, Telephone Systems

ABS Internet was founded as a local company in Canoga Park, California, in 1996, and incorporated in 1999. Originally part of W-P Miller & Associates founded in 1978, our company believes that an overall and thorough knowledge of current technologies is necessary to provide clients with high-performing, reliable and scalable networks. We help to ensure that your network is designed and maintained for maximum peformance, while maintaining the most secure and reliable computing environment for your business to accomplish its objectives. This means we help to make it fast, secure and reliable.

We have technicians on call for emergency issues and we use the latest in remote access software to solve many issues immediately. Our staff is here to help your network run flawlessly.

Our goal is to provide our clients with rock-solid reliable networks, coupled with secure computing environments to maximize productivity within the business. Not only do we service and maintain your systems, we impart our "best practices" experience to all users, making sure "we're all" aware of the concerns inherent in today's computing world.

1. Use an email service with a built-in spam filter. Services like Google's Gmail have robust filters that prevent most spam emails from getting to you. Also, these services use the power of huge user bases to continually refine the filters and block known spammers. When one user marks a certain email message as spam, all other users will gain that benefit in their spam filter.

2. Don't click email links unless you know where it will take you., and never reply to spam messages, even to "unsubscribe". Often times, spammers will send emails to thousands of email addresses, most of which the spammer is not sure is even a valid email address. When you click the link in the email or reply, you verify that your email address is indeed valid, opening the floodgates for even more spam.

3. Use a 3rd party spam filter. While some email applications, such as Outlook, include primitive spam filtering, adding a 3rd party spam filter can help further reduce spam through methods such as white lists, black lists, and Bayesian filtering. Spam filters are often bundled with antivirus in software suites, such as Norton Internet Suite. Better spam filters usually operate on their own and can be found from a number of sources on the Internet.

4. Prevent your email address from being posted online. Spammers have spiders that search the internet for any email addresses they can find. Often times, when a person posts on a blog or in a chatroom, their email address is permanently posted online for anyone to see. If you do need to post your email online, use a form such as "YOURNAME AT GMAIL DOT COM." By doing this, many spiders will fail to recognize this as a valid email, and your email address will not be added to their dreaded list. Some services, such as Facebook.com, will post your email address on your profile as an image. While this is currently an effective tactic, spammers are beginning to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to retrieve email addresses from these sites.

5. And finally. keep your private email address PRIVATE. Reveal your "protected" email address to your family and friends, but do NOT use it to sign up for any services online. Even companies that you believe to be secure may reveal or sell your email address; a legit website's "trusted partner" may not be so legit. Create additional email addresses with one of the many free, online email services and use those email addresses to sign up for accounts and services on the Internet. You can set these email addresses to forward to your main email account, which will maintain a level of anonymity between you and the potential spammer.

Most users connect seamlessly to the internet without realizing how the information gets to and from the Internet. In reality, there are several different types of devices that allow you to surf the web. This article gives an overview of how it all connects together.

A Network Interface Card (NIC) - also known as a network adapter - is the piece of hardware in your desktop or laptop computer that lets you send and receive information. Most network adapters come with wireless capability now, especially those in laptops. Every computer connected to a network must have a network adapter, and each adapter has a unique address built into the hardware, known as a MAC address. Repeaters are devices that allow a signal to travel long distances. As cables travel these long distances, the signal tends to naturally degrade. Without repeaters, only those users within approximately 100 meters of the source of a signal would be able to send and receive data over the network.

A network hub is a fairly unsophisticated device that allows multiple connections to be linked together. A hub connects multiple ports together, allowing them to act as a single network segment. When data is received, the data is broadcasted to all of the hub's ports, possibly resulting in "collision." The availability of lower priced switches and routers has rendered the use of hubs largely obsolete.

Network bridges are similar to hubs, but are more complicated and more efficient. Unlike a hub which transmits traffic to all ports, bridges learn the identities of each connection and transmit data accordingly rather than broadcasting traffic to all ports. Bridges come in three types: local bridges, remote bridges, and wireless bridges.

Switches are sometimes referred to as "intelligent bridges," in that they perform largely the same function. However, switches have hardware that direct the data traffic, versus software in a bridge, allowing them to "switch" from one port to another more quickly. In addition, switches usually have many more ports, with the intention that most network devices will be connected directly to the switch.

Routers are likely familiar to the average user. A router is a device that lets many users connect to the internet, and also creates an internal network known as a local access network (LAN). A router's main function is to forward and route data and operates on two planes: the "control plane" is for outgoing data, while the "forwarding plane" is for incoming data. Most commercial routers now have wireless capabilities.