DNS Tutorial

This is a tutorial to explain DNS, what it does, and how it relates to your website. For purposes of the tutorial, we shall assume that the user is a home user connected to a ISP with dial-up, cable, DSL, etc. The same ideas apply to businesses, but things can get complicated quickly depending on how the business is set up. Dealing with those complications is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Before we get into DNS, lets start off with breaking down a web address. This is also known as URL or Uniform Resource Locater. It essentially gives where the web page is, and how you need to talk to it. Lets use the example of:

http://www.onlyonecreations.com/pages/wood-gift-pen.htm

The first part is "http://", and that tells your PC what protocol (what language so to speak) to use talking with this site. In this case, you are using HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). Another very common one for web designers to use is "ftp://" or File Transfer Protocol. You would use it to connect to your webserver to put the web pages you created onto the server.

You also see "https://" quite commonly. This simply means that you the connection between you and the web server is secure (meaning the information being sent back and forth is encrypted). You should see "https://" when you (or your customers) are checking out, especially when they are entering credit card information.

The next part, "onlyonecreations.com" is called the domain name. The "www" used to be more significant than it is today. Today, the "www" is, for the most part, assumed and you can get to the same page regardless of whether or not you type in "www" your browser.

The part "/pages/wood-gift-pen.htm" tells the web server to look in the directory called "pages" and send the file called "wood-gift-pen.htm" to your browser. It is just like the directories on your PC.

Before we get into DNS, we need to explain what an IP address is. Every PC and server has an IP address on the Internet. It has the format of 4 numbers, separated by periods, and looks like "64.17.143.84". Each number should be between 0 and 255.

Think of it as your phone number on the internet, it must be unique. It would be bad to have 2 different houses with the same phone number, and it would be bad to have 2 different machines (more properly known as hosts) that have the same IP address on the Internet.

For most people, it is much easier to remember "www.onlyonecreations.com" than it is to remember "64.17.143.84". When you enter a URL into your browser, you usually use the easy to remember name.

How does your PC know where to find "www.onlyonecreations? Remember that each machine has a IP address? There is a way to translate from the easy to remember domain name, and the hard to remember IP address.

Enter DNS. DNS is an acronym for "Domain Name Service". It's whole purpose in life is to translate between the friendly "www.onlyonecreations.com" and the not-so-friendly 64.17.143.84. It handles this translation for web sites, email, FTP servers, database servers, or any machine within a domain name.

Let's dig into the process of how that works. Let's use the example that Scott types "www.onlyonecreations.com" into his web browser. How does his PC find the web server that has the page he's looking for, among the thousands of web servers?

1. Scott types in www.onlyonecreations.com to his browser.
   

2. Scott's PC looks at it's configuration. It will find something called "DNS Server" or "name server" and there will be an IP address associated with that. Let's say it is 198.6.1.1. Scott's PC sends a message to 198.6.1.1 and asks "I am looking for the IP address of www.onlyonecreations.com, can you tell me what it is?"
   

3. The DNS Server (198.6.1.1) gets the message, and assuming that the server already knows what the IP address of www.onlyonecreations.com is, it tells Scott's PC that the IP address is 64.17.143.84. I will get into considerable more depth about the DNS server, how it works, and why it is important to a web site owner, a little later.
   

4. Scott's PC gets the message that the IP address of www.onlyonecreations.com is 64.17.143.84. So his PC sends a message to 64.17.143.84 and asks "send me the default web page at 64.17.143.84".
   

5. The web server (whose IP address is 64.17.143.84) sends the web page to your browser. That is a simplistic example of how your PC finds a particular web-server and web page. The process of matching a domain name to a IP address is called resolving. So your PC resolves the IP address from the domain name. Let's get into a little more detail.

For step 1, how does Scott's PC know that the IP address of the DNS Server is? There are 2 ways it learns what the address is. The first is that Scott asked his ISP what the address was, and entered it himself. There are times manually entering (also known as statically entering) the address is necessary or desirable, but usually the ISP automatically tells your PC what the IP address of the DNS server is.

This process is called "DHCP" or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. When you select "Obtain IP address automatically" in your windows Network connections page, you are telling your PC to use DHCP and to ask the ISP to give you the DNS Server address (among a bunch of other things).

In step 3, we assumed that the DNS server already knew what the IP address of www.onlyonecreations.com was.

What if it didn't already know?

Let's assume that the DNS server Scott's PC sent a request to, doesn't know where www.onlyonecreations.com is.

Have you ever noticed that there are only so many variations of the end of the domain name? There are .com, .gov, .net, .org, .us, .biz, among others. When a DNS server receives a request to resolve an IP address (translate from a domain name to a IP address) for a domain that it doesn't know the answer to, it sends a message to any one of a small number of servers. That small number of servers are responsible for knowing what the "authoritative server" is for EVERY domain name. A realm would be .com, or .org for example, and is properly called a top-level domain.

What is an authoritative server? An authoritative server is a DNS server that has a Statement of Authority configured for a particular domain name. That means that the server has absolute and total knowledge of the domain, any information that contradicts the information that the server has is wrong, it is the final word.

This becomes more important a little later. For purposes of this discussion, let's ignore backup authoritative servers.

The message that Scott's DNS server sends to the top-level domain server "what is the authoritative server for onlyonecreations.com?". It is important to understand, that Scott's DNS Server is NOT asking "what is the IP address of the web server for onlyonecreations?". It is only asking "where do I go to find out where the web server for onlyonecreations.com is?"

Once Scott's DNS server knows where to go to get the answer for Scott's request, it sends a message to the authoritative server asking "what is the IP address of the web server for onlyonecreations.com?". The authoritative server responds, and Scott's DNS Server tells Scott's PC the IP address it needs to connect Scott to the webpage he is looking for.

To summarize the past few paragraphs, Scott's DNS server receives a request for an IP address that it doesn't know. That server makes a request of a top-level domain server, and gets a response with where to go to get the information that Scott is requesting. The DNS server then makes a request of the authoritative server, and forwards the answer it receives to the PC that made the first request.

It sounds long and complex, but it happens very quickly. One way to speed up the process is called caching. Caching is where the DNS server remembers the response from the authoritative server for a period of time. So if Bob makes the same request 5 minutes after Scott did, the DNS server doesn't have to repeat the whole process. Caching will be brought up again in a bit.

So we learned how your PC finds out where it needs to go to get to specific web page. So what. What does that have to do with web site owners? Let's explore.

You're a web site owner, you just got your site made (or had it made). Now you want to register a domain name. What does that mean?

When you register a domain name, you need to talk to a "registrar". You tell the registrar some information about you, and they ask for a "name server", or "DNS Server" when you register the domain. The exact term used will vary, but they all means the same thing - what are the IP addresses for the authoritative servers for your domain? These would generally be the DNS servers of your web host. They will ask for at least 2, sometimes up to 4, but 2 are all that are absolutely needed. Those after the first are used if the first one is down.

For the sake of simplicity, that registrar is responsible for telling the top-level domain servers the answer to the question that Scott's DNS server asked "what is the authoritative server for onlyonecreations.com?".

There are numerous companies that register domain names, and many web designers and web hosting companies have a process to help make this easy for you. However it gets accomplished, make SURE that YOU own the domain name, not the web hosting company, not the web site designer.

This is not as much of a problem as it once was. Many times in the past, your web host/ISP/designer would own the domain name. If you were unhappy with them for whatever reason, you could not move your site to someone else without their blessing. They permitted you to use the domain name because you were a customer. They locked you in as a customer because it was very costly to change domain name. It's essentially changing the name of your business, your identity on the internet. They could also charge you whatever fee they decided on to transfer the domain name to someone else, and there was no guarantee they were willing to do that.

Again, not nearly as big a problem as it once was, but still something to make sure you get ownership of.

Now you are thinking, that is a really long explanation for 2 paragraphs of needed information. :) What happens if you picked a web host that is the worst company on the face of the planet, or you have outgrown what the web host is capable of providing, or maybe even you decide to host your own website.

The first thing you need to do is plan. The basic process would be that you sign up with a new web host, put a copy of your site on the new web host, and make sure everything is working, sometimes there will be glitches. Once everything is working, then you have the registrar tell the top-level domain servers that the new authoritative servers are at the new web host. So from then on, whenever Scott wants to see your webpage, his DNS server is told by the top-level domain server that the authoritative server is at the new web host, and they in turn point to your new web page.

Now, I said to plan. There is a reason for that besides just making sure everything works. Remember when I said that "caching" would come up again? Now is that time. Remember that Scott's DNS server cached the address for the web server of:

www.onlyonecreations.com,

meaning that it remembers that www.onlyonecreations.com is has the IP address of 64.17.143.84. Most DNS servers are set to remember that information for 24 hours. So if Scott requests your web page at noon on Monday, Scott's DNS server will cache the IP address of your web server until noon on Tuesday. If you change hosts at 1pm on Monday, Scott will get your old website until at least noon on Tuesday. His DNS server is giving Scott's PC the information it remembers, it doesn't check to see if that is still accurate. So if your old website is down (maybe your shopping cart won't work now that you have moved hosts, for example), Scott can't get to your new website, until his DNS server refreshes the information (which will point to the new web site).

Plan on a timeframe of 24-48 hours from the time your registrar makes the change in the top-level domain server, before that change is spread through the Internet. So what does this mean for your planning? If your site is generally used by businesses, your site won't be very busy over the weekend. Therefore, plan on making the change on a Friday evening, by the time Monday rolls around, all the DNS server caches have been cleaned out (timed out actually), the DNS servers will have to ask the top-level domain servers, and your new website well be accessible.

One word of caution, before you make plans, find out when you need to tell the registrar when to make the change. It usually takes a period of time, that you need to plan for. There is little you can do about the 24-48 hour period.

As that time period elapses, more and more of the DNS servers around the world with have their cache time out, and get the new information pointing to your new site, hence fewer and fewer people will be unable to access your new site. It generally is pretty manageable, if you plan accordingly.

So we know what DNS is, what it does for us, and a basic idea of how it works. We know what a registrar does, and why we need them, and what an authoritative server does for us. We know why some people may not be able to access our new site 5 minutes after we changed hosts.

A customer just called and said my site is down. I call my web host, and they say it's up. I call the customer and they still can't get on. Now what? Time for some basic troubleshooting. I'm not going to go into great detail, but enough for you to confirm things have been done correctly, and figure out if the site is really down or if there is something making it look like it is down.

Two of the best sites I have found for troubleshooting are:

• www.dnsstuff.com/

• www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php.

There are a TON of tools here to help you figure out what the problem is.

A few quick steps:

1. Can you get to other web sites? Including ones you have not been to recently?
   

2. Can your customer access other sites?

One of the first steps you should take in troubleshooting your site being down - type in the IP address of your web server in your browser. If you normally type in http://www.onlyonecreations.com/pages/wood-gift-pen.htm, type in http://64.17.143.84/pages/wood-gift-pen.htm. Does it work? When you use the domain name, does it still not work? If you can get to your site using the IP address, but not using the domain name, the problem is DNS, it is not your web server.

Let's use some tools at www.dnsstuff.com to confirm some things. The 3rd tool down on the left side is WHOIS lookup. Type in your domain name there (example, "onlyonecreations.com"). That brings up a page with 2 important pieces of information. One being who owns the domain name (this should be your name and address for your domain name). The other being the authoritative servers (called domain servers here)- remember Scott's DNS server asking for the authoritative server for onlyonecreations.com? These are the addresses that the top-level domain servers answer with.

The top tool on the right is called DNS Lookup. Type in www.onlyonecreations.com, make sure that A is selected, and click look up. There are some interesting and useful pieces of information here. When I entered my domain name, I got:

- Searching for A record for www.onlyonecreations.com at g.root-servers.net:

- Got referral to M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. [took 197 ms]

- Searching for A record for www.onlyonecreations.com at M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET.:

- Got referral to ns1.ixwebhosting.com. [took 249 ms]

- Searching for A record for www.onlyonecreations.com at ns1.ixwebhosting.com.:

- Reports www.onlyonecreations.com. [took 100 ms]

Do you see "g.root-servers.net" and "M.GTLD-SERVERS.NET"? Those are top-level domain servers. On the 2nd line, it says "got referral to ns1.ixwebhosting.com". That should be the one of the domain servers you saw in the WHOIS lookup a minute ago. The DNS server is being told where to get the IP address of www.onlyonecreations.com (ie, ns1.ixwebhosting.com). The next block of information tells you the answer that the authoritative server gave to the question "what is the IP address of www.onlyonecreations.com?". It says that www.onlyonecreations.com has an IP address of onlyonecreations.com. What!? That's not an IP address. Remember way back at the beginning, I mentioned that you usually get the same page regardless of whether you type in www or not? Here's why! Now click, back and remove the "www." from the front of the domain name in the box, and click look up. Now we see that onlyonecreations.com points to 64.17.143.84. www.onlyonecreations.com points to onlyonecreations.com, which points to 64.17.143.84, so it doesn't matter if someone types the www or not (in this case).

So now you can walk through and ensure that the servers that are supposed to have to correct answers, do in fact have the right answers. But how do I tell if my (or my customer's) DNS server is giving me the right information? Click here : http://www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php. There are 3 boxes to be concerned with. The first one (called simply Domain here) is the domain name (like www.onlyonecreations.com) of the machine you are having problems getting to. The next box (called Server here) is the DNS server you want to ask. The 3rd box (called Query) is the type of record you are looking up. For our purposes you want to look "A" (which is a regular type of name or record) or "MX" (which is an email record - ie "where do I send mail to at onlyonecreations.com?").

So to find what MCI's DNS Server (as an example) has for the IP address of onlyonecreations.com, enter "onlyonecreations.com" in the 1st box, 198.6.1.1 (MCI's DNS server) in the 2nd, and select "A" in the third box.

Last thing, sub-domains. A subdomain can be used, for example, if you have both wholesale and retail for your business. You could have the retail part of your business as www.yourdomain.com, and the wholesale as wholesale.yourdomain.com. Details are beyond the scope of this tutorial, but the same general rules apply to subdomains as it does to domains.

I hope this clears up confusion, and doesn't muddy the waters too much

Create Shortcut On Your Desktop

Right Click On Desktop

1. Place you cursor on an empty part of your desktop.
2. Right click and select: New > Shortcut
3. A shortcut wizard will open up.
4. 

Enter Shortcut Destination Enter the destination to the shortcut you want to create. If the destination is a website, simply enter the URL of the website or page. Click Next

Type a Name for the Shortcut Type in a name for the shortcut that will help you remember what it is for. Once you have entered the new name, click finish.

Use The New Shortcut On Your Desktop! You are already done! That's all there is to it! Now when you want to bring up the site you visit frequently you can simply double click on the new shortcut on your desktop! I WILL DEFINITELY SEE YOU AT THE TOP!

Create Shortcut On Your Desktop

Right Click On Desktop

1. Place you cursor on an empty part of your desktop.
2. Right click and select: New > Shortcut
3. A shortcut wizard will open up.
4. 

Enter Shortcut Destination Enter the destination to the shortcut you want to create. If the destination is a website, simply enter the URL of the website or page. Click Next

Type a Name for the Shortcut Type in a name for the shortcut that will help you remember what it is for. Once you have entered the new name, click finish.

Use The New Shortcut On Your Desktop! You are already done! That's all there is to it! Now when you want to bring up the site you visit frequently you can simply double click on the new shortcut on your desktop! I WILL DEFINITELY SEE YOU AT THE TOP!

Computer Tech Tips - Zone Alarm Configurations

You won't have to do a lot of research on firewalls to discover that Zone Alarm, comes highly recommended by many techs in the industry. Unfortunately though, there simple are not a lot of computer tech tips on effective Zone Alarm configurations. This article is designed to provide you with step by step instructions on setting up basic Zone Alarm.

1. To open the control center, right click on the ZA icon, down by the clock in the lower right corner of your screen. Select Restore Zone Alarm Control Center, click to open
   .

2. Click on Overview in the left hand column.
   

3. Click on the Preferences tab, located below the help question mark.
   

4. In the Check for Updates section, put a dot in the automatic circle. (Click on the center of the circle)
   

5. In the General section, put a check in the box next to Protect Zone Alarm Client.
   

6. In the Contact With Zone Labs section, put a check in the box marked Hide the last octet of my IP address when applicable. This concludes the overview portion.
   

7. Look back to the column on the left, under the word Overview click on Firewall.
   

8. There are two tabs near the help icon. You should be on Main (If not, click on the Main tab.)
   

9. In the section Internet Zone Security, (it should be the top section) click on themedium position, this should highlight Med. This will also change the text to the right of the setting box, to medium.
   

10. Go to the Trusted Zone Security section and set it to medium also.
    

11. Click on the Advanced box, just under the last section, on the lower right. There will be a smaller window with the text Advance Settings at the top. In this box you will see a Security tab. In this section you will see several boxes stacked on top of each other. The ones that you will need to have checked are Allow Outgoing DNS/DHCP in Trusted Zone on High setting and Allow Outgoing DNS/DHCP in Internet Zone on High setting. Click ok to close window.
    

12. In the left column, click on Program Controls. Once again you should see tabs at the top. You should be on Main. You should see Program Control section and the Auto Lock section.
    

13. In Program Control select medium.
    

14. In Auto Lock, I recommend that you select off, until you are more familiar with this program.
    

15. Click on Program Wizard, under the last section on the lower right. A new window will open. In Program Wizard you will see only one tab with the textSecure Programs on it. Under Secure Programs, on the right, you will see, Do you want Zone Alarm to pre-configure access permission? Select "Yes" and click finished.
    

16. In Program Control, click on the Programs tab, under the help button. Here you can see what programs Zone Alarm will allow to have access, to the internet. You will see green check marks in the programs that it will allow access. The programs with the dark blue question marks, will ask for your permission to get access. (If it's a program that you will be using often you can configure Zone Alarm to remember your permission or to block when you are prompted later). The red X's are programs that are blocked from gaining access. Review all the programs and settings. You can make changes here by left clicking on the X's, question marks, or the checkmarks, to set your preferences. You can also wait, until you are prompted later, to decide. When you have finished configuring your preferences, proceed to the next step.
    

17. In the left column, click on Alerts & Logs. You should be on the Main tab. You will see, Alert Events Shown, click on the center of the circle that reads, ON to activate this feature. You can always change this setting later, when you are more familiar with Zone Alarm.
    

18. Under the section on the lower right, click on the Advanced box. This will bring up a smaller window with the text Advance Alert and Log Settings at the top. Place a check mark in the box to archive text logs daily.
    

19. In the Log Archive Appearance section, set your preferences. When you are finished click ok at the bottom to close the smaller window.
    

20. In the left column, click on E-mail Protection. On the Main tab select, Basic MailSafe Settings. Set your preference. Special Note: If your anti-virus protection is continually up to date, it is generally unnecessary to select this feature, and may possibly conflict with your anti-virus program. If you do not have anti-virus protection, then click the circle to turn this feature on. Close control panel.

• Download free basic version of Zone Alarm
• Zone Alarm help files provide advanced settings.
• Test your new firewall configurations with Shields Up.
• Related Articles: Virus & Hacker Threats - Should You React?

Computer Virus Threats

We've all had it happen, that moment of panic when you wonder if your computer has a virus. In that situation, we can make the wrong decisions by deleting or installing files. If your system is set up properly and you back up files on a regular basis, there is no reason to panic.

Most of us have received an email "from a friend" warning us of impending doom. Sometimes the warning is real and sometimes it's not. Usually the email begins "I found this on my computer and I think I may have accidentally sent it to you. Better check your computer. I'm really sorry." The email finishes up with urging you to send this message to EVERYONE in your address book.

Hoaxes can actually make you the virus by getting you to delete needed programs or files causing the system to bog down or crash. These hoa

xes usually arrive in the form of an e-mail and contain false virus warnings. When in doubt, check a list of knownvirus hoaxes. The best thing to do is to delete the email.

Some virus programs appear to have been sent by a friend or a company you have emailed before. Most come from unknown sources. Once opened they work by pulling names out of a computer's address book and using them to further spread the virus.

You can set your email to accept plain text only. Block or remove emails that contain file attachments. Some viruses are even programmed to instruct your pc to show you only the plain text but can still infect your computer with hidden malicious code.

Prevent Computer Virus Threats

Install Virus Protection Programs

Help prevent computer viruses by updating windows regularly and installing virus protection programs. Virus updates should be done at least once a week. Scheduled the task time to run automatically so that it won't interfere with your work. Set up your computer to automatically download updates, but install the updates manually.

If your system starts running very slowly for no reason, go online and get the system checked. A good scan of your entire operating system, memory, hard drive and boot sector is needed. Trend Micro has a free online virus scanner.

Anti-virus programs hun

t for viruses and cleans attachments if possible. When a file can't be cleaned, the anti-virus program will isolate the file. The anti-virus program uses the definition list you download from the program's website, or it matches up a general pattern of what a virus looks like.

The schedule with which the anti-virus definitions are updated can vary, and you may get caught in that window of vulnerability between the virus appearing and it getting updated to the list. Warning: The viruses will get in if you don't keep your anti-virus program updated.

Software companies use patches to correct a problem or a weakness that people can take advantage of. Patching is a necessity and will be an on going method for computer systems weakness prevention.

The Internet is not always what you see. Scan all of your email attachments as you download them. This should be done with files you download directly from internet sites as well as music files, programs, e-books, games, etc. Be careful sharing files with others,

such

as MP3, videos, programs, pictures, etc. Downloadable data can contain malicious code that you download without knowing it, and will infect your computer.

Downloading the latest patch for your system can stop some of these viruses. You need to get the most recent protection that is out there. Get them directly from the company site. Please note that sometimes you could receive false notifications of necessary update patches in your email, urging you to download a patch immediately to protect your computer. Microsoft does not send update notices by email. These are almost always viruses.

Trojan is a code that hides from you. Even banner ads can contain trojans. The banner ad displays another pop-up that would redirect you to another site and load the content on that page. This would allow the trojan to execute while you are distracted with the content of the page. Trojan programs do not seek out new computers to infect like a worm or virus.

A trojan has the ability to automatically infect a computer. The fact that no fix exists for it, makes the appearance of the trojan a problem. MooSoft de

veloped The Cleaner for detecting and removing trojans in your computer.

People can help protect themselves against Active X issues by changing their IE internet security zone settings to prompt them before running Active X components. If your not familiar with changing security settings, visit PC Pitstop for a free scan to check for security vulnerabilities and automatically set your security controls.

Hackers use automated programs to break into systems and are used by virus writers who set out to damage or use a computer system. The use of a firewall will help prevent this. A firewall works by warning you when someone is trying to gain access to your computer. If someone gains access to your computer they can retrieve information that you have entered, such as passwords, bank accounts and credit card numbers.Zone Labs offers a free basic firewall.

A computer worm hasn't been created to spread by instant messaging, however it provides a target. Experts say a computer worm transmitt

ed by using instant messaging programs would infect as many as 1,000,000 computers in less than a minute. New threats to your computer are created on a regular basis.

Keeping informed and using good judgment is always the very best prevention.

Real Time Vehicle Tracking - GPS Trailer Tracking

Real time vehicle tracking is a GPS trailer trackingtechnology that is dependent on real-time positioning information. GPS trailer tracking has its restrictions and is not a viable option.

Real Time Vehicle Tracking

Different technologies are used in real time vehicle tracking systems, such as GPS, vehicle tag-based AVI, and video image processing. Commercial image processing systems work well in free-flowing traffic, but are not effective enough with congestions, shadows and lighting transitions.

Video data tracking can be done using different approaches:

· 3D model based tracking
· Region based tracking
· Active contour based tracking
· Feature based tracking

Feature-based auto tracking systems in real time vehicle trackings, track sub-features such as distinguishable lines or points on the object. In active contour based tracking, the idea is to have a representation of the bounding contour of the object and update it dynamically. 3D modeling involves recovering trajectories and models with high accuracy for lesser number of vehicles. In region based real time vehicle tracking, the system identifies a connected region in the image associated with each vehicle and tracks it over time using a cross-correlation measure. Wireless vehicle tracking uses wireless devices to provide real-time vehicles tracking.

GPS Vehicle Tracking

GPS vehicle trackers have some major limitations. At best GPS vehicle tracking is more suited for navigational purposes than vehicle tracking. GPS vehicle tracking systems are easily disabled and are prone to error. Determining a position accurately using GPS vehicle tracking depends on the various types of errors inherent in the technology. Reducing these errors would lead to more accurate results. GPS auto trackers are often error-prone and unreliable. There are a lot of problems associated with installing a GPS vehicle tracking system that limits its efficiency when tracking stolen vehicles. GPS also requires line-of-sight visibility to at least four satellites in the sky. Because of this limitation, GPS vehicle tracking is ineffective in tunnels and mountainous terrains, but even low-rise buildings and trees obstruct signals.

For additional pertinent information on GPS Vehicle Tracking System click on the adjacent link.

GPS Trailer Tracking

A functional GPS trailer tracking system is a vital part of keeping track of the fleet. Asset management devices are typically installed on the tractor-cab of the transport vehicle - the truck, train locomotive or vessel. Thus the cargo can be located when the load is attached. But sometimes, when an accompanying load like the trailer, railcar or barge is disconnected, location information is lost. Under such circumstances, these assets may be lost for hours or days or more, which leads to a total loss of perishable cargo or missed deadlines for time-critical loads. GPS trailer trackers are a good way to get real time data for customer service and optimization systems. Information obtained from the GPS trailer trackers helps to cut costs and increases productivity and ensures optimum utilization of resources. A GPS trailer tracking system can also be integrated with dispatch and other management functions.

Real Time Tracking

Real time tracking means to calculate the position of an object at the current time and update it constantly as time changes. Real time tracking is thus performed on the current object in the current location and ensures that information is not delayed or recorded for post-analysis. This system uses GPS for accurate positioning and cellular mobile network for communications, that is, providing real time updates over the telephone. A cellular based system does not operate effectively on battery-only power without periodically reconnecting to line power sources. Satellite based communications alleviates some of the coverage problems associated with cellular tracking devices.

Technology Center - Educational Technology

Technology helps in improving the performance of the corporate sector. It also helps in integrating the world through trade and financial flows. Technological advances facilitate international transactions. Educational technology enables students to prosper in the competitive environment. Technology in education inculcates a feeling of independence. It lifts pressure off the students. They do not fear criticism while undertaking training sessions in technology. Technology also benefits the disabled students. Technology facilitates special education to disabled students. Technology in learning makes a difference in the attitudes of students.

Technology Center

Technology facilitates transfer of information at a faster pace. It also allows better communication. Technology enables people to improve and control their surroundings. It enables people to use technical means to improve their standards of living. Thus, technology has made a tremendous impact on people's lives. Technology centers exist increase the awareness of technology. These centers increase the knowledge of the industrial staff. They prepare trainees for the industry.

Technology helps in:

• Accessing information
• Increasing awareness in vocabulary, writing and comprehension
• Stimulating and solving problems
• Making self assessments

Technology prevents loneliness among the elderly people. Robots prevent depression among the aged people. Technology reduces dependency of the disabled people.

The following technologies assist disabled people:

• Computers
• Speech and voice activated applications
• On-screen keyboards
• Wireless communication devices
• Better tracking devices

Technology Learning

Learning through technology empowers students and augments their interests. Technology provides various training opportunities and introduces new concepts. Technology based learning brings about a variety of information formats. Technology prevents obscurity. Students are able to visualize phenomena with the help of computers. Pictures and graphics stir students interest. Computer-based technology increases interaction between the students. It also helps in solving problems. Learning through technology enables students to collect, store and organize information. Technology enables students to test hypothesis and achieve goals.

Technology Training

Technology based training could make a positive impact in market place. Corporate executives may learn new skills with the help of technology. Training through technology provides the following benefits:

• Consistency: Technology based training provides consistent information. It focuses on key points. But, the training provided by instructors may vary and change.
• Geographical reach: Technology in training does not need classrooms, text books or specific locations.
• Flexibility: Classroom training involves fixed content. Technology based training allows flexible course content. Flexible course content does not pressurize the students.
• Better understanding: Training with technology enables better understanding of the various concepts. It also helps trainees in the retention and application of information.

Educational Technology (Education Technology, Technology In Education, Technology School, College Technology)

Education technology helps in imparting practical knowledge to the students. It enables students to use tools that are found in the work areas. Teachers should facilitate the proper implementation of technology.Educational technology should also be encouraged in schools and colleges. It helps in improving the learning effectiveness. Colleges should recruit external consultants. These consultants provide technical advice to the students.

Technology in education provides the following benefits:

• Enhances education
• Develops academic skills
• Improves access to information
• Removes geographical restrictions
• Develops problem-solving skills
• Promotes innovation
• Promotes understanding among various cultures

Educational technology ensures equitable opportunities for all the students. It also reduces excessive reliability on the tutor. Students may take their own time and work at their own pace. Technology in education enables students to gain more knowledge in less time. Education technology helps students in improving their writing. Students edit their work with the help of word processors. Word processors improve their quality of writing. But, the major disadvantage of educational technology is that they reduce personal contact between the students.

Technology In Special Education

Technology in special education benefits disabled students. Special education technology provides tools to assist disabled students. These tools help in reading and writing. Anchored instruction is used in imparting special education training. Anchored instruction promotes mathematics by using video-based contexts. Technology in special education improves the mathematical skills and the thinking ability of the students. It also increases the self-confidence of the students. Special education technology could pave way for greater academic success and increased job opportunities.