Understand ASP in field of Computer Networks

An Application Service Provider (ASP) is a business that offers software services to customers, using computer networks and the Internet as the mechanism to deliver and manage the service. Among the most well-known Application Service Providers are Clickability, Salesforce.com and WebEx.

The goal of an ASP business is to reduce the cost of software distribution and maintenance. Using a client/server model (often Web-based), network software can be installed in a centrally-controlled place and hosted - accessed by the customers over remote links. This method to providing software solutions is sometimes called the software as a service (SaaS) approach.

Apache Web Servers

Apache is generally recognized as the world's most popular Web server (HTTP server). Originally designed for Unix servers, the Apache Web server has been ported to Windows and other network operating systems (NOS). The name "Apache" derives from the word "patchy" that the Apache developers used to describe early versions of their software.The Apache Web server provides a full range of Web server features, including CGI, SSL, and virtual domains. Apache also supports plug-in modules for extensibility. Apache is reliable, free, and relatively easy to configure.Apache is free software distributed by the Apache Software Foundation. The Apache Software Foundation promotes various free and open source advanced Web technologies.

Cisco launches super fast router.....

NETWORKING HARDWARE VENDOR Cisco announced a router that it thinks could change the world wide web for evermore.The company said its glorious CRS-3 carrier-grade router is designed to serve as the foundation of the next-generation Internet, as it can manage speeds of up to 322 Terabits per second.

Just so the great unwashed know, that is fast enough to transmit the entire printed collection of the US Library of Congress in one second, or the bandwidth required for every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously. Every movie ever created could be streamed in less than four minutes, Cisco claims.

Of course it is just a router and not the entire world wide web infrastructure, but it has more than 12 times the traffic capacity of anything else out there.Cisco says that it will make Internet and cloud services much more efficient. It mentions that AT&T recently tested the Cisco CRS-3 during the world's first field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology, which took place over AT&T's live network between New Orleans and Miami recently.

The CRS-3 machine will replace the firm's CRS-1 router, which is still one of the most popular and fastest available commercial routers. The CRS-3 is three times faster than the CRS-1.The firm says its latest top of the line carrier-grade router is powered by its Quantumflow Array Processor, which unifies the combined power of six communications processor chips to work as one. This apparently will deliver high service capabilities and processing power. It also will require only a fraction of the power.

Cloud security weaknesses prompt call for global data protection law

European leaders have called for a worldwide agreement on data protection to address the data security weaknesses of cloud computing.The call was made today before an international audience of 300 cyber law experts who had assembled at the Council of Europe to discuss the harmonisation of cybercrime regulations.

Francesco Pizetti, president of the data protection authority of Italy, warned that cloud computing had challenged the legal basis on which personal data was handled by corporations."It is not possible to continue to guarantee the protection of citizens' data without very strong international rules accepted by all countries around the world," he said.

Udo Helmbrecht, executive director of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), said the agency was examining cloud computing because of the risks it held for data security.ENISA will push for European regulation to oblige cloud providers to notify customers about security breaches, said Helmbrecht.

"We need to build trust into the cloud," he said. "If we don't build trust into this environment, the business model will not run."

Jim Reavis, executive director of the Cloud Security Alliance, said the regulatory environment needed clarifying for cloud providers. One uncertainty was how to deal with government requests to access the data they held. Cloud providers might want to make it difficult for "adverse" governments from getting at their data, but should assist governments who had the legal authority to make requests."We don't have a lot of good rules and structures for doing that sort of thing," he said. "There's a lot dealing with the legal domains, there's a lot dealing with incident response, there's a lot with the technology of cloud that we need to secure."

Yves Poullet, director of the Research Centre of IT and Law at the University of Namur, warned that "cloud computing is challenging the definitions of privacy" and foreign police might seize data contained in cloud datacentres hosted in their country.Pizetti said an EU desire for better cloud regulation had been prompted by the US seizure of European banking data held by Swift - a move that caused the firm to close its US datacentres.He said the Council of Europe's Convention on Cyber Crime would help create an international system of regulation that would make cloud computing safer.

The Council of Europe's annual Octopus conference was a focus for efforts to harmonise cyber laws around the world, mostly to give law enforcers the legal basis on which to gather cross-border evidence and bring prosecutions for cybercrimes such as hacking and fraud.Alexander Seger, head of economic crime at the Council of Europe, warned that European businesses did not want to use cloud providers who hosted datacentres in countries that did not have adequate legal protections.

Jorg Polakiewicz, head of law reform at the Council of Europe, said both the Convention of Cyber Crime and the Council of Europe's Data Protection Convention were being updated to take account of new technologies such as cloud computing.