Category Archives: Bastos Training

Is IPV6 the next Y2K?

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Though my title may seem a little bit too dramatic, in no way do I want to equate or make people think that this is an issue that people need to panic about much like they did in the erroneous belief that the year 2000 would cause any problems with computer systems. Though this issue may not be that big of a deal it is important that non computer users understand what is going with IP addresses as it is fundamental to the basic plumbing behind the internet. As the transition from IPV4 to IPV6 begins to occur, people need to understand what it is and that it will effect them physically since a large portion of the population uses the internet constantly now and many businesses rely heavily on it.

Without getting to technical, the problem can be equated to what happened with telephone industry back in the early days of phones. As cities and communities became larger, the need to transition from a 4 digit phone number for every home to a 7 digit number and eventually to the 10 digit numbering system we have today in the US was vital to grow the telephone infrastructure. With the advent of cell phones the problem grew even more as people could now have several numbers not just for their home but for their families and the very early original system would not have had enough phone numbers to give to every user.

This is sort of what is happening to the internet, the current IPV4 infrastructure has a 32 bit address and though that still gives us a large number of internet addresses to work with we are coming very close to running out of addresses very soon. As every new device from smart phone to laptop and tablet device comes online and may require an address, when you consider that the problem isn’t just limited to the US but instead is world wide you can see how we will run out of ways to locate a computer to send information to very shortly. Current estimates that if we continue in the growth that we currently see shows us running out of IP addresses in the IP version 4 format some time in late 2011. Though the argument can be made that there are still millions of IP addresses that are being “hogged” by certain older organizations like Universities and companies like HP. That is still not enough to really fill the need when you consider that the internet grows exponentially every few months (meaning it doubles in size).

Many will try to make a huge deal out of this and say that the world is coming to an end and that the internet will crash if we don’t do switch and though that may be a bit much it is a serious problem that is for the most part being ignored in most circles. Most companies and organizatiosn create what are called sub networks or internal networks that don’t require an idividual IP for each machine and this has served us well for now but may not work as well down the line if the internet continues to grow the way it has been. The real answer to this problem has been for years now a new standard called IPV6, it gives us a 128 bit address so basically more room to work with numbers. Just to give you a point of reference as to just how large IPV 6 really is compared to the current address model, you could give a different IP address using IPV6 to every grain of sand on earth.

The problem becomes the adpotion of IPV6 has been very slow and companies have been waiting until it actually becomes a problem before they really deal with it. It won’t crash the internet or take down banks and institutions like we thought would occur with Y2K but it will be a problem for people using the internet in their homes or offices once the change over does occur. Though most large companies and institutions are having the forsight to buy routers and systems that are IPV6 compliant, most likely the small cable box or wireless router most people buy for cheap and keep at their home to use the internet may not be. My hope is that once the change over starts to happen that cable providers will figure out a way to help their customers in the transition by providing them with an internal system to accomodate them from having to buy all new equipment for their homes in a year or two.

The basic take away from this is whether you are a family with a single wireless connection to the internet for your kids, spouse and grandma or you are a small business looking to upgrade your computers and network routers or switches, it’s vital that you pay attention to whether what you are buying is IPV6 compatible or not. If this becomes an issue soon in the future and if companies don’t seem to transition well to the new standard as time goes buy you may see people are are forced down the line to buy all new equipment for their house or office when they just bought it a few years or months back. If you already have the equipment then don’t worry to much about upgrading, when the time comes and it will that you need to switch over you will have to deal with the issue at that point. If you are in the process of buying or are looking to buy new computers and routers then I would take this issue very seriously so that you don’t pay a ton down the line for this.

Most of the major manufacturers don’t see a need right now to offer IPV6 to their current customers for two major reasons, first it’s not a problem now so they take the same view as most in the industry and that is we will deal with it when it happens but second they see it as a positive because they know that in a few years down the line you will have to buy a new device and so by keeping IPV6 as an unecessary extra addon that they provide only to the more expensive versions of their devices they know they will be able to sell even more IPV6 machines when the change over actually does occur. It may not seem fair but it’s business, so be sure to only buy IPV6 compatiable hardware in everything you get and hopefully your devices, computers, routers and other machines will last you many many more years to come.

Online Training Done Right

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When I ask people that take classes online what they are missing the most from a regular class or lecture, the first thing they tell me interactivity. In this case they miss being able to not just hear from the professor but ask questions, interact with him etc.

Rule #1: They need to be interactive

Most online classes are dull and boring text based or powerpoint presentations that require you to read more than if you just picked up a book on the subject. Most schools take advantage of this because it’s the cheapest route and allow the professors to monitor the classroom activities but most don’t go through the trouble of making their classes any better. Most schools and other organizations are focused on the content more than the student’s experience and therefore may not spend much if any time on presentation. Whether it’s HTML5, Flash or any other form of interactive system, you can choose to do so much more than the norm in planning your class. The problem is that the professors and teachers are usually left to put together the course content and with most having little to no technical experience, they do what they can do best, type. We need a new crop of teachers that can do more than make a powerpoint on a subject, they can create audio friendly, interactive classes that will allow the students to click and drag through their studies and trully utilize their learning potential. We need tech savy course creators.

Rule #2: They need a way to measure student participation

Most online courses now have online testing and quizzes which is important in measuring student participation, but intead of focusing on standardized testing only for a course, there should be a testing of the way a student is learning. Online classes need to be more intiuative so that the software can better interact with the student and really get their attention. I hate online courses that depend only on a chatroom session and a bunch of reading material, if we pay for an online classroom then the experience should be just as good if not better than the in class experience, most of the reading I can get from a book so why not make the content on the class more interactive.

Rule #3: They need valid reference material

Many schools in general get this wrong when deciding the textbooks they need to use for a class, in many cases the textbook information is out of date or the online class rely’s so much on the textbook that it resembles more a class syllabus than an online classroom. There needs to be available during the class and during the training that is either more valuable or different then the reference material and it has to be valid and produce benefit for the student otherwise it’s worthless and shouldn’t be there. Many scoff at the idea of using Wikipedia in online classrooms for referencing material but in fact that is a great tool to give your students an idea of outside information that may increase their knowledge and understanding, just because you don’t want to link to it doesn’t mean that your students aren’t already referencing it.

Rule #4: They need to be readily available and convenient

There is a rush online to provide training from colleges wanting you to take their online courses to companies helping you train or try out their software products in a classroom setting. The problem I find is that in many cases as a student or a potential buyer, I have to sign up for an inconvienient webinar and schedule an appointment to meet up with an actual human being before taking the class or product. Companies like Citrix have come up with products like GoToTraining and GoToWebinar to help people more easily do these live training events but that isn’t always what the customer wants.

The purpose behind doing a Webinar from a companies standpoint is to allow a salesman to talk with the tester or client and potentially sell them the product, the reason to do it from a school’s perspective is to allow a professor to meet with a student and allow them to ask questions. Yet as a student of many of these kind of classes, I can tell you that convenience and not always presence is on the top of list for most that take classes online. If you take the time to make your training more interactive, then you will solve the problem that most classes have of needing a teacher or professor to run the seminar or lecture.

Rule #5: They need to be Inexpensive

Companies Like Element K and others do a great job at providing interactivity and all of the above, but in many cases I want to take a class but don’t want to spend over $200 to do it. They price classes this way because that is the general amount that we think about when we take classes at a community college or learning annex. There is nothing wrong with charging so much for a class if you are simply trying to recoup your initial costs, but in the end the economics of free mean that your class has more than paid for itself and in order for a customer like myself and others to feel the need to take your course the price has to be reasonable. I would only take an online class that’s in the $100 or more range for two reasons; first if the class provided me a certification that was worth something, second if I absolutely needed that class and had no other option. In most cases people when confronted with such an expensive proposition will opt to do the research themselves or use wikipedia.com. Keeping your prices between the $10 to $40 range will allow that even the most hesitant of students will consider taking the course and all the other factors we discussed will make your online course even more appealing.

Technological Comfort Zone

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Everyone has a technology comfort zone, as I’m writing this I’m using an online blogging platform called WordPress that is easy to set up and use for anyone and has the most features with the lowest possible price, free. Yet it’s important that we distinguish the difference between what is our technology comfort zone verses our technology limitations and understand those differences otherwise we risk putting ourselves into a position where we are either paying a lot for something or working way to hard when there are easier and better solutions to our problems.

An example can be given when someone at your work uses Excel to build a database of information or a general form verses using a database program like Access, the best tool for the job might be the database but in many circumstances people prefer to use the spreadsheet because they think they understand it better than this other complicated program. Though some may argue that this is a limitation, in fact I believe it to be more of a comfort zone issue than a limit. Comfort can be seen as something that I do because I don’t want to learn or take the time to use this other thing, while limits is something that is physically impossible to do right now because of cost constraints or other variables. I’m not going to create a search engine database that’s better than Google because I’m physically limited by the number of servers I can deploy verses Google’s massive infrastructure. The same thing can be said about switching phones, I’m physically limited with the phone that I have because I cannot afford a smart phone right now verses I can afford one but I don’t want to take the time to learn to use it or get the most out of it.

You see this all over in Corporate society today, you have people who are great at their jobs but think technology should be relegated to the IT department and thus close their minds from any possibility that could make their work flow easier and better as well as help them become more productive. In many cases IT people don’t help either because they lock down most corporate computers and thus prevent people from making creative work flow possible because they are limited by what the technology guys at the company know how to do. Take it from a Computer Scientist, most IT departments don’t know much about technology and are driven mostly by the latest tool released by Microsoft, Oracle or SAP. The reason why these companies make so much money from all of their liscensing agreements is because they love the idea of a technology comfort zone in Corporate America. If you are comfortable using Office and Windows you will have no desire nor need to branch out into other products and thus they have you as a customer for life.

Apple does this well in the Home Computer market by reducing the technological learning curve on all their devices and thus locking people into always wanting to buy the latest Macbook laptop or iPhone/iPad. So why is this even an issue or why right about it? Well in many cases from my experiences what people may think is a technology limitation is in fact a technology comfort zone and they don’t even realize it. The biggest area I find this in is Open Source software or free non licensed software, in many cases even if you tell an individual that there is free software out there that can do the same thing they are paying someone to do, the fact that there may be a small learning curve forces the user to shell out a ton of money that in many cases they simply cannot afford or don’t have the budget for.

I’m sorry but the days of saying I’ll leave that for the IT department to do is over, small companies realize this as more and more employees are learning skill sets and using technology they would have never used or learned about in a large corporation. If you are at your job and you do something constantly or repeatedly, try and think of how you could use technology to do it faster or better, in the end you may think that saving files in a share folder verses using SharePoint or even a free Content Management System like Alfresco might be better and easier for you in the short term, but you are selling yourself short. It’s understandable if you are part of an older generation that just recently learned how to use computers and are somewhat set in your ways, but if you are under 30 and you think that you won’t have to learn these tools and technologies in the long run, you’re deadly mistaken. Your job and your future ability to get a job rely on your willingness to turn what you think is a limitation into a comfort and go beyond it in the long run.