This is great news because my blog and lots of my websites are made with Drupal and I’m everyday happier not to have chosen Joomla when I was still evaluating both and hesitating.

Here you can read about Drupal being simply the best PHP Open Source CMS, with Joomla! and CMS Made Simple at the second place in a tie:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/2008-best-php-open-source-cms-drupal

And you can read about Drupal being the best overall Open Source CMS here:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/2008-open-source-cms-award-winner-announced

When I read on forums so many people praising Joomla instead of Drupal, I wonder what is happening with them, don’t they realize that all SERIOUS awards are always won by Drupal over Jooma? Don’t they see that a lot of SERIOUS big players in the web industry always chose Drupal to create or update their web properties and never Joomla? Are they all blind or plain stupid?

Last year Drupal won the Best Overall CMS Award but didn’t win the best php CMS (was second behind joomla) why? Because of a stupid rule Packt had set up which said one CMS couldn’t win several categories. This year they removed this stupid rule and so Drupal won both as it should have already last year!

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert said “these awards are a testament to the valuable contributions from dedicated Drupal community members around the globe. Working together, the Drupal community is building the future of the dynamic web so that anyone can quickly build great social publishing websites.”

Anyway, congratulations to Drupal for being the best Open Source CMS in the world and enabling me and tons of others to create powerful websites on which we can rely so quickly and easily!

In my 15 months of membership with EntreCard, I have accumulated more than 11,000 EntreCard credits already. Previously, this just keeps growing and growing because I rarely use credits to advertise. But with EntreCard’s new paid ads system and cashout scheme, it looks like I can make money online by converting these credits to cash.
What is EntreCard?
EntreCard is a way to advertise your blog for free on someone else’s blog. You earn EntreCard Credits, the “currency” of the EntreCard economy, when you “drop” your card on someone else’s EntreCard widget and when other bloggers advertise on your blog. You then use those credits to advertise your blog on the EntreCard widgets of other blogs. Aside from the free promotion, you get to earn more blog contacts too since you basically are introducing yourself to other people on the blogosphere.
What is the Paid Ads system?
EntreCard recently launched an advertising network in which paying third-party advertisers can advertise on any member’s EntreCard widget. According to EntreCard, 75% of the total money earned will go to Entrecard members who want to turn their credits into cash. This will supposedly “deflate the economy, make credits more valuable, and lead to lots of exciting new products and services in the market.”
How exactly can one make money from EntreCard?
The idea is that you sell and convert to cash the EntreCard credits you have accumulated. Your participation, however, will depend on whether you approve paid ads on your blog’s EntreCard widget or not. EntreCard emphasizes that the success of the cashout scheme is based on the success of the paid ads system, so members are encouraged — to the point of being required — to approve paid ads.
Details of the EntreCard cashout system can be found here, but here a few more major points.
How much will the value be of the EntreCard Credits?
Its worth will depend on the success of the paid ads system but according to EntreCard (EC), credits may be worth approximately $15 per thousand if the EC economy goes back to levels seen in early 2008. In effect, my 11,000 credits could earn me $165. Not bad.
When will the cashout system begin?
EntreCard expects to launch it this weekend (April 11, 2009).
Are there rules that EC members have to abide by with the paid ads and cashout system?
EntreCard is requiring users to display ads within the top two pages of their blogs, meaning, the ad must be displayed on a blog after scrolling one complete screen.
Good or bad for EntreCard members?
The paid ads system may be to the detriment of some EC droppers and advertisers because, technically, the free users will now have to compete with paying advertisers with regard to the ad space. But if this is a way to sustain the EntreCard economy, then in the long run, EC members will benefit. Also, if members can start earning from the EntreCard advertising widgets on their blogs, what’s wrong with that?
I personally look forward to the launch of the cashout system. Finally, there’s a way for me to dispose — and earn from — my 11,000 EntreCard credits.

Entrecard is an old and useful blogging network for bloggers. If you have a blog and want to get visitors just use Entrecard credits and exchange them to adverts, actually you buy adverts with your credits. Well, it’s an old story and we all know that. But this network has made a lot and became a network where bloggers can earn money. I still believe that it’s possible to make some cash, it’s not easy but possible.

Payouts are issued in some abnormal way. I believe they want to make some cash but everything is explained vaguely. They have made a big decision but it’s not enough to tell members that they get 75% of revenue from paid ads. This virtual economy is a very strange economy. How can credits become a real money? I have ever heard about similar system since I started blogging. Owner of one Site has changed the paying system so all members were not satisfied with the new system and eventually the Website has gone, because members didn’t like it.

I think Entrecard’s system is similar so I wonder that we can get scammed, at the same time entrecard is too big network so all we have to do is to participate in it and make or even try to make some cash. Free account costs money so Entrecard really needs money to survive. Everything takes time so all we have to do is wait. We don’t need to forget that advertising system is still active and running so for better traffic it is still a perfect network. But remember that you won’t get credits for paid ads. We have a lot of questions but I hope we will get the answers soon. Buy the way, drop the card and earn a credit.
This came as a surprise this morning when I checked my mail:

Entrecard’s second payout to me!!!

Just when I was about to give up hope after hearing that many people had not received their payout for ages!!

I guess the proof in the pie…. is in the eating, or in the case, the receiving!

I want to share tips to earn fast with AdSense. Those tips are especially for beginners just starting.

What is important with adsense:
- Traffic (coming from search engines, ie. Google)
- Good ad placement (to have the best CTR you can)
- Target non technical audience (because they click more and they are more numerous than technical people)
- Target non time-related content.

Join My PR5 (DoFollow) 100% AdSense Revenue Sharing Digg-like (with referral program).

How to achieve it:
- For traffic you need to produce content for the masses, that is, children, women, seniors, any non technical person on the internet
- For ad placement you need to put adsense ads on your site where you would want to have them located if they were your own ads and the site wasn’t yours.
- To target non technical audience, don’t talk about computers or internet. no flash games, no desktop wallpapers, no make money online, no forex, etc.
- Non-time related content means your content is searched for all year round.

Exemple of content for the masses:
- Take one of my latest sites: May Calendar … it’s actually 12 domain names in english and 36 in three other languages, but could have been done on one domain name only, I simply wanted to get all good domain names for myself
- Look at the content: all I’m offering is a calendar for one month. I’m doing it by PHP coding, but you could do it by hand with photoshop and it would be exactly the same. Just more work because you would have to produce them, but you want to make money online, right?
- My audience is not technical, and my content can be used by anybody on the internet, technical or not.

Another example would be card to print for free. Like birthday cards, newborn cards, christmas cards. If your site is about printable cards, then it’s non time-related, even if some cards are for christmas only, you can have lots of cards such as birthday and death, retirement, good wishes, heal soon, etc. All year round.

Now if you want to get an idea of the traffic you can generate with this method, you should expect several thousand unique visitors per day, take a look at my open stats tracker for my site on printable calendars: http://extremetracking.com/open;unique?login=worldcal
(EDIT: please note that since 14th may 2010 Google seems to have penalized those 48 domain names, that’s why the stats are now low since I get traffic only from other search engines and backlinks. Google didn’t send me an email to tell me what was wrong, so I suspect maybe having 12 domain names per language for a pretty similar content is the reason. But that doesn’t make my tips any less valid, don’t worry)

To give you an idea of the adsense earnings, take a safe scenario: CTR of 5%, CPC of $0.1, that’s an eCPM of $5.
So if you have 1,000 ad impressions you will earn $5.
1 unique visitor is likely to visit several pages of your site, so 1,000 unique visitors means more than 1,000 ad impressions.

As for the time it take to get such a site off the ground, expect several weeks/months of light SEO such as posting links on other sites, social bookmarking and asking for link exchanges to other webmasters.

I hope these tips are useful to you, so that you don’t waste your time by doing beginners mistakes of chasing high paying keywords and topics for other webmasters/bloggers/computer geeks.

Please feel free to ask questions about this post, or to give other AdSense tips in the comment box below.

Cheers,
James

Today I created a video tutorial to show how to create a music video with good sound quality. Over the 5 years I have been using YouTube, I produced a lot of videos of my harmonica playing, but usually I was recording very simply, just switch on the camcorder, launch the backing track on the computer speakers and play over.

The result is mono and crappy sound, but it was ok for me because I didn’t care about the sound quality and it was not that much work.

But from time to time I did it in another way, and the result of course is way better, so I’ll show you how I do it. Of course it is still possible to improve the quality tremendously, by using a good microphone instead of the camcorder’s.

At the end of this page there is the video I made to explain the process, but first I will write the text of the video, so it’s easier to see the steps all at once:

What you need:

Hardware:

1. Camcorder
2. Audio headset
3. laptop, internet connection, etc.

Software:

1. Band in a box (backing track)
2. Audacity (sound editing)
3. Cyberlink Power Director (video editing)

Step 1:

Record yourself playing with audio headset on and the backing track playing inside your head.

Step 2:

Extract the sound from the video using Audacity to record the sound of the video.

Step 3:

Apply sound effects (reverb, echo/delay or wah wah, any effect you like) and then save your audio file by using file/export.

Step 4:

Record the sound of the backing track coming from Band In A Box with the melody track muted. Also save this audio file.

Step 5:

Import both audio files in Audacity and mix them together (make sure they are synchronised together) then save this final audio file.

Step 6:

Launch Cyberlink Power Director and mix the video (with sound track muted) with the final audio file you saved in step 5. Add graphic effects to the video to your liking and then save this video by going to file/produce movie.

Step 7:

Upload the video to YouTube!

Here is the video I made to explain the process:

And in december it happened, about $560 in one day, and since then the next three days have been over $500 also.
I expect it to continue at least until christmas if nothing bad happens traffic-wise. But I don’t see it continue past that, since a lot of traffic is due to christmas and the new year (think christmas gifts, calendar 2010, greeting cards, etc.)

It’s only for adsense of course, I also use other ad networks, but adsense performs the best and I give it the best locations. So december 2009 will be remembered as the month when I broke the $500 per day I thought was unreachable (to me) and it will also be the highest month ever in my adsense account’s life, well I hope not

Well as useful tips I can summarize like this:
- don’t chase high paying keywords (CPC) because you won’t be the only one and probably not the best at SEO so… instead find a niche with moderate to high traffic with low to moderate competition (between webmasters) because it’s better to earn $0.1 twenty times than $1 once.
- second important thing is ad placement, never be satisfied with a page CTR less than 5%, keep improving it as long as it isn’t 5%, but don’t reach 20% as it will mean something is very wrong in terms of user-friendliness and you won’t last long. The only advice for ad placement is to put adsense where you’d like to have your own ads if the site wasn’t yours.
- don’t waste your time creating forums, it’s very difficult and doesn’t pay well with adsense. Don’t do flash games, free wallpapers and such niches with really low paying keywords, $0.1 should be the minimum average CPC you’re looking for.
- don’t buy ebooks or pay for anything other than promotion of your site and web hosting.
- try to have your content generated by users instead of you, with the power of internet they can add more content in a day than you can in a month, and it’ll be more relevant.
- add content generated automatically if you can code in PHP and use APIs such as Google Search API, but try to add value instead of simply doing a replica of google search (or whatever APIs you’re using) because if you don’t bring value, then soon your site will be desindexed from google = no more visitors.
- keep having goals, after $3 a day to reach $100 monthly, increase it always, take adsense earnings and web traffic in general as your score in the real-life game. Take traffic building as a game, so use google analytics to keep track of visitors and set traffic goals like you set earnings goals. You should be having fun with this work, otherwise there’s no point, better work in a factory!
- finally don’t put all your eggs in the same basket, that advice applies to web properties, don’t have only one site in case something happens, but also to ad networks (don’t have only adsense, try others even if they probably won’t earn half as much as adsense, try to spend time optimizing their earnings) and also to other things in internet-life, like web hosting companies, where you receive your money, etc. don’t centralize.

Set up your free SEO Book account, and you will get this tool + 2 other SEO tools valued at over $300 for free. Already have an account? Log in and your installation link will appear in the place of this message.

Why Do Over 130,000 Webmasters Use SEO for Firefox?

Want to know why Google or Yahoo! ranks pages? If so this is the Firefox extension for you. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market directly in the search results.

Want to learn more? Watch this video and/or read on.

Download & Installation Instructions:

• You have to be using Firefox to get this to work. If you have not yet used Firefox go download Firefox, and then come back to this page using Firefox as your web browser.

Set up your free SEO Book account, and you will get this tool + 2 other SEO tools valued at over $300 for free. Already have an account? Log in and your installation link will appear in the place of this message.

After installation is complete, restart Firefox, then search Yahoo! or Google to verify this extension is working for you.

Off the start PageRank is the only thing that is automatically pulled into the SERPs. After you install SEO for Firefox and restart your browser you may want to configure the extension settings to pull in other useful data.

The Theory…

I like to just be able to glance at something and see if it is worth doing or not. Over time in the SEO game you sorta learn a feel for estimating keywords and markets, but it is helpful to have a few additional data points, especially if you are new to the market.

This tool was designed to add more data to Google and Yahoo! to make it easier to evaluate the value and competitive nature of a market. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. In addition to pulling in useful marketing data this tool also provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper into the data.

First Things First:

If you are casually surfing please turn this extension off. Only turn it on if you are actively researching a market.

In the status bar at the bottom of Firefox you can click the SEO for Firefox logo to turn it on or off.

If it is colorful it is on.

If it is gray it is off.

This extension also has courtesy settings which allow you to ping search engines for data at a slow rate. You probably want to set the delay to at least 1 or more seconds. If you set it at 0 do not be surprised if some of the engines at least temporarily block you for scraping data.

SEO for Firefox Extension Features:

Pulls useful market research data right into Google’s and Yahoo!’s search results, including the following data near each search result.

• PR: (Google PageRank) an estimated measure of global link authority
• Age: age pulled from Archive.org, shows the first time a page was indexed by Archive.org’s spider. The theory is that if Archive.org found a page so did many of the major search engines.
• Links: (Yahoo! linkdomain) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a domain
• .edu Link: (Yahoo! .edu linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a domain
• .edu Page Link: (Yahoo! .edu link ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a specific page
• .gov Link: (Yahoo! .gov linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .gov links pointing at a domain
• Page Links: (Yahoo! link) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a page
• del.icio.us: number of times a URL has been bookmarked on Del.icio.us. Heavily skewed toward techy / Web 2.0 stuff.
• Technorati: an estimate of the total number of links to a site from blogs
• Alexa: rank based on website traffic . Heavily skewed toward internet marketing and webmaster related resources.
• Cached: (Google site:) shows how many pages from a site are indexed in Google
• dmoz: searches the Google Directory to count the total number of pages from a site that are listed in DMOZ, and the total number of pages listed in DMOZ that reference that URL.
• Bloglines: shows you how many people are subscribed to a particular blog via Bloglines.
• dir.yahoo.com: is a site listed in the Yahoo! Directory or not.
• WhoIs: makes it easy to look up the whois data for any site.

One Plug in With More Data, Easier Access

In addition to pulling in this valuable marketing data this tool links to the resources where the data was pulled from, so it makes it easy for you to verify the data and further analyze it by citing the source. You can click on any of the data points to dig deeper.

You can chose which of the links you want to appear, and they will appear in the organic search results under each listing, likeso

This tool also links to a couple cool keyword research tools near the top of the search results, including:

• Google Trends – shows historical search volume trends
• SEO Book Keyword Research Tool – cross references many popular keyword research tools
• Overture View Bid – shows Yahoo!’s top bid prices for a particular keyword
• Google Traffic Estimator – shows top bid estimates and click volume estimates associated with Google AdWords.
• Google Keyword Sandbox – Google’s keyword research tool

These links are located just below the search box, likeso

Settings:

SEO for Firefox can be turned on or off globally. In addition, each particular piece of information also has three settings

• Auto – automatically pulls in the data whenever you search Google or Yahoo!
• On-Demand – link to pull in data will be present in search results, but the data will not be automatically pulled in until you click on the associated link
• Hidden – if you do not find a particular data point useful you can remove that data point from the tool output.

By default most of the tool features are in the On-Demand state (not on Auto). This is done to ensure that those who would most likely be abusive users (by not following our usage tips) will be unable to use the tool to its full capability since they would not read these instructions on how to change the settings.

Recommended Settings:

Different data sources are more or less reliable than others.

• Anything that you have on Auto should have at least a 1 second delay.
• I would recommend putting Bloglines, Del.icio.us and Technorati on On-Demand (or if you have them on Auto set their delays to 5 seconds).
  • Del.icio.us will give you 503 service unavailable errors if you ping it too quickly.
  • Technorati tends to be quite unreliable.
  • Ask.com was always pretty brutal with how they banned information scrapers on Ask.com, offering up lifetime bans if they thought you were excessively hogging resources. I am not sure how strict they are with Bloglines.
• Since there are so many Yahoo! data points I would recommend only activating a few of those or setting those to 5 seconds if you have them all on Auto. If you query Yahoo! too quickly I believe they typically ban you for about a half hour or so.
• I would probably put Alexa.com and Archive.org site age on at least a couple second delay if they are on Auto.

How to Change Your Settings:

• While in Firefox look at the menu across the top of your browser. Click on the tools link.(or hit Alt T)
  
• From the tools drop down menu click on extensions menu (or hit Alt E)
  
• Scroll down to the SEO for Firefox extension. Right click on it and left click on options. In the example below I have del.icio.us set to on demand and I set one of the Yahoo! .edu link settings to Hidden
  
• Hit ok when you have all of the settings set to your preferred setting.

Be a Kind User:

If you are casually surfing please turn this extension off. Only turn it on if you are actively researching a market.

In the status bar at the bottom of Firefox you can click the SEO for Firefox logo to turn it on or off.

If it is colorful it is on.

If it is gray it is off.

How to Update SEO for Firefox:

This extension also will periodically update when we add new features or to make up for when search engines change their search result footprints. There is no need to reinstall this extension to get it to update. To update this extension

• While in Firefox look at the menu across the top of your browser. Click on the tools link.(or hit Alt T)
  
• From the tools drop down menu click on extensions menu (or hit Alt E)
  
• At the bottom of the extension box click the find updates button. If there is an update available for any of your extensions there will be an Update Now button to the right of the extension.

Update Log

I should have made one of these earlier, but…

• Version 2.9 – added SEO X-ray feature
• Version 2 to 2.89 – added Compete.com traffic estimates, updated it to support Firefox 3, added BOTW, maded each data point sortable, added l00 link to requery the current Google search with 100 results per page.

Possible Future Upgrades:

• A status indicator would be helpful.
• Is it listed in Digg?
• Maybe proxy list checking?
• May create a cache of your stats hosted on your machine such that if you click the back button to go back to the last search the data is still there.
• Will see. Depends on feedback
• Leave feedback here.

Other Useful Related Firefox Extensions and Goodies:

Rank Checker is well worth a look. If you want to see SEO data while you surf the web then I also recommend downloading the SEO Toolbar. View a list of related useful extensions on our SEO extension page.

Conflicting Extensions:

I have been told that for some people SEO for Firefox does not work well with CustomizeGoogle or Firefox BetterSearch 1.12.

There might also be a few other conflicting extensions. If this extension works on Yahoo! but not Google then check to see if you have some other potentially conflicting extension that is customizing Google. If it works on nothing then throw your computer out the window or read comments left by others here. If you still have questions you can ask them here.

Gain a Competitive Advantage Today

Want more great SEO insights? Read our SEO blog to keep up with the latest search engine news, and subscribe to our SEO training program to get cutting edge tips we do not share with the general public.

Question 1:

The left describes some types of connections while the right describes some types of cables. Drag the items on the left to the proper locations.

Answer:

Explanation:

To specify when we use crossover cable or straight-through cable, we should remember:
Group 1: Router, Host(PC), Server
Group 2: Hub, Switch
One device in group 1 + One device in group 2: use straight-through cable
Two devices in the same group: use crossover cable

For example: we use straight-through cable to connect switch to router, switch to host, hub to host, hub to server… and we use crossover cable to connect switch to switch, switch to hub, router to router, host to host… ).

+ We can connect a modem to router auxiliary port using a rollover cable. Recall that the purpose of the router’s auxiliary port is for connecting to a modem and most Cisco routers have a second port on the back called the auxiliary port. We can use this port in case of a far-away router goes down, the administrator can have someone in the area go to the router, plug in a modem and access to the router remotely (if using the console port, we have to go to the site to work with that router).

+ We can connect a PC serial port to a switch/router console port through the RJ-45 to DB-9 or RJ-45 to DB-25 adapter (at the PC end), depending on the computer. Here is a good resource about this type of connection

Question 2:

The above provides some descriptions, while the below provides some routing protocols. Drag the above items to the proper locations.

Answer:

Explanation:

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol, so it is vendor-specific. By default, EIGRP internal routes have an administrative distance value of 90.

OSPF uses cost as its metric. By default, the cost of an interface is calculated based on bandwidth with the formula cost= 10000 0000/bandwith (in bps). OSPF elects a DR on each broadcast and nonbroadcast multiaccess networks (like Ethernet and Frame Relay environments, respectively). It doesn’t elect a DR on point-to-point link (like a serial WAN).

Question 3:

The above describes the Spanning-Tree Protocol port states, while the below describes their functions. Drag the above items to the proper locations.

Answer:

Explanation:

Blocking state: When the STP is enabled, all the switches (and bridges) in the network start in blocking state. In this state, it does not participate in frame forwarding. After initialization, all switches assume they are root until they exchange Bridge Protocol Data Units (BPDUs) with other switches in the network. The exchange happens until only one switch stills think it is the root. At that time, no exchange occurs, and after the forward delay time expires, the ports move to the listening state.

Listening state: The port listens to BPDUs to make sure no loops occur on the netwrok before passing data frames. A port in this state prepares to forward data frames without populating the MAC address table.

Learning state: The port listens to BPDUs and learns all the paths in the network. In this state, it populates the MAC address table but does not forward data frames.

Forwarding state: The port sends and receives data frames.

Question 4:

Drag the Frame Relay acronym on the left to match its definition on the right (not all acronyms are used)

Answer:

Explanation:

In Frame Relay, a DTE is often known as the router at the customer site while DCE is often the switch of the Internet Service Provider (ISP).

There are two types of virtual circuits: Permanent virtual circuits (PVCs) and Switched virtual circuits (SVCs). PVC is a virtual circuit that is permanently availble whille SVC is a dynamically established virtual circuit, created on demand and dissolved as soon as transmission is over and the circuit is no longer needed. PVCs are by far the most common type in use today.

One of the LMI (Local Management Interface) features (or extensions) is the virtual-circuit status message, which provides communication and synchronization between Frame Relay DTE and DCE devices.

Frame Relay virtual circuits are identified by Data Link Connection Identifiers (DLCIs). DLCIs have local significance, which means that the values themselves are not unique in the Frame Relay WAN.

Question 5:

As a CCNA candidate, you are required to have a firm understanding of the OSI model. At which layers of the OSI model do Wide Area Networks operate in? Please drag the items to the proper locations.

Answer:

Explanation:

WAN operates in the two lowest layers which are Data Link and Physical layers.

Here you will find answers to access control list questions

Question 1:

A network administrator wants to add a line to an access list that will block only Telnet access by the hosts on subnet 192.168.1.128/28 to the server at 192.168.1.5. What command should be issued to accomplish this task?

A – access-list 101 deny tcp 192.168.1.128 0.0.0.15 192.168.1.5 0.0.0.0 eq 23
access-list 101 permit ip any any
B – access-list 101 deny tcp 192.168.1.128 0.0.0.240 192.168.1.5 0.0.0.0 eq 23
access-list 101 permit ip any any
C – access-list 1 deny tcp 192.168.1.128 0.0.0.255 192.168.1.5 0.0.0.0 eq 21
access-list 1 permit ip any any
D – access-list 1 deny tcp 192.168.1.128 0.0.0.15 host 192.168.1.5 eq 23
access-list 1 permit ip any any

Answer: A

Explanation:

First the question asks to block only Telnet access so the port we have to use is 23 -> C is not correct.

Next we need to block traffic from hosts on the subnet 192.168.1.128/28, which is 192.168.1.128 0.0.0.15 if we convert to wildcard mask (just invert all bits of the subnet mask,from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 0 we will get the equivalent wildcard mask of that subnet mask) -> so B is incorrect

In this case, we have to use extended access list because we need to specify which type of traffic (TCP) and which port (23) we want to block -> so D is incorrect because it uses standard access list.

Question 2:

As a network administrator, you have been instructed to prevent all traffic originating on the LAN from entering the R2 router. Which the following command would implement the access list on the interface of the R2 router?

A – access-list 101 in
B – access-list 101 out
C – ip access-group 101 in
D – ip access-group 101 out

Answer: C

Question 3:

The following access list below was applied outbound on the E0 interface connected to the 192.169.1.8/29 LAN:

access-list 135 deny tcp 192.169.1.8 0.0.0.7 eq 20 any
access-list 135 deny tcp 192.169.1.8 0.0.0.7 eq 21 any

How will the above access lists affect traffic?

A – FTP traffic from 192.169.1.22 will be denied
B – No traffic, except for FTP traffic will be allowed to exit E0
C – FTP traffic from 192.169.1.9 to any host will be denied
D – All traffic exiting E0 will be denied
E – All FTP traffic to network 192.169.1.9/29 will be denied

Answer: D

Explanation:

There is always an implicit “deny all” command at the end of every access list, so if an access list doesn’t have any “permit” command, it will block all the traffic. If we use the command “access-list 135 permit ip any any” at the end of this access list then the answer should be C – FTP traffic from 192.169.1.9 to any host will be denied.

Question 4:

The access control list shown in the graphic has been applied to the Ethernet interface of router R1 using the ip access-group 101 in command. Which of the following Telnet sessions will be blocked by this ACL? (Choose two)

A – from host PC1 to host 5.1.1.10
B – from host PC1 to host 5.1.3.10
C – from host PC2 to host 5.1.2.10
D – from host PC2 to host 5.1.3.8

Answer: B D

Explanation:

Below is the simple syntax of an extended access list:

access-list access-list-number {deny | permit} {ip|tcp|udp|icmp} source [source-mask] dest [dest-mask] [eq dest-port]

Notice that this access list is applied to the Ethernet interface of R1 in the “in direction” so in this case, it will filter all the packets originated from E1 network (host PC1 and PC2) with these parameters:

Source network: 5.1.1.8 0.0.0.3 which means 5.1.1.8/252 (just invert all the wildcard bits to get the equivalent subnet mask) -> Packets from 5.1.1.8 to 5.1.1.11 will be filtered.

Destination network: 5.1.3.0 0.0.0.255 which means 5.1.3.0/24-> Packets to 5.1.3.0/24 will be filtered

Therefore packets originated from 5.1.1.8 to 5.1.1.11 and have the destination to the host 5.1.3.x (via Telnet) will be denied.

Question 5:

The following configuration line was added to router R1

Access-list 101 permit ip 10.25.30.0 0.0.0.255 any

What is the effect of this access list configuration?
A – permit all packets matching the first three octets of the source address to all destinations
B – permit all packet matching the last octet of the destination address and accept all source addresses
C – permit all packet matching the host bits in the source address to all destinations
D – permit all packet from the third subnet of the network address to all destinations

Answer: A

Not all of these commands will run on all Hosting Products.

This is a list of Common commands that can be run from root / SSH access.

I. Basic Commands
A. Retrieve Plesk Admin Password

cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow

B. Change Directory (cd)

cd /path/to/directory/

C. Listing Files/SubFolders (ls)

ls -alh

(files and subfolders listed with perms in human-readable sizes)

D. Checking Processes

ps -a top -c

(process viewer – Ctrl+C to exit)

ps -auxf

(process list)

E. Start/Stop Services

/etc/init.d/ start|stop|restart|status

(“/etc/init.d/httpd stop” stops apache)

F. Check Bean Counters (hard and soft limits, failcounts, etc.)

cat /proc/user_beancounters

II. File System Commands (df & du are (dv)-only commands)

A. Check Total Disk Usage

df

(gives physical disk usage report with % used)

B. List Files/Folders +Sizes (du)

du

(lists all filesizes. This will take some time.)

du -sh

(lists all the subfolders/sizes in a dir)

C. Remove/Delete Files (rm /path/to/filename.htm) -DANGER- always verify

rm -vf

(force-deletes file. Dont run unless you know EXACTLY what you’re doing)

rm -vrf

(force deletes folder and all subfolders and files)

To Remove a Directory you can use the following command:

rmdir

D. Copy Files (cp)

cp filename.abc /new/path/filename.abc.123

E. Move Files (mv)

mv filename.abc /new/path/filename.abc.123

F. Create Empty File (touch)

touch filename.123

III. File Permissions and Ownership

A. Change Permissions of files (chmod)

chmod 000 filename.abc

(defaults are usually 755 for folders, 644 for files)
TIP:

1st digit=Owner; 2nd=Group; 3rd=Other
(-rwxrwxwrx = 777, -rwxr-xr-x = 755, -rw-r–r– = 644, etc.)
7 = Read + Write + Execute
6 = Read + Write
5 = Read + Execute
4 = Read
3 = Write + Execute
2 = Write
1 = Execute
0 = All access denied

B. Change Ownership of files (chmown)

chown user:group filename.abc

(you can see user and group w/ ls -alh)
TIP:

Anytime a user creates a file, the Ownership of the file matches that user. In Plesk, every domain that has hosting has a different user. So if you are copying files from one domain to another, you must remember to change ownership.
IV. Checking Log Files (dv)

Log files can tell you a lot about whats going on on a (dv). You can use the command:
‘tail -n 100′ before the logfile name to list the last 100 entries of the logfile.

Here are some of the most common:
A. Main Error Log

/var/log/messages

B. Apache Error Log

/var/log/httpd/error_log

(main)

/home/httpd/vhosts/mt-example.com/statistics/logs/error_log

(per-domain) (May also be: /var/www/vhosts on newer dvs)

C. MySQL Logs

/var/log/MySQLd.log

D. Mail Logs

/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

NOTE:

Common issues to look out for in log files

* The main error log will not always give you all the information you want for a svc.
* You may see alot of failed SSH and FTP connections, that is generally normal.
* Keep an eye out for MaxClients errors in the Apache logs if a customer is complaining of Apache dying alot. You can check the KB for raising MaxClients settings.
* If a customer does not set up Log Rotation for a domain under Plesk, then Log Files will build up and may take up alot of unneeded space. You can usually delete old log files in Plesk, and change the Log Rotation to Daily instead of by size.
* MailLogs can show you if a customer is spamming, or if mail is coming in or out.
* MySQL Logs should be able to show you general MySQL errors such as bad connections, or corrupted tables. Check the Int. KB for the ‘myisamchk -r’ repair table command.

V. Advanced Commands

A. Find. You can do alot with find. for now lets find all files over 10MB.

cd /
find / -type f -size +10000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk ‘{ print $5 “: ” $9 }’ |sort -n

B. Grep. Another handy tool to get specific information

cat file | grep blah

(only lists the information where the word blah is found)

C. Less/More

less filename.abc

(displays the content of a file. arrows to scroll, ‘q’ to quit.)

more == same thing basically. You can use the ‘| more’ command to scroll through something page or line at a time.

tail -n 1000 /var/log/httpd/error_log | more

VI. Vi is a basic text editor.

Careful what keys you hit while in vi.

vi /path/to/filename.abc