Saturday 18 February 2012

ICT for development MDG6

Combating HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases is the sixth goal in the ongoing initiative by the UN and member countries which began in 2000 at the turn of the millennium known commonly as the millennium development goals (MDGs).
ICT has a role to play in combating HIV through stopping or reversing its spread globally. ICT has been able to spread information about the disease faster and effectively to far flung areas of the globe. Radios, televisions, mobile phones, computers and other gadgets have been used to relay information that is aimed at combating the spread of HIV. People all over the globe have been educated on issues that revolve around stigma associated with the disease. Communities are now more open about this disease and the victims are continuously being encouraged to seek medical help.
Scientists and researchers also use ICT to share their findings among themselves and with the rest of the world. This has helped in coming up with new ideas that would see cures being developed to eliminate the disease. Media has been used to bring together groups of scientists, victims of the disease and those susceptible to falling victim for purposes of research and cure development.
ICT has also been used in documenting progress in how the disease is being dealt with and reports are published to show areas where management and containment have been successful and where some strategies have failed. This increases the awareness of all stakeholders in the fight against the disease and works to improve their participation in programs that would help stem the spread of HIV/AIDS.
ICT has also been used by patients to access information that is useful to them. Mobile phones have helped in relaying this information to where the patients are. Mobile applications have also been developed to ensure that treatment is taken at the appropriate time using reminders

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Causes of slow intranet and impact on business

Reasons for slow intranet 

  • Users could be wasting the bandwidth through running heavy downloads or opening a variety of tasking websites like social media platforms. This reduces the amount of bandwidth available thus slowing down the system. This is because such websites and downloads use a lot of bandwidth when running.
  • The other reason could be that the number of users has increased and thus running of tasking websites has also probably increased. This would result to slowing down the entire system of the intranet and thus connectivity would be hindered.
  • A router could also be used in the intranet connection and if that is the case users accessing the intranet remotely would encounter slow speeds if the router is unable to encrypt VPN (Virtual Private Network) fast enough.
  • Network interface card, computers with bad network adapters can slow down the entire network. Faulty NICs are known to broadcast junk (useless) packets of data. This increases traffic on the network and eventually slowing down all users.
Solutions
Below are solutions to the above issues in respective order.

  • There are several softwares that can monitor the protocols that are putting pressure on the bandwidth. These softwares also have the ability to kill some of the protocols and stop certain websites from loading and other operations such as downloads.
  • Another solution would be to increase the amount of bandwidth in direct promotion to the amount of use in the organization. This will ensure everyone is allocated enough to continue with fast speeds on the network.
  • The router can be replaced by use of a pfSense box (open source firewall/ router) as replacement or used with the router to improve its VPN encryption speed in order to keep up with connectivity. This would be best for people accessing the intranet remotely. This is because data being sent via VPN needs to be encrypted and if this is not done fast enough then the resultant effect would be slow response for the user.
  • Network interface cards that are faulty should be replaced to ensure the speeds on the network improve.