Don Frieze reported that if anyone downloaded our July/August newsletter, it may have had a defective advertisement for HSC. The issue was repaired as soon as we noticed the defect. The ad was for a giant anniversary sale set for September 21st at their Bay area store. HSC is a store that specializes in acquiring and reselling surplus electronics. Their selection ranges widely from the near useless to near new technology. Be careful in your selection, as their return policy is rather restrictive.

Q. I do quite a bit of business on the Internet. I am curious, as I think the Internet is slowing down. As an example, Amazon.com tried free shipping if you bought over $50. Amazon did so well with that, they dropped it to $25. Well, I believe businesses do not do that unless they need to pump sales. So, I believe business is slow. Internet merchants are worried about security where someone uses someone else’s credit card. And the customer is always worried about giving up the credit card number. So, Visa has a new secure credit card that they are using on the Internet. Has anyone here used that new secure card?

A. The process is called virtual credit card numbers. You begin by going to your credit card issuer's Web site and initiate a transaction. This transaction generates a one-time-only credit card number. This number is valid only for this transaction for this vendor. This number will never be repeated again. Your real credit card number is never released to the vendor. And the vendor is virtually guaranteed a good number because it’s a number generated by your credit card issuer.

Q. How does one get MSN Messenger to go through a router?

A. Milt Hull promises a full article on instant messaging technology.

Milt brought up a discussion about hardware firewalls. "There are ZoneAlarm and Black Ice, and those are nice firewall programs for individuals on the Web. For example, a user on ATT Web or other cable access where you are sharing your feed with the rest of the neighbors, these products are quite satisfactory. But if you are bigger than that, such as a larger company, and you want to have industrial-strength blocking, I recommend a hardware-based firewall/router such as SonicWall."

Milt said he had no idea how powerful this product is. Since his purchase, he has attended several classes to learn more about its capabilities. The actual firewall has a wide area connection, a local area network connection, and then a DMZ zone where you can put your servers. But what is cool about this firewall is that it has content filtering, anti-virus, and several things you can add on. For example, the content filtering is an optional subscription service or manual entry.

Milt’s clients were challenged to try to access any porn site. When they tried, the firewall sent back to the browser a message that said, "You have been blocked by the SonicWall filter, your attempt has been logged, and your superiors have been notified."

The logs are stored in a SQL Server database and are accessible at any time. The logs reflect bandwidth use on a per-user basis, their destinations, and the source of visitors coming to your Web site, and attempts at restricted access.

The reason a company would need a router like this is because of instant messaging abuse. Instant messaging applications use a lot of bandwidth. IM applications typically have a buddy list with 10 to 15 entries, and it polls all of these targets every few seconds. The amount of traffic due to queries asking if this specific person is available and if there are any messages is huge. That much outgoing traffic kills a significant portion of inbound bandwidth. So, many businesses restrict instant messaging use.