Author Archives: riyana

Aligning optical and IP infrastructures

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An Opinion

alcatel_logoThe article “Alcatel integrating network layers for efficiency” by Stephen Lawson of NetworkWorld discusses how the company Alcatel-Lucent plans to more closely align the optical infrastructure with the IP infrastructure.  The integration of these two main components of long-haul service-provider networks will increase speed and efficiency for the carriers.  Traditionally, the two domains have remained, for the most part, separate.  Internet and private IP traffic is generally transported over electronic packet routers.  At times, it is handed off to an optical infrastructure for transport over long distances.  There is very little interaction between the two elements, as they are typically managed by different teams.

Alcatel, a company with expertise in both technologies, plans to offer the ability to send traffic from multiple ports or VLANs into a single wavelength.  As a result, carriers can take full advantage of each wavelength, reducing the need to deploy additional wavelengths.  Furthermore, the company will allow IP routers to send traffic straight across the optical network, thus eliminating unnecessary IP routing along the way.  Finally, because Alcatel supplies both network layers, the two systems have knowledge of each other’s resources, and will be able to communicate fault management alarms.  The ultimate goal will be for the IP and optical network elements to reroute traffic if there is a failure in either layer.  These features are known as the Converged Backbone Transformation Solution and will roll out over time.

Alcatel’s Converged Backbone Transformation Solution will have a large impact on the carriers. Financially, the integration will save carriers at least 30% in capital expenditures if they build a network from the ground up utilizing Alcatel’s technology.  For carrier networks with existing infrastructure, cost savings will be more incremental in nature.  In addition, the technology will provide faster provisioning for enterprises that rely on the carriers to interconnect their offices.  This will increase business processes and customer service, and will ultimately have a positive impact on revenue.  Similarly, the technology will help boost the revenue of the carriers who are currently dealing with the problem of data traffic growing faster than the revenue they can collect for it.  Finally, the introduction of this technology will enable Alactel-Lucent to become an even more significant player in the networking world.  Companies such as Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks will have a new competitor in the field.  This competition will help stimulate a lagging economy, and ideally produce new ideas and growth in the networking community.

How to turn auto-generation of ID numbers off

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identityAlthough not recommended, sometimes it is necessary to turn auto-generation of ID numbers off in your database. For instance, I was in a situation where I was completely redesigning a database (deleting tables, renaming tables, purging data, entering new data, ec.). However, the client was insistent on maintaining the ID numbers that were associated with specific items that they wanted to keep.

This is how I turned off the auto-generation of ID numbers in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Management Studio:

  1. Right-click on the table name and hit Design
  2. In the Column Properties tab, find Identity Specification and expand the section
  3. For (Is Identity) change the dropdown to No
  4. Hit Save

If you encounter the following error message, you will need to perform an additional step:error

Go to Tools > Options and click “Designers”.

Uncheck the “Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation” and hit OK.

menu

Try the above steps again.

When you are done, make sure to turn auto-generation back on!!!

Modifying 2532|Gigs App

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This is the second time I have installed the 2532|Gigs app for a band website. header"2532|Gigs is a php/SQL gig lister designed for bands, venues and music sites alike. The web based Control Panel allows users to add, edit and delete shows and artists. Support for multiple artists as well as multiple users." Unfortunately, it has not been updated since 1/28/08, and for all intents and purposes, seems to have been discontinued. However, I like the simplicity of the app, especially the “drop-in” PHP code that displays the gigs anywhere on your website. I’m a huge fan of not having to modify or create new theme templates. However, the app is lacking in several fundamental areas, so I had to modify 4 files and create 1 new file. Instead of listing each individual update that I made, which are numerous, I have created a zip file with the modified files that you may download.

Here are the changes I made to 2532|Gigs v1.2.2:

In the Admin > Manage Gigs page:

  • The checkboxes next to each artist are checked off by default. This helps when adding a new gig, especially if you only have 1 artist.
  • I have converted the INPUT field for Details to a text area. This will enlarge the Detail field so you can see more text on the screen.

On the front-end (show_gigs.php):

  • I created a separate column for Time.
  • I have removed the empty space preceding each field.
  • In the Details cell, I have colored the background beige, and made the font color black. This will make the Details cell stand out a bit more.
  • I created a new page called past_gigs.php and uploaded it to the same directory that show_gigs.php is in. This will allow a user to display past gigs in descending order. To display it, just use the same PHP drop-in code for the upcoming shows, except you replace the path to show_gigs.php with the path to past_gigs.php.

This is the listing of gigs that I created.

Plogger beta 3 Installation Tweaks

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I just installed the Plogger application for one of my clients, and, as with most apps, had to make a few tweaks in order to get it working.  Plogger is a very basic open source PHP photo gallery.  If you need something with more functionality, I would suggest checking out the slew of other PHP Photo Galleries out there such as Gallery.  The reason I chose Plogger was its sheer simplicity for integrating the photo gallery into your website.  It is truly a “drop-in” app that requires only 3 PHP statements on your page.  The thumbnails, bread crumb nav, search bar, etc flows to fill any container width you have set.  No editing of PHP include files or complicated themes. However, I did struggle with 2 issues:

Issue #1: Clicking the image to bring up the actual enlarged image resulted in a 404 error.  The directory path was messed up.  Here’s how I fixed it:

Open ‘plog-functions.php’ and find the following code:

[code lang=”php”]
function plogger_get_source_picture_url() {
global $config;
return (!empty($config[‘allow_fullpic’])) ? $config[“baseurl”].’images/’.SmartStripSlashes($GLOBALS[“current_picture”][“path”]) : “#”;
}[/code]

and change it to read:

[code lang=”PHP”]function plogger_get_source_picture_url() {
global $config;
return (!empty($config[‘allow_fullpic’])) ? $config[“gallery_url”].’images/’.SmartStripSlashes($GLOBALS[“current_picture”][“path”]) : “#”;
}[/code]

Issue #2: This is not really an issue, but a tweak.  By default, the Plogger will display your Collection first, and then force the user to drill-down to see the albums contained in that Collection.  This is fine if you have many collections, but if you only have 1 collection, then it doesn’t make sense to force the user to drill-down to the album level.  To show the albums for a specific collection, make the following change:

Open ‘index.php’ or whichever page you are calling the Plogger from, and replace the third PHP “drop-in” statement with the following code. The Plogger-ID is the ID of the Collection you want to show the albums from.

[code lang=”PHP”]

[/code]

Final note: The instructions do not explicitly state this, but the 3 PHP drop-in statements need to be added to a page with the .php extension.

Here is the Plogger Gallery that I made in action.