Your Simple Tech Blog

As we have talked about what VPNs are and how they can be useful in the workplace or home in our previous VPN post we will now show you how you can run your own OpenVPN server at home or in your business.

In this environment we have selected OpenVPN, It’s free and open source and on of the most secure options out there. We will be running this on Windows Server 2012 however this should run fine on Windows 8 as well.

First we must download and install OpenVPN from the community downloads section at the bottom of the page. Be sure to check all boxes while installing OpenVPN. Once OpenVPN has been installed we can create the required server certificates and keys, To do this input the following commands on an Administrative Command Prompt session. Read More

There are many different software applications that implement virtual private networks, 3 popular VPN’s used are LogMeIn Hamachi, Windows Server Direct Access and OpenVPN. Things to consider when choosing the right VPN  is the speed, compatibility, security and setup. Depending on the infrastructure and network size the optimal VPN solution may vary. For small peer-to-peer networks the LogMeIn Hamchi solution would be preferred. For large enterprise networks with multiple domains, Microsoft Direct Access would be your best option. Although in a small business solution with one domain and a limited budget OpenVPN is a viable solution.

Read More

What is a Virtual Private Network?

A Virtual Private Network can be used in many different ways. It can mask your IP address to watch region blocked content from international websites that block connections from Australia. It will protect your privacy on WiFi connections especially at public places such as coffee shops and airports as well as simply connecting to network devices at home or work from wherever you are in the world securely.

But in most cases a VPN can be a very powerful tool for any business to implement. A VPN can connect two different geological branch offices into the one network, allowing and increase in productivity and accessibility. For employees that travel to lots of different locations, having a VPN tunnel back into the office on their laptop can ensure that all the work can be transferred in a secure manner.

Read More

Today’s blog I will share an excellent resource I have come across recently. The website www.edx.org hosts a large array of short courses from American Ivy League Universities and Universities from around the world that you can enroll for online.  The best part about these courses is that they are free and if you pass you will receive a certificate from that University. Here are some of the Universities offering these courses.

Read More

As a society today users consume as much data as possible, as fast as possible, meaning that if your website loads slower then 4 seconds you may miss out on business. Today on The Tech Check Blog we will explore the benefits of analyst websites to help improve the speed of your website.

The analyst site the we use here at Tech Check is GTmetrix where we can enter in the desired website to test and it will show us our Google’s Page Speed and Yahoo’s YSlow rating, along with a detailed report of the corresponding problems with the site. Enter you website address into the search bar and hit go. For this guide i will make the Tech Check site slow and use a few fixes to greatly improve the ratings.

Read More