Style Business

Network Administration is different from System Administration. In System Administration all tasks are concerned with one independent computer system. In case of Network Administration once you put your system on a network, it interacts with many other systems. In today’s fast paced world everybody is demanding for modern network which is much superior to the earlier ones. We need improved security and better network management.

Network administration commonly includes activities such as network address assignment, routing protocols and configuration of Authentication and Authorization –directory services. It often includes maintenance of network facilities in individual machines, such as drivers and settings of personal computers. It sometimes also includes maintenance of certain network: gateways, intrusion detection system, etc.

The task of Network Administration is done by Network Administrator. Network Administrator is responsible for network design and security.

Designing:

Designing a network is termed as Network Architecture. Network Architecture can be defined as the design principles, physical configuration, functional organization, procedures, and data structures used for designing and construction of a communication network.

In this fast changing scenario the term Network Architecture also denote classification and differentiation of distributed computing architecture.

To tackle with the collision issue a certain set of rules are also defined which ensures not more than one computer can send across a packet through data cable.

Security:

Sometimes security has more to do with politics and human resources issue than networking. A security administrator is mostly put into abeyance in deciding priority to maintain a reasonable level of security or providing flexibility to users to get their job done. A security administrator has to seek balance between these two opposite wants. Security should be like clothing as clothing are so designed that they are not to tight so that it does not restrict movement and it should not be so loose that it gets revealed to public.

When thinking of securing a corporate network three ways should be kept in mind that someone can get access to the corporate network:

1) Through the Internet.

2) Through dial-in-access.

3) Through Virtual Private Networks.

Network Management System:

Network Management Systems is a combination of both the hardware and software used to monitor and administer a network. Individual network elements are monitored by Element Management Systems.

Network management refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that pertain to the Operation, administration, maintenance, and provisioning of networked systems.

• Operation deals with keeping the network (and the services that the network provides) up and running smoothly. It includes monitoring the network to spot problems as soon as possible, ideally before users are affected.

• Administration deals with keeping track of resources in the network and how they are assigned. It includes all the “housekeeping” that is necessary to keep the network under control.

• Maintenance is concerned with performing repairs and upgrades – for example, when equipment must be replaced, when a router needs a patch for an operating system image, when a new switch is added to a network. Maintenance also involves corrective and preventive measures to make the managed network run “better”, such as adjusting device configuration parameters.

• Provisioning is concerned with configuring resources in the network to support a given service. For example, this might include setting up the network so that a new customer can receive voice service.

Changing Dynamics of Network Administration:

Perhaps you prefer to work outside the office, say, on the golf course. When you’re away it would be useful to monitor your servers and network remotely. You’re in luck; there are a bevy of utilities that let you monitor, diagnose, and repair problems and perform administration tasks remotely with a smartphone or handheld device linked to one of your data center servers.

Most offerings let you manage passwords, printer connections, email programs, or database servers with a Blackberry, Palm Tree, or Nokia smartphone linked to a network server, which is linked to the rest of your network. But while Avocent’s Sonic-Admin, Ecutel’s IC2 (Infrastructure Command and Control), MobileControl from ASG, and other solutions probably work well; many administrations have reservations about security.

Security Concerns

The idea of network management applications using a wireless device represents a dream come true for many network administrators, but it will be a while before the concept takes hold. In fact, the potential market for such utilities is huge, but security concerns have reduced it to only a fledgling market, and the utility’s debut has been too small to track, says analyst Gerry Purdy of Mobile Trax.

“Of course, demand for this type of application will eventually grow as smartphones will have more feature sets and can handle the software loads necessary,” Purdy says. “But at the same time, these devices and applications represent security [threats] in the minds of [IT administrators], such as when a person leaves the company and has access to the network with his mobile device or when a mobile device might provide the opportunity for someone to hack your network with a smartphone.”

Acknowledging that appeasing security concerns represents the toughest sell, Robert Touw, a business development manager for Avocent’s mobile solutions group, maintains that IT administrators are increasingly buying into both the idea of remote network management and the security that the utilities can offer. He also says that even some financial firms, for which security is of utmost concern, now use the utility.

Wireless & Remote Freedom

Most of all, IT administrators relish the opportunities wireless and remote network administration offers. “There is quality of life: Suddenly you don’t have to give up dinner to fix something right away,” Touw says. “Now, suddenly you can also do things in 10 minutes that used to take 40 minutes.”

For security, Avocent says SonicAdmin offers 3DES encryption and token transaction authentication so that the server only accepts valid data packets with recognized tokens. Authentication levels, backed by RSA SecurID, include SonicAdmin user account authentication, device authentication, and NT/AD authentication plus optional RSA SecurID integration. Data such as confidential network and personal logon is not stored on mobile devices. Additionally, remote administrative actions are logged on both the SonicAdmin server and managed servers.

Ecutel says its IC2 software offers six security layers. The server, on which it runs, for example, sits behind the data center’s firewall and signals to and from the server, and mobile devices use a minimum of 128-bit encryption. Authentication is based on a Web-based administration client and RSA SecurID. There is also a complete audit trail of IC2 server operation, and IC2 automatically times out after 30 minutes of inactivity.

ASG says users of its MobileControl Administrator’s management interface are required to log in using a PIN and domain credentials. The systems also can take advantage of RSA SecurID, SSL, VPN, and third-party wireless gateway server security solutions. Sensitive information, such as passwords, is never stored on the wireless device, and an automatic timeout feature for each mobile device prevents illegal entry into the network if a wireless device is lost or stolen.

According to Purdy, the application will likely eventually take hold once vendors convince IT administrators that the security risks can be minimized. Purdy says, “It is just a matter of these companies getting the word out that [these utilities] are secure and that they work.”

Network management may mean different things to different people. To some network management may be a solitary network consultant monitoring network activity with an outdated protocol analyzer, to others network management may be about distributed database, high-end workstations generating and traffic. Speaking generally, network management is a service, which uses a wide range of devices, tools, and applications, to enable the network managers to monitor and maintain networks successfully & efficiently.

Network management deals with the top-level administration and maintenance of widespread and large networks, commonly seen in the field of computers or telecommunications, which may be necessarily, include user terminal equipment.

Network management executes functions such as security, control, allocation, monitoring, coordination, deployment and planning to name a few. It is also worth noting that network management is governed by a several protocols which are basically present there for its support, including SNMP, Common Information Model, CMIP, WBEM, Transaction Language 1, Java Management Extensions, and Netconf.

Routing is also an important area of network management. Routing refers to the process of selecting the paths in a computer network on which to send data. In this arena of network management, logically addressed packets get transported from their source to their destination with the help of nodes. These nodes are called routers, in a process termed as forwarding.

Successful network management also uses accounting management. This controls and reports on the financial status of the network. This area of network management involves bank account maintenance, financial statement development, and analysis of cash flow and financial health.

Coming to Network Monitoring, it is about policing network traffic. In other words, network monitoring is spying for the benefit of smooth working of network management. Network monitoring is part of network management. Ideally network monitoring is a function that one of your systems must perform on an ongoing basis. While the other systems are performing the functions assigned to them, one should set aside at least one computer to monitor network activity. This is network monitoring in a nutshell.

The computer performing network monitoring must be kept always on. Which means that network monitoring system should have exclusive power lines or, backup generator facility. Everyone should understand that network-monitoring system is the most critical part of any network, because it is with the help of network monitoring that that the alarm will be sent if something is wrong.

Network monitoring will identify the slow or failing systems and notify the network administrator of such lapses. Issues like overloaded systems, crashing of servers, network connections being lost, virus infections, and power outages will be dealt without losing time if network monitoring is in place.

For more resources about Network management or even about Network monitoring please review this site http://www.networkstrategy.com

Can you guess what the big buzz is lately for network marketers? Social Networking! I will explain why but let’s take a quick look at how it started. At first there was MySpace and Facebook, two huge social networking giants. Network Marketers have joined them in order to market their opportunities through these sites. It is a great way for that extra free exposure even though the members of the networks aren’t entirely targeted.

However, the value of marketing on Myspace and Facebook is quickly dropping. This is due to the massive release of new and niche focused social networks. The fact is that this year alone I have seen an increasing number of professional social networks geared towards network marketers launching and becoming increasingly popular. To name a few: TalkMoola.com, Zenzuu, Friendswin, Yuwie, and Wowzza. A couple older ones are DirectMatches, AdLandPro, and even Ryze. Honestly I wouldn’t even be the least bit surprised to see a few more start-up this year – that is how much it is catching on! It is also obvious why they do become so popular among network marketers, because there is no better advertising than targeted advertising. Exposing your business opportunity, system, or product to other network marketers is simply the most effective thing to do. Once a network marketer joins you they already have had their foot in the door and are somewhat knowledgeable about the industry and can greatly help your business. However if a random person from MySpace sees and joins your business they are not nearly as valuable to you because they most likely have no idea what they are doing or what network marketing is even about.

So when network marketers are invited with the ability to join a social network full of network marketers it is almost a no-brainer. Just to clarify why I said “almost”… It is because not all network marketers have caught on to the power of social networking yet or how to properly use social networking to explode their businesses. But the ability to further expose themselves and their business to other like-minded people is extremely valuable and profitable for most. The old way of network marketing is out, and I see the future holding tight to social marketing through professional social networks. Even so, many of these new business social networks are offering incentives for those who join. These range from revenue sharing, direct affiliate commissions, and various MLM pay plans. Through this supporting these new business social networks they will experience the increased awareness and exposure that they deserve.

All professional social networks, however, are not created equal. Here are a few things you need to look out for when deciding which ones you will utilize in exposing yourself and your opportunities.

1) Somewhat Targeted or Extremely Targeted?

When looking over your social networks find out if the people involved in the social network are the type of people who would be interested in what you have to offer, or are like-minded to you. This means that if you are a network marketer looking to provide an opportunity to other network marketers then the people involved in the social network should be strictly network marketers. Does the social network you are considering include members looking for a date or love? If the social network includes this or niches totally unrelated to you then this weakens the potential of that network for you. However, if the social network is only network marketers or business opportunity seekers then it is an incredible source for you.

2) Are there limitations on contacting your friends in bulk?

Increasing your friends or contact list on social networks is the one major thing you must do in order to maximize your exposure and reach. This means accepting friend invitations from those within the social network and also seeking out other like-minded to add to your network of friends. The larger your list of friends the more active you will appear to be and the more people will take heart to what you have to say. It also means more people who you can send messages to through the social network. Some social networks limit the amount of people you are able to send a message to at once. Let’s say you have 200 friends but you are limited to sending to only 30 people per message and you can only send one bulk message per day. Well this is a very negative restriction and even more so if you have a much larger network of friends. On the other hand, some social networks will let you add unlimited friends and you can send them a bulletin or message to all your friends at once anytime with ease. This is what you should be looking for because whether you have 100 friends, 1,000 or even 10,000 you can send them all a message just as easily as if you were sending it to one. This means potentially huge exposure for you. If you want you can even consider it like an instant contact list of targeted prospects! However, I do warn about sending too much unwanted messages to your friends, you should try to connect with them and send them as much quality information as you can instead and then lightly introduce what you have to offer. If you consistently send what they would consider as spam messages they will just block you or remove you from their friends’ network, so using the social network properly is important.

3) Are the members free, paid, or both?

Another factor is the true quality of the member base. If the membership is mostly free then they are less likely to be purchase ready. However, if the membership is all paid and everyone is used to paying to be a part of the social network then these are the highest quality members you can get in touch with because they will have the money to invest in working with you. Mixed is fine though as this factor is not as important as the first two.

4) How are the other site incentives?

This is the least important but should still be mentioned. Other incentives could be the pay plan such as revenue sharing, affiliate commissions, or some type of matrix structure. It could also be other services provided with your cost of the membership such as training, tools, or other bonuses. Keep in mind, even if they do not offer great incentives but the rest of the above factors are positive I would still be excited to join.

Right now there is not a huge selection of targeted professional social networks but I am positive that the future will hold true for more and more becoming available. Personally I like to take advantage and join any social network because that is extra exposure for me, and any extra exposure is always a good thing. However when choosing to be most active in select networks you may want to consider the above factors. I have created many strong relationships, learned a lot, taught a lot, and profited a lot from those relationships within social networks. You should take at least some advatange of every professional social network available, even if it is just setting up a profile to gain some extra exposure. If they are a niche social network that have like-minded inviduals similar to yourself then you should definitely be more open to actively using that network. The benefits can be enormous.

1 Introduction

Ad hoc networks are a new paradigm of wireless communication for mobile hosts (which we call nodes). In an ad hoc network, there is no fixed infrastructure such as base stations or mobile switching centers. Mobile nodes that are within each other’s radio range communicate directly via wireless links, while those that are far apart rely on other nodes to relay messages as routers. Node mobility in an ad hoc network causes frequent changes of the network topology. Military tactical operations are still the main

Application of ad hoc networks today. For example, military units (e.g., soldiers, tanks, or planes), equipped with wireless communication devices, could form an ad hoc network when they roam in a battlefield. Ad hoc networks can also be used for emergency, law enforcement, and rescue missions. Since an ad hoc network can be deployed rapidly with relatively low cost, it becomes an attractive option for commercial uses such as sensor networks or virtual classrooms.

1.1 Security goals

Security is an important issue for ad hoc networks, especially for those security-sensitive applications. To secure an ad hoc network, we consider the following attributes: availability, confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation.

Availability ensures the survivability of network services despite denial of service attacks. A denial of service attack could be launched at any layer of an ad hoc network. On the physical and media access control layers, an adversary could employ jamming to interfere with communication on physical channels. On the network layer, an adversary could disrupt the routing protocol and disconnect the network. On the higher layers, an adversary could bring down high-level services. One such target is the key management service, an essential service for any security framework.

Confidentiality ensures that certain information is never disclosed to unauthorized entities. Network transmission of sensitive information, such as strategic or tactical military information, requires confidentiality. Leakage of such information to enemies could have devastating consequences. Routing information must also remain confidential in certain cases, because the information might be valuable for enemies to identify and to locate their targets in a battlefield.

Integrity guarantees that a message being transferred is never corrupted. A message could be corrupted because of benign failures, such as radio propagation impairment, or because of malicious attacks on the network.

Authentication enables a node to ensure the identity of the peer node it is communicating with. Without authentication, an adversary could masquerade a node, thus gaining unauthorized access to resource and sensitive information and interfering with the operation of other nodes.

Finally, non-repudiation ensures that the origin of a message cannot deny having sent the message. No repudiation is useful for detection and isolation of compromised nodes. When a node A receives an erroneous message from a node B, non-repudiation allows A to accuse B using this message and to convince other nodes that B is compromised.

There are other security goals (e.g., authorization) that are of concern to certain applications, but we will not pursue these issues in this paper.

1.2 Challenges

The salient features of ad hoc networks posses both challenges and opportunities in achieving these security goals.

First, use of wireless links renders an ad hoc network susceptible to link attacks ranging from passive eavesdropping to active impersonation, message replay, and message distortion. Eavesdropping might give an adversary access to secret information, violating confidentiality. Active attacks might allow the adversary to delete messages, to inject erroneous messages, to modify messages, and to impersonate a node, thus violating availability, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation.

Secondly, nodes, roaming in a hostile environment (e.g., a battlefield) with relatively poor physical protection, have non-negligible probability of being compromised. Therefore, we should not only consider malicious attacks from outside a network, but also take into account the attacks launched from within the network by compromised nodes. Therefore, to achieve high survivability, ad hoc networks should have a 2 distributed architecture with no central entities. Introducing any central entity into our security solution could lead to significant vulnerability; that is, if this centralized entity is compromised, then the entire network is subverted.

Thirdly, an ad hoc network is dynamic because of frequent changes in both its topology and its membership (i.e., nodes frequently join and leave the network). Trust relationship among nodes also changes, for example, when certain nodes are detected as being compromised. Unlike other wireless mobile networks, such as mobile IP [21, 48, 34], nodes in an ad hoc network may dynamically become affiliated with administrative domains. Any security solution with a static configuration would not suffice. It is desirable for our security mechanisms to adapt on-the-fly to these changes.

Finally, an ad hoc network may consist of hundreds or even thousands of nodes. Security mechanisms should be scalable to handle such a large network.

1.3 Routing Protocol and Threats

Routing protocols for ad hoc networks are still under active research. There is no single standard routing protocol. Therefore, we aim to capture the common security threats and to provide guidelines to secure routing protocols. In most routing protocols, routers exchange information on the topology of the network in order to establish routes between nodes. Such information could become a target for malicious adversaries who intend to bring the network down. There are two sources of threats to routing protocols. The first comes from external attackers. By injecting erroneous routing information, replaying old routing information, or distorting routing information, an attacker could successfully partition a network or introduce excessive traffic load into the network by causing retransmission and inefficient routing.

The second and also the more severe kind of threats come from compromised nodes, which might advertise incorrect routing information to other nodes. Detection of such incorrect information is difficult: merely requiring routing information to be signed by each node would not work, because compromised nodes are able to generate valid signatures using their private keys.

To defend against the first kind of threats, nodes can protect routing information in the same way they protect data traffic, i.e., through the use of cryptographic schemes such as digital signature. However, this defense is ineffective against attacks from compromised servers. Worse yet, as we have argued, we cannot neglect the possibility of nodes being compromised in an ad hoc network. Detection of compromised nodes through routing information is also difficult in an ad hoc network because of its dynamically changing topology: when a piece of routing information is found invalid, the information could be generated by a compromised node, or, it could have become invalid as a result of topology changes. It is difficult to distinguish between the two cases.

On the other hand, we can exploit certain properties of ad hoc networks to achieve secure routing. Note that routing protocols for ad hoc networks must handle outdated routing information to accommodate the dynamically changing topology. False routing information generated by compromised nodes could, to some extent, be considered outdated information. As long as there are sufficiently many correct nodes, the routing protocol should be able to find routes that go around these compromised nodes. Such capability of the routing protocols usually relies on the inherent redundancies — multiple, possibly disjoint, routes between nodes — in ad hoc networks.

2. Key Management Service

We employ cryptographic schemes, such as digital signatures, to protect both routing information and data traffic. Use of such schemes usually requires a key management service. We adopt a public key infrastructure because of its superiority in distributing keys and in achieving integrity and non-repudiation. Efficient secret key schemes are used to secure further communication after nodes authenticate each other and establish a shared secret session key. In a public key infrastructure, each node has a public/private key pair. Public keys can be distributed to other nodes, while private keys should be kept confidential to individual nodes. There is a trusted entity called Certification Authority (CA) [11, 47, and 26] for key management. The CA has a public/private key pair, with its public key known to every node, and signs certificates binding public keys to nodes. The trusted CA has to stay on-line to reflect the current bindings, because the bindings could change over time: a public key should be revoked if the owner node is no longer trusted or is out of the network; a node may refresh its key pair periodically to reduce the chance of a successful brute-force attack on its private key. It is problematic to establish a key management service using a single CA in ad hoc networks. The CA, responsible for the security of the entire network, is a vulnerable point of the network: if the CA is unavailable, nodes cannot get the current public keys of other nodes or to establish secure communication with others. If the CA is compromised and leaks its private key to an adversary, the adversary can then sign any erroneous certificate using this private key to impersonate any node or to revoke any certificate.

A standard approach to improve availability of a service is replication. But a naive replication of the CA makes the service more vulnerable: compromise of any single replica, which possesses the service private key, could lead to collapse of the entire system. To solve this problem, we distribute the trust to a set of nodes by letting these nodes share the key management responsibility.

3. Push! Photo: Informal Photo Sharing in Ad-Hoc Networks

As mobile camera phones become ubiquitous the practice of photography changes. Camera phone pictures are usually taken with sharing in mind. Meanwhile, publicly sharing photographs online has become increasingly popular with websites such as Flickr. Push! Photo is a mobile photo sharing application where photos can be made public and immediately accessed by anyone nearby. The application also automatically searches for photos on nearby devices to find interesting and relevant photos. Push! Photo shows how it is possible to share digital photos just as easy as paper photos.

Shoot!

Publicize!

Discover!

Enjoy!

3.1 THE PUSH! PHOTO PROTOTYPE

The current prototype of Push! Photo allows photos to be made public, and users can browse their own photo collection as well as those of others nearby. When devices are in proximity of one another, they will automatically start to search each other’s public photo collections for

Photographs relevant to one self. These photos are shown as a multi-picture slideshow, which is extended as new photos are found. To browse photos from an event shown in a particular photo the user can click on that picture in the slideshow. The application will then download all photos from nearby devices taken at that event. In this way, if a user spots an interesting picture in the slideshow, she can easily find more photos from the same occasion. To decide

Whether two photos are from the same event, information about whom else was around and the time of shooting is used. The application implements a discovery service to find other devices when they are within Wi Fi-range. Thus the application is always aware of who else (using Push!Photo) is around at a particular time. As a photograph is taken, the resulting picture is tagged with this information together with the time and the identity of the photographer. The current prototype is an application running on

Pocket PCs with WiFi-cards and external SD-cameras

3.2 RELATED WORK

In previous work with Push! Music [2] music files were replaced with so called media agents which were enabled to autonomously copy themselves between devices over a wireless ad hoc network. The media agents try to find their

way to potential listeners as users meet, and as a song is copied it automatically enters the play list. In this way the users discover new music while passively listening. Other projects have looked at mobile photo sharing. Davis et al. in MM2 uses the notion of co-presence to simplify the decision of with whom to share [1]. Photos are then uploaded automatically to a central web server where the sharing recipients can access the photos. Kohno and Rekimoto instead use GPS information and time stamps to decide if pictures are from the same event or not [4]. This is used to let users easily browse each others photos when standing in a group to serve as a topic of discussion. The system also let users drag and drop pictures between your own and other’s devices. As a contrast, Push! Photo aims to look into how mobile sharing can be simplified by allowing seamless sharing, and using context and tagging to automatically find interesting and relevant photographs

4 Conclusions

In this paper, we have analyzed the security threats an ad hoc network faces and presented the security objectives that need to be achieved. On one hand, the security-sensitive applications of ad hoc networks require high degree of security; on the other hand, ad hoc networks are inherently vulnerable to security attacks. Therefore, security mechanisms are indispensable for ad hoc networks. The idiosyncrasy of ad hoc networks poses both challenges and opportunities for these mechanisms. This paper focuses on how to secure routing and how to establish a secure key management service in an ad hoc networking environment. These two issues are essential to achieving our security goals. Besides the standard security mechanisms, we take advantage of the redundancies in ad hoc network topology and use diversity coding on multiple routes to tolerate both benign and Byzantine failures. To build a highly available and highly secure key management service, we propose to use threshold cryptography to distribute trust among a set of servers. Furthermore, our key management service employs share refreshing to achieve proactive security and to adapt to changes in the network in a scalable way. Finally, by relaxing the consistency requirement on the servers, our service does not rely on synchrony assumptions. Such assumptions could lead to vulnerability. A prototype of the key management service has been implemented, which shows its feasibility. The paper represents the first step of our research to analyze the security threats, to understand the security requirements for ad hoc networks, and to identify existing techniques, as well as to propose new mechanisms to secure ad hoc networks. More work needs to be done to deploy these security mechanisms in

an ad hoc network and to investigate the impact of these security mechanisms on the network performance.

5 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my friends for their invaluable contributions to this work. I am also grateful to my family and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions that helped to improve the quality of the paper.

I am grateful to Almighty for His blessings upon me.

6 References

[1] E. Ayanoglu, C.-L. I, R. D. Gitlin, and J. E. Mazo. Diversity coding for transparent self-healing and

fault-tolerant communication networks. IEEE Transactions on Communications, 41(11):1677–1686,

November 1993.

[2] M. Castro and B. Liskov. Practical Byzantine fault tolerance. In Proceedings of the 3rd USENIX

Symposium on Operating System Design and Implementation (OSDI’99), pages 173–186, New Orleans,

LA USA, February 22–25, 1999. USENIX Association, IEEE TCOS, and ACM SIGOPS.

[3] Y. Desmedt. Threshold cryptography. European Transactions on Telecommunications, 5(4):449–457,

July–August 1994.

[4] Y. Desmedt and Y. Frankel. Threshold cryptosystems. In G. Brassard, editor, Advances in Cryptology—

Crypto’89, the 9th Annual International Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara, CA USA, August 20–24,

1989, Proceedings, volume 435 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 307–315. Springer, 1990.

[5] Y. Desmedt and S. Jajodia. Redistributing secret shares to new access structures and its applications.

Technical Report ISSE TR-97-01, George Mason University, July 1997.

[6] A. Ephremides, J. E. Wieselthier, and D. J. Baker. A design concept for reliable mobile radio networks

with frequency hopping signaling. Proceedings of the IEEE, 75(1):56–73, January 1987.

[7] P. Feldman. A practical scheme for non-interactive verifiable secret sharing. In Proceedings of the 28th

Annual Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science, pages 427–437. IEEE, October 12–14,

1987.

[8] M. J. Fischer, N. A. Lynch, and M. S. Peterson. Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty

processor. Journal of the ACM, 32(2):374–382, April 1985.

[9] Y. Frankel, P. Gemmel, P. MacKenzie, and M. Yung. Optimal resilience proactive public-key cryptosystems.

In Proceedings of the 38th Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pages 384–393,

Miami Beach, FL USA, October 20–22, 1997. IEEE.

[10] Y. Frankel, P. Gemmell, P. MacKenzie, and M. Yung. Proactive RSA. In B. S. Kaliski Jr., editor,

Advances in Cryptology—Crypto’97, the 17th Annual International Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara,

CA USA, August 17–21, 1997, Proceedings, volume 1294 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science,

pages 440–454. Springer, 1997.

[11] M. Gasser, A. Goldstein, C. Kaufman, and B. Lampson. The digital distributed systems security architecture.

In Proceedings of the 12th National Computer Security Conference, pages 305–319, Baltimore,

Networking is obviously an essential part of network marketing. Every successful network marketer knows this to be true. Although networking is such an intricate part of network marketing, the two terms are not synonymous. However there are many similarities. Both rely heavily on people skills. Both require people to confront their fear of talking to other people. Both carry with them the risk of rejection. Both also carry with them enormous opportunity. And to some people, both are considered dirty words.

Of course people that consider networking as something that is ‘not done’ don’t understand what networking is really about. The same can be said of people that think network marketing is something that is beneath them. Too many people think that networking is a way to get connected solely for their own advancement in life. In that respect a person might feel that it is unethical or not noble to network. This line of thinking stems from the idea that advancement will always come at the expense of someone else, that success in life is a zero-sum game. These people often look at network marketing from the same perspective. They think of profiting from other people’s efforts as something that is negative and not fair to them. In reality, successful networkers will tell you that it doesn’t work that way at all. Networking doesn’t have to be at anybody’s expense and the business of network marketing doesn’t reward anyone for taking advantage of others. It actually rewards people for helping other people to succeed. In that respect it may very well be the most ethical business model in the world today.

A lot of the negativity around networking can be explained by the different types of networkers. Some can be considered ‘hunters’, moving in for a quick kill, after which they move out again. They often operate without regard of the other persons interest and because of this they will enjoy the fruits of success for only a limited period of time. Often it will not take long before people find out what’s really driving the hunter. Once they see that he or she is only looking after his or her own interests, their willingness to interact with this person will quickly evaporate. By contrast, truly successful networkers are often ‘farmers’ who spend a lot of time sowing and nourishing their relationships, instead of just focusing on reaping. They invest in their network, they energize their network. They use their network, but they never ever abuse their network! And their network knows this. A true networker will always keep the interests of others in mind. That’s why working with a true networker is so enjoyable. Networkers are often very likeable and as such people like to interact with them.

Networking is a skill that is essential to all businesses not just network marketing. Although network marketing differs in many ways from the more traditional forms of doing business, the importance of networking is just as prevalent. If not more so. A network marketer that doesn’t know how to network will be out of business in no time. Network marketing is first and foremost a people’s business and this implies that the ability to effectively work with people is absolutely critical. This is why successful network marketers are extremely adept at networking. Many have found out over time that developing this skill can pay off in many areas outside their network marketing business as well. Business owners who have started a home based business on the side often apply their enhanced networking and people’s skills in their traditional business with great success. For some network marketers this spin-off has earned them more money than the income from their network marketing business itself.

So whether you are in network marketing or in a more traditional type of business, don’t underestimate the importance of becoming an effective networker. And if you really want to master this skill you may find there is a lot to learn from good network marketers. So if you happen to know anybody that fits that description, try and benefit from their knowledge on the topic. It will surely help you network your way to success!