Network History
Computer networks were created at the same time when several research and academic units joined forces to create a scientific research platform. Felsenstein Lee’s Homebrew Computer Lab spearheaded this program. He had joined forces with Community Memory to work on networking of computers in the ‘70s before the PC was developed.
The system was made of fake terminals that were positioned at different places. These include WEA (Whole Earth Access), Laundromats and different communities in San Francisco. The networks were designed to cover a small region with the aid of lasting links, which were preferable for modems and telephone networks.
In 1978, Seuss Randy and Christensen Ward became the first publishers to write about the board using PCs. Six years later, the Apple and IBM operating systems rocked the markets. As a result, the FidoNet was launched. In those days, only computers with the UNIX operating systems could access the internet.
Pozar Tim’s ufgate became the first software used by the FidoNet to access the internet. Later on, Fram Steve and Weikart Scott worked together with the APC (Association for Progressive Communications) to develop a network, which could allow the UNIX to be used in certain cheap computers.
Some of the early computer networks included Public Electronic Network (PEN) of Santa Monica, Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) of San Francisco’s Bay region, and Big Sky Telegraph (BST). There were also several networks designed for small firms in merchandize.
In the ‘80s, the TCP-IP standard was adopted in attempts to enhance internet accessibility. At that time, several advancements in networking took place. For instance, the NSFnet became the America’s platform for global networking. Eventually, the Information Superhighway took networking to the next level.
Merits and Demerits of the IDS
This system is used for detecting network traffics for malicious data bundles. The main advantage of this system is the ease of use signatures. They are also easy to form, understand and use for networks with regular patterns. For instance, they are easy to use for detecting network threats that may be targeting the overflow of buffers.
Additionally, the signature based detection systems can be used to raise alarms. They are quick to use and, therefore, save much energy. In the case the system being detected uses SMTP, DNS or ICMP than the signatures can be eliminated. On the other hand, there are also some disadvantages of using the signatures.
For instance, they can only detect particular threats, but not novel ones. The threats imply that a signature must be developed for every threat. Since they are mainly reliable to matching of strings and consistent expressions, signatures are vulnerable fake positives. Their efficiencies are also only limited to threats with systematic designs.
Anomaly Based IDS
They are designed to detect attacks on networks with baselines. The baseline allows detection of threats outside it. It also enhances the dissection of protocols at phases of the network. The process involves processing and decoding in attempts to understanding them.
Its disadvantage, however, is the difficulty in setting up rules. Additionally, the definition of rules is also riddled with differences in implementation of the protocols by vendors. This is because all the protocols must be tested before detection (Foster, 2005).
References
Cheswick. (2008). Firewalls And Internet Security: Repelling The Wily Hacker. New York: Pearson Education.
Koziol, Z. (2005). Intrusion Detection with Snort. New York: Sams Publishing.
Miller, B. (2009). FCS Data Communication and Networking L4. New York: Pearson Education.
Shinder, D. (2009). Computer Networking Essentials. New York: Cisco Press.
Stallings , W. (2007). Network security essentials: applications and standards. New York: Prentice Hall.
