Wednesday, June 19, 2019

How to set up a radio link in MATLAB.

A radio link layout


Imagine you were contracted to set up a radio link between Mulago area and Namirembe hill. 
Got up early in the morning, spent the entire day digging and putting up transmitters with your team and at the end of the day as you test your link signal, you realize there's a hill at Makerere that is obstructing the signal!
This means you have to redo the entire process of setting up better or longer transmitters which will increase the cost and waste a lot of time.
All this can be solved by employing Radio mobile. This is a software that helps us predict how the radio link will be, if there are obstacles, then they can be prior dealt with, rather than having to do the work and end up redoing it.

Follow the link below to get a feel of how a radio link can be set up in radio mobile software.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dC3tfmEXvH27n15aYnIjrEXH8jHjNAh-



Friday, June 7, 2019

Introduction to Python programming

Python is one of the richest programming languages! Easy to use, whether you are new to programming or an experienced developer, it's really so easy to learn and use python.
Python is a  general purpose programming language and can used for developing both desktop and web applications. 
Also, you can use Python for developing complex scientific and numeric applications.
Let's not forget the data analysis and visualization features that come with it.


  • History of python:
                  Invented in the Netherlands, early 90s by
                  Guido van Rossum.
                Named after Monty Python.

                Open sourced from the beginning.
                Considered a scripting language, but is much more.
                Scalable, object oriented and functional from the beginning.
                Used by Google from the beginning.

Truth is, you are not not to learn all of it in one night, it takes practice, resilience, and sleepless nights haha but when you get there you will see how it was all worth it.

Here's  an example of a simple program l created.

            This can be written in the python IDLE ie Integrated Development Environment, below;


            And the result got after running the program is;

            Thursday, May 30, 2019

            Day 4: Working of a firewall

            What comes to your mind when you see this?! Honestly me it's a "firewall" and am sure most of you thought so. 
            When we come to the computing world, this is a metaphor for a firewall which is  a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. 
            A firewall can be both a software and a hardware. Many people might be familiar of the software but hardware firewalls also exist! Many companies do have them in supply. 






            These are examples of firewalls from the prominent network distributors l know. 

            Firewalls can also be grouped in categories ie,


            •  Packet-filtering firewalls;
               Used to control network access by monitoring outgoing and incoming packets and allowing them to pass or halt based on the source and destination Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, protocols and ports.
            •  Stateful inspection firewalls (Dynamic packet filtering) 
            Monitors the state of active connections and uses this information to determine which network packets to allow through the firewall.
            •   Circuit-level gateways;
             These work at the session layer of the OSI model, or as a "shim-layer" between the application layer and the transport layer of the TCP/IP stack. They monitor TCP handshaking between packets to determine whether a requested session is legitimate.
            •   Application-level gateways (a.k.a. proxy firewalls);
             Provides network security. It filters incoming node traffic to certain specifications which mean that only transmitted network application data is filtered.
            •   Next-gen firewall;
             This is a deep-packet inspection firewall that moves beyond port/protocol inspection and blocking to add application-level inspection, intrusion prevention, and bringing intelligence from outside the firewall.

            I hope that catches you up on firewalls.

            Wednesday, May 29, 2019

            What does a company systems administrator do?

            A picture of a systems admin at work

            Imagine you woke up and the news hit you that you're the new systems admin of a particular company!
            I know right now what's running in your mind is programming and debugging, and yes, that's going to be on top of your worry list.
            This is what you'll be tasked to do;
            • Monitoring the system
            •  Troubleshooting
            • Installing software
            • Performing backups
            • Maintaining local documentation
            • Adding and removing hardware
            • Automating regular tasks
            You sure won't escape the debugging part!
            To succeed as a systems admin, you sure have to keep some of these practices in check,
            • Be nice, it doesn't cost a penny.
            • Always and always monitor your systems. The blame will 100% be on you if any system fails.
            • Back up your files, don't wait to treat the patient rather than prevent the disease.
            • Another good practice is to keep your users informed. Keep them updated on all the changes.
            • And don't forget to implement robust security.
            Okay, let's now do some networking. You'll need to know things like a hub, a switch, a router, a bridge, and these are all familiar terms l hope.
            Briefly,
            A hub is just a connection point for devices on a network.
            Switch-connects computers on a network
            Router- connects many networks
            A hub is just a connection point for devices on a network.
            A bridge- connects two sections of a network together.

            How do you think the internet gets to your computer??
            One may actually fail to break this down but try to decode this process
            Router=>switch=>NIC=>device(pc)
            NIC being a Network Interface Card that is found in a computer.
            With this process model knowledge, please don't run to the router if your internet connection goes down, at least first deal with your NIC and upwards.



            Tuesday, May 28, 2019

            Day 2: How to use the GNU/Linux in programming

            Just because l created this on the second day, l will still fill you in on the first day!
            And this was all about getting to know each other and getting familiar with the course outline we are to cover during the internship period.
            Oh, we are training from netLabsUG, located in Makerere. We are 18 interns from different learning institutes.
            Cheers to day 2!!
            So today we started programming in GNU/Linux. We basically did an introduction and installation of Linux on our machines, which was a success (well mine was successful).
            I installed Ubuntu which is a distro of Debian and managed to write certain codes like mkdir- to create a new directory.
            linux logo