Anti-virus software is based on two variations — signature and heuristic. The first one, says Mr N.S. Baskar, managing director of Rudra Technologies, kicks in only after the virus is in the process of infecting your computer. It gets the virus’ string (its signature, really), stores in it the hard disk’s innards and then repels the virus when it tries to strike again. The downside of this, according to Mr Baskar, is that signature-based anti-virus is not geared to tackle unknown viruses, or the more virulent variants which constantly try to get into your computer. The other technology, developed by Symantec, is heuristic-based-that is, it tries to understand the behaviour of viruses, and act accordingly to stop them in their tracks. Heuristic anti-virus software’s disadvantage is that it could cause a lot of false alarms.

Enter, Rudra, the anti-virus software developed by Rudra Technologies. "Rudra, the technology for which was developed by our centre in Chennai, is pre-emptive. It works on the intentions of the virus, or malware, before it can attack," says Mr Baskar. "And once installed, the software works in perpetuity, or as long as the computer is in operation." According to Mr Baskar, Rudra moves beyond merely comparing the signature of an intruder to known threats in a database, and missing new and unknown threats. It intelligently recognises and identifies malicious intent and immediately targets the malicious program or intrusion attempt for exclusion from the PC before it becomes a threat. He says that Rudra, for which a patent is pending, focuses on making sure that the malware cannot run on your system in order to cause any damage by shielding the RAM memory of the PC. The software also has the capability of differentiating between legitimate applications and malware. More importantly, he says, Rudra secures the malware either by deleting its instantly, or by moving it to a quarantine in the PC’s hard disk.

Hotspots on rise

The number of commercial Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to grow by 47 per cent worldwide to 143,700 in 2006, with the Asia Pacific region accounting for a substantial part. North America and Europe are currently home to 74 per cent of the hotspots. "By 2011 the Asia Pacific region will surpass both Europe and North America in the number of Wi-Fi hotspots", says ABI Research. But for the moment, Europe is still the market leader with over 57,000 hotspots. One major driver of Wi-Fi hot spots is retail establishments. The growing Wi-Fi hotspot market is fueling a demand for Wi-Fi access points. More than 675,000 access points will be shipped this year specifically for use in hotspots.

National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and Afilias India Private Limited said on Sunday that the India specific ‘.in’ internet address has reached 2 lakh registrations, since it was opened for the public in January last year.

Expressing his happiness over the significant increase, minister of communications and information technology Mr Dayanidhi Maran said that this is an important milestone in the 10 point agenda for India that he had introduced in 2004, as ‘.in’ is now firmly established as a leading country code domain and reflects India’s leadership in technology and the internet.

"Government would shortly introduce the registration of ‘.in’ domains in native Indian languages, beginning with Tamil and Malayalam", said Mr Maran.

The ‘.in’ registry has grown to nearly 30 times the initial size of 6,500 domains prior to the January 2005 re-launch. The re-launch included a more competitive price, expanded eligibility, a state of the art technology platform and broader distribution through the global registrar network.

While India rated 63 per cent in the usage of ‘.in’ domain name, 37 per cent were registered outside Indian soil. Over 150 countries are represented by ‘.in’ domain owners. The most popular countries are India, US, and Germany, which together account for over 81 per cent of registrations, followed by the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Switzerland and Italy. "We are proud to support .IN", said Mr Ram Mohan, director of Afilias India, that provides technical support to the .IN domain. The department of information technology (DIT) and National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) took the initiative of setting up of the state-of-the art, hardware and software and re-launched the ‘.in’ registry. The entire process of registration is available on-line. The opening of the ‘.in’ registry has significantly improved and broadened the availability of the domain names. Internet domain names worldwide have assumed greater significance in recent times with the internet increasingly being used as an effective medium for communication, governance, education and commerce. The system of registration of internet domain names can facilitate the proliferation of internet in a country.