VPN NETWORK CONSULTING
Secure Remote Access
Among our range of network security services is consulting on Virtual Private Network (VPN) architectures for midsize or large enterprises and government agencies. We can design a robust, redundant, highly available, secure network access solution that can be accessed remotely, over the Internet, anywhere your people can plug in a laptop. We base our recommendations and implementations on advanced VPN technology using 3DES and AES encryption (128-to-256 bit cipher keys) of your transmitted data. Your remote users can have secure access to the company Intranet and business partners can reach a secure section of your network for joint extranet applications.
DNS CONSULTING NEWS
DNS Consulting Services
We offer DNS (IPv4, IPv6) consulting services to Fortune 1000 enterprises, universities, the US military, or federal government customers on Linux servers and clusters, Solaris, and Windows.see more..
Imagine.com's HQ Location
Imagine.com is located in Kingston, New York, north of New York City in the heart of IBM country,now called "Tech Valley". We are in TechCity, a 2.5 million square foot office campus, located in the beautiful Hudson Valley. TechCity was originally built by IBM for development and manufacturing.
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NETWORK SECURITY CONSULTING
Protect your online assets.
We offer network security consulting which includes firewall security audits, secure infrastructure protection of routers and switches against various types of DDoS attacks, secure configurations of servers and workstations, anti-virus security and DMZ and Defense-in-Depth Network Designs. Various types of indepth security monitoring techniques are recommended as well as security hardware and software. Audit proceedure and DoD checklists are used. Security is critical in today's networks to keep your business or agency on track. Be proactive, don't close the "barn door" after the network attack. Contact us at 845-336-9200 to find out how to better secure your network.
IPTV Network Consulting
Another service we offer is consulting on IPTV Network Architectures for cable and telecommunication providers and enterprise or academic campus networks. We can design a highly available, resilient Open IPTV (previously called Internet television) or Walled IPTV architectures using IPTV servers and proven software for compression and Video on Demand (VOD) and Streaming Video content. Our triple play (voice, video and data) converged network solutions focus on Standard Resolution and High Definition Video deployed over multi-vendor IP networks using state-of-the-art SD or HDTV, MPEG4, MPEG2 hardware to IP encoding technologies. Once encoded into IP, the IP stream can be unicast or multicast onto the network backbones maintaining Quality of Service (QoS). We can also leverage these architectures for high resolution business video conferencing (one-to-one and one-to-many) with a "signal" QoS that is jitter free, low loss and with sub-50ms latency end-to-end.
We won't sell you IPTV hardware or software, but act as architecture and engineering consultants to provide best practices and recommendations. Our approach is to first perform requirements analysis, followed by a network migration to support Voice, Video and Data convergence on the IP network so a quality viewing experience can be achieved with high volume IPTV streams and downloads as well as standard web traffic and Voice (VoIP) if required. Multiple Multicast and Podcast architectures can also be supported. Long Haul and metro optical architectures which can multiplex hundreds of independent MPEG streams without converting to IP can also be engineered with existing and new headend/satellite facilities. We then provide a different network design for the IPTV datacenter whether open or walled, in the form of an integrated scalable multi-gigabit IPTV data-center solution with blade servers (on your preferred brand) so the content hardware and software and encoders/trancoders can scale to provide any size server deployment, possibly in multiple locations/countries. If your network is leading edge and in countries such as China or in the EU with IPv6 deployments that run (IPv4/IPv6) dual stack, QoS and IDS-ACl security can be maintained for IPTV with carefully planning as these technologies are still evolving. There are currently some limitations in provider-to-provider QoS with IPv6 but which work well in a Walled IPTV deployment. MPLS point-to-multipoint can also be used if the ISP has an MPLS network. Contact us to plan your IPTV deployment today.
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INTRODUCTION
Company Overview
Imagine.com is a Network Architecture and Engineering consulting firm. We provide our services to middle-market and large enterprises, government agencies, military, and to the cable and telecommunication industries. As network architects, we provide Internet Protocol (IP) consulting services and develop solutions to improve the overall performance of "mission critical" computer networks. Most of our consulting work is deep within the IP infrastructure: Network Architecture and Consulting, Network Security, robust Internet Access design and implementation, IPsec and SSL VPNs, High-Availability Network Design, Legacy Frame-Relay and ATM Wide Area Network (WAN) architectures, Optical Network Architectures, MPLS TE and QoS, Intranet Peer Security, Integrated IS-IS and IP Network Design, Network Intrusion Detection Systems(IDS), Incident Response Methodologies, Multi-homed (multiple exits to the Internet) local, regional, national or global enterprise networks, Voice-over-IP (VoIP), Dual Stack IPv4-IPv6 Architectures, Least Cost Routing Solutions, Intradomain Multicast Network Designs, Private Hoot and Holler Financial VoIP Voice networks and other types of networking.
IPTV
HARDWARE & SOFTWARE NEWS
Fast Changing Market requires Smart Investors
We don't make IPTV hardware, as indicated above, we are IP consultants and architects. There is a startup out there that has a similar name to ours (even though we have the Imagine.com registered trademark and we advised their president and their lawyer several times not to use a name almost identical to ours) who is now involved in litigation with the public company BigBand Networks who accused them of stealing BigBand's intellectual property. Do you see a disturbing pattern of conduct?
Investing in IPTV technology requires a serious amount of due diligence and understanding of both the world of digital television technology (television centric view) and a detailed understanding of IP networking on a local, regional and global level (a network centric view). It's easy to say a particular technology will work in the lab without realizing that real world IP networks are far more complicated. There are many components to regional, national, or global cable, telco or ISP networks that will be overlooked by television centric startups and many of the necessary early design decisions may err and are likely to influence the final product's success. Take encoding and compression for example. Many companies are on the verge of some great emerging technologies to deliver HDTV over IP networks with much lower bandwith then the current requirements. One such emerging company funded by Billionaire George Hara of Defta Partners is XVD Corporation. Mr Hara was major investor in Polycom and Zoran, a world leader in DVD chipsets. Another company is World Data Group. World Data Group has working HDTV signals running at very low bit rates using advanced wavelet technology used heavily in military applications. These companies have the technology, resources and customer base to be successful in complex IP networks. It pays to research the market before investing as it is very easy to get wowed by something in the lab and have it not work correctly in real IP Cable or Telco networks. That's what killed investments for investors in early versions of VoIP who didn't count on BGP table propagation disrupting the timing of IP voice packets.
There is a big push on now to do IPTV over Carrier Ethernet. In a closed IP network controlled by one ISP, one still has to account for surging peer-to-peer traffic and other factors in real IP flows that can disrupt a "wow" startup technology. Most HDTV over IP will require MPLS point-to-multipoint network architectures. This is what companies like COX Communications are using. So your mileage may vary considerably depending on the ISP's network architecture and their ability to control and redimension MPLS bandwidth on the fly using deep IP analytical network planning software. There is lot of new IPTV technology coming down the road from around the world. Here in the US Path1 is a maker of hardware that works in the real world. Hardware is always faster the software, (which is why dedicated software gets encoded into hardware as soon as possible if it works as advertised). Path1 has some great high resolution IP video solutions and after many years of development and deployments. They may turn the corner and have it finally payoff for them. A large Hedge Fund, cable company, ISP, or carrier would be smart to make a 50 million+ investment in the company. And let's not forget Cisco, Real, Microsoft, and Apple. All have the power to affect the outcome of your investment. Careful research and guidance from qualified professionals is key to avoid losses in your investment portfolio.
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