Hello, and welcome back. We're going to take some time and talk about how we protect telecommunications technologies. Let's take a look the module topics here. We'll talk about converged communications. Convergence is a very important thing for us to consider. We'll talk about VoIP, voice over IP technology. We'll take a look at POTS and PBX. POTS stand for plain old fashion telephone system, what we would think of as the analog phone systems we would have been used to using years ago, whole rotary dial concept. And then PBX, private branch exchange, which is a digital version of the analog phone system. Cellular systems, and then, of course, no good conversation about protection would be complete without knowing about attacks and then, of course, countermeasures to countermand them. Let's jump right in with IP convergence. So when we think about convergence, we're thinking about the idea of being able to bring multiple things together, right? Into a common area, manage them and use them as a holistic solution, a system that becomes part of a greater whole. And so we're thinking about supporting multimedia applications. We're thinking about, for instance, if we might think about this class and your ability to watch this class, this is an example of a converged technology platform. You're being able to stream the media that we are creating, and communicating, and editing, and putting together for you. It's got rich features in it, graphics, drawings, my voice, my face. There's slides. There's all sorts of stuff you see. There may be some hands on exercises. There's all sorts of different things, right? You're streaming that down into a web browser or through a web service into a web browser or some sort of media application player. And you're watching that on your computer with your beautiful, large screen, probably speakers, and the ability to be able to pause and make notes on all the stuff you're doing. That's an example of convergence. You're using multiple technologies to be able to interact with a system. We can think of a web-related meeting like a WebEx or GoToMyPC or whatever you may use to be able to drive that, Skype for Business, whatever it may be. You're using voice, you're using video, you're using, probably, a shared desktop. You may be adding graphics. All these things are examples of convergence, where we can interoperate and bring together multiple technologies. The IP networks that we use, that we have in common, allow for a lot of this technology to exist, but it's not always linked together. The advent of the cloud and cloud based services and the far-ranging, far-reaching capabilities of the cloud allow us to link these systems together in new and innovative ways. And this is really what convergence as a technology thought process is all about. When we think about convergence, we have to think about different technologies coming together interoperating, communicating, exchanging information. And we have to think about the underlying protocols and the underlying mechanisms that are used to do that. When we think about the exchange of data, we think about large volumes of information, perhaps, stored somewhere having to be accessed using a protocol or connectivity mechanism and then made available. And so we think about things like Fibre Channel over Ethernet, which is called FCoE for short. This is a protocol that is going to be able to be used to move information inside of our data networks. But as we say, it's going to be an encapsulation protocol. It's a lightweight protocol. It's basically a wrapper, and we're not really using it for long distance transmission. It's envisioned as being a short haul protocol. It is used, as we say here, inside the data center, in our large data centers, where we manage large volumes of storage and networking. And we use it on or in the data center, using what are known as Data Center Bridging Ethernet networks. And we use the FCoE, the Fibre Channel over Ethernet protocol, to be able to move data across short distances. Across what we call the back plane or the storage plane, which is going to be the area that connects across fiber cabling, maybe one server to the storage array or storage array to two servers. And we move 5, 10, 20 feet, 30 feet, whatever it is, very quickly back and forth between those two devices racked up and mounted somewhere in the data center. Then we use Fibre Channel over Ethernet. It's very quick. It's very, very robust for those short distances, but it's not meant to carry data from here all the way around the world and back again. That's not what Fibre Channel over Ethernet is designed to do. So it's short hall communications within the data center, and that's what Fibre Channel over Ethernet is used for. It's a storage protocol, and it's used to manage and access the data that's on these large, massive, what are called SAN, Storage Area Network systems. We use these with cloud technologies and specifically with virtualization to be able to drive access to the large volumes of data that we need. So this is data center protocol that's going to be used to be able to move and interact with storage. We also use iSCSI. iSCSI's another common storage protocol. It's an IP-based storage networking protocol, as you can see, that links data storage facilities for us. It is going to facilitate data transfers, but, unlike FCoE, iSCSI is used for long distance communication. We could send and receive that over intranets and manage storage over long distances using iSCSI. We can't do the same thing with Fibre Channel over Ethernet. So we have two storage protocols, but one is used very differently from the other. That'll be a great point of comparison, great point of knowledge, for somebody preparing to look for, take and successfully pass the SSCP exam. At least, I would think it would a good point of knowledge for me to be aware of. Multi-Protocol Label Switching, what's know as MPLS, it's another technology used for being able to move data and rack with it, route it, specifically in this case, and tell it where to go. MPLS, newer technology, interesting, works with what's known as label switching, is what often is referred to for this technology. You could see the little hash marks on the screen, kind of walk us through the thought process. So let's discuss, quickly, what MPLS is and how it works.