When you become a ViewTouch customer, VTNet is extended to your POS system, bringing it into the protective reach of the ViewTouch Point of Sale Network. We created VTnet, the world's first Point of Sale network, with the vision that your hardware, software and staff are entitled receive the maximum benefit of a new dimension of network-based performance, versatility, reliability and support.
ViewTouch is
not simply a POS application that runs on a free operating
system. It is an array of tightly integrated functional
components, hardware and software, at many levels; an example of this
is the very fast, two-second
approval time for your credit and debit card customers.
ViewTouch POS systems have a built-in, low level daemon which monitors the large number of 'mission critical' network and application parameters that play important roles in maintaining the health of this complex POS system. The information pushed back to us here helps us to keep your system balanced. Our sophisticated, versatile monitoring daemon runs intermittent status checks on your network and on the many POS host resources and services which we have specified as 'mission critical' (such as: processor load, disk and memory usage, running processes, log files). We escalate host and service notifications to the appropriate specialist. There is continuous monitoring and reviewing of current network status, notification and problem history, log file and more.
About Your Broadband Connection
ViewTouch customers have Cable and xDSL broadband connections and use a Linksys Cable/DSL Router to connect their local ViewTouch network to the Internet and to VTNet. Your Linksys router can be set to run a mail, a web and an FTP server on your local area network. The Linksys WRT54GS router offers a simple, easy to use and reliable way to share your broadband Internet connection with the rest of your network. It is easier to set up than a PC acting as a NAT/Gateway and is more reliable.
Dynamic DNS code is integrated into the Linksys Router model WRT54GS. The router WAN (Wide Area Network - or Internet) IP address is typically the only useable address on the router and this is the IP address that gets published in the Dynamic DNS system. Since this WAN IP is the incoming IP Address of the router, the router's PORTS need to be configured. The router acts a NAT (Network Address Translator) and offers basic port filtering for security purposes. This port filtering also prevents you from running a web server, email server, or any other server like Internet Games, Netmeeting, etc.
The multi-function router combines an 802.11g 54Mbps ultra high-speed wireless access point with up to 200mW of output power, a 4-port LAN switch (10/100 Mbps MDI/MDIX auto-sensing), Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) Firewall, Virtual Private Network (VPN) pass-through and a USB 1.1 Printer Server.
The router secures your network by featuring Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and 64/128-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). It disables SSID broadcast and does MAC address filtering. A Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall provides the maximum level of network security by analyzing individual data packets as they pass through, ensuring that only authorized packes are allowed access to the network.
Another advantage is that we can remotely configure your router and examine its log files. The router includes network address translation (NAT) and a 10/100 Mbps WAN port with support for up to 253 devices on the single IP address provided by your Internet Service Provider. The router's DHCP server auto-assigns nonroutable IP addresses to all devices on the network. The router's web-based managament interface allows it to be configured to handle IP routing and port forwarding.