Being domain administrator in a complex network, you don’t want to walk around to fix issues or to install a software. You rely on remote desktop solutions to get into other devices. I use the admin share (\\node\x$) command very often. However, when the devices you’re working with has Windows firewall enabled, you’re out of luck. 

Turning off Windows firewall remotely seems to be impossible in enterprise networks. Of course, in a network with 20 desktops, you could just simply walk over and do it. I’ve done a lot of searches and tried various of methods, the conclusion is: No Go!

A guy once wrote an au3 script, some people confirmed it works. But when I tired it recently, it works only if the target client is yourself. When I tried the script targeting another node, it does nothing. The way I see it: If windows firewall blocks incoming ICMP packets, it’s pretty much it. I have to walk over to the node and manually turn WFW off.

Maybe, creating a global policy on the domain controller would be the way to go…

Finally, we’re able to use IMAP protocol on Gmail. Many of us are not familiar with IMAP, most of the time, people prefer or used to the term “POP3″. What are the difference? Which is better?

POP3 is a very popular email protocol used today, it connects to the email server via email client and download new/unread messages into your hard drive. You have the option to tell your email client (Outlook, Thunder Bird)  to keep a copy on the server. But on most email services (Gmail, Yahoo Mail Plus) will still keep the email in unread condition for the web mail interface, which means when login to the web mail, you have some extra work to do (Check All, Mark as read.) if you already read these messages in your email client that is. And, this made it kinda hard to tell which message you’ve read and which you didn’t. Heck, I have couple hundred messages every time I login to Gmail web. Thanks to Google for filtering all (almost all) of the junk mails.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) does it differently, when reading messages by email clients (Outlook. Thunderbird, iPhone ETC,.) via IMAP, it constantly connects to the email server, and tells the server “Hey, I read this message already. Now, mark it as read!” Bamm… The messages gets marked and no matter which computer or device you check your email with, again, will show that the messages has been read. Even when you login to the web mail interface.

For more information on IMAP, IMAP4 and/or POP3; Please visit WIKI.

You dig? Clearly, IMAP is much cooler! Okay fine, it’s up to you to judge.