How to Protect Yourself Online
With the ongoing pandemic, many people are still working from home, and businesses are asking people to do online orders and to provide personal information.
Making sure your identity and information are secure doesn’t take much effort. We should all be aware of how to protect ourselves online and here are a couple things you can/should watch out for.
1. Your password is the first line of defense, so make sure you create a strong password.
Below are some ways of making sure you create a safe and secure password.
– Avoid easy to guess words/phrases/number sequence like “password” or “1234”.
– Don’t use common quotes or movie/song titles.
– Stay away from using personal information for example birthday, pet name, etc.
Click here for more details on how to create a strong and safe password written by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.
2. Don’t click on unfamiliar links or ads that seem too good to be true. Unfamiliar links could bring you to pages that take your information without you knowing. Advertisements or contests that show up on the sides, or pop up window boxes when you enter a webpage are also dangerous. Many of them would congratulate you or trick you into entering a contest by asking you for your personal information (e.g. Full name, address, email, credit card number etc)
A couple of our customers have received congratulations pop-up boxes indicating that Novus is giving away items, and asks for their personal information like credit card number. Please note that is NOT us, and if you do receive something like that and are unsure, never hesitate to contact us and make sure it is a legitimate prize.
3. Phishing has become more and more popular. It could come in the form of emails, text messages, phone calls. They are typically designed to trick you into giving your personal information by pretending they are sites that you trust like your bank.
The majority of the banks would not give you a direct link to go to when there is an issue with your bank account. They normally would recommend you to log in directly into your account by asking you to go to their website without providing a link or they would ask you to call them. It’s always the safest to log in from their website directly as well as contact the number listed there rather than the one listed in the email.
Click here to learn more about how to protect yourself from Phishing scams.
We wish that everyone stays safe physically and digitally – Remember when in doubt, it never hurts to take the extra caution step to contact the business directly to confirm if a specific email/phone call is actually legitimate.
If there are any questions or concerns, feel free to contact our Customer Service!
Published: 2:23 pm on November 6th, 2020
Why Upload Speeds Are Important?
It’s strange to toot your own horn, but sometimes you just have to do it! At Novus we are proud about our customer service, competitive prices and fast speeds. Generally speaking, most providers have plans with higher download speeds and lower upload speeds as most people do a lot more downloading. However, at Novus we strive to provide the best packages for our customers, so all of our packages have symmetrical download and upload speeds.
We know that download speeds are crucial for streaming videos and movies on Youtube or Netflix. But what is the point of upload speeds? What requires decent uploads speeds? Below are some things that would work much better with faster upload speeds:
– Backing up data and information
– Emails that include attachments
– Cloud applications (e.g Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud)
– Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone services
– Video calling services
With many people working from home, virtual video calling meetings, uploading documents and data is crucial. Novus has always been proud with our fast and symmetrical upload speeds as not all the providers do the same for their customers.
We strongly recommend our customers to do speed tests from time to time to ensure that their speeds are at a proper state. A friendly reminder to avoid doing a speed test while a device(s) are downloading or uploading something as it will impact the speed test!
If you are having speed issues, please check out our quick guide on how to troubleshoot here. Got suggestions or more questions? Feel free to contact our Customer Service or Tech Support at 604.642.6688!
Published: 3:20 pm on October 7th, 2020
Get to Know More About Your Internet Speed
We’re using our Internet more than ever! Whether it’s for working at home or streaming movies online. Not sure if you’re on the right Internet package? Well, take a quick read on the difference of each package we have below and see if you’re on the right one!
Internet 35 (35mbps upload/download):
This is our most basic package – We recommend this for a household of two who don’t do massive and constant downloads/uploads and just casual streaming/web browsing. If you have two or more people doing active 4K streaming services, then you may want to consider Internet 100 or Internet 300.
Internet 100 (100mbps upload/download):
Our second tier and most popular package – This is typically recommended for a household of two with one person who does more video streaming and downloading/uploading. Example: You enjoy having 4K Netflix streaming in the background while surfing the web and one or two others are also surfing the web at the same time, then this would be a decent package for the two of you.
Internet 300 (300mbps upload/download):
Tech lovers may want to consider this package – Recommended for households who have users that enjoy having the latest tech gadgets and want fast and uninterrupted streaming, gaming and all while working.
Internet 600 (600mbps upload/download):
This one is for the speed lovers – Those who have multiple people at home who enjoy gaming and streaming video separately so each individual can enjoy watching the shows they want instead of fighting for the speed and having it to buffer at all times.
Internet 1 GIG (1000mbps upload/download):
Our fastest speed – For those who want speed on top of speed! If you enjoy downloading/uploading while streaming video content and gaming all at the same time with multiple people in the household, then you may want to consider this.
Most people enjoy watching videos or TV shows by streaming it online. Here are some recommendations for what speed you may need to help you consider what package you want to go for.
Recommended speed for streaming videos in:
– Standard definition (SD), at least 3mbps
– High definition (HD), at least 5mbps
– High dynamic ranging (HDR) or 4K, at least 25mbps
For those who are still working from home, here are some recommendations based on what you do for your work:
– Emails and basic computer software, at least 3-4mbps
– Video group calls, 10+ mbps
– Large file downloading, 40+ mbps
Hopefully this information can help you better understand the ability of what your internet package can do. Reminder that all our internet packages have unlimited data with symmetrical speeds, so you don’t have to worry about going over the data limit nor have issues uploading your new vlog onto the internet or uploading your work onto the cloud!
If you are having speed issues, please check out our quick guide on how to troubleshoot. Got suggestions or more questions? Feel free to contact our Customer Service or Tech Support at 604.642.6688 and we will be more than happy to assist you!
Published: 10:49 am on September 4th, 2020
Why You Should Reboot Your Devices?
As humans, we all need to recharge ourselves with things we enjoy or passionate about – Whether it’s going for a hike, sitting at a patio soaking up some sun, taking a dance class or playing a video game. This allows us to get our head back into the life grind we seem to be on constantly in a better mood. With electronic devices, they need a reboot from time to time as well, which will help improve their performance.
At Novus we recommend our customers to reboot their router or PVR periodically. Especially the router – it is good to reboot it every several months to enhance the performance of the router. Your router receives a temporary (or dynamic) IP address which can change at any time and most people have this. There is a way to make sure your IP doesn’t change and that is called static IP. Typically businesses are more suited for static IP than residential users, or it is used to host computer servers. When you have a dynamic IP sometimes the router does not recognize the change, which could possibly slow down your internet connection.
What are the steps you need to do to reboot the router?
- Make sure no one else is doing anything important on the internet
- Find your wireless router and unplug the power cable for 10 seconds
- Plug the power back in
- Wait 5 minutes for the router to boot back up
- Enjoy your service again!
Even when you are not experiencing any downtime, it is still a good idea to reboot your router from time to time to help fix any possible internet connectivity issues or slow connections. This goes for any electronic devices, giving it a nice small break from all the hard work by rebooting them.
For those that are looking for a static IP, Novus does offer them. Please contact our Customer Service team at 604-642-6688 for more information.
Source: Wabi Branding
Published: 3:17 pm on August 5th, 2020
IPv4 & IPv6 – what is this and what’s the difference?
IPv4 & IPv6 – what is this and what’s the difference? You may have heard these technical terms before but didn’t know what they were. Or maybe you do and are curious what, if anything Novus will be doing for the IPv6 future.
Let’s first go back to basics – IP addresses were first developed back in the 80s and it is called Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) – The majority of people are still using this. Every device that you own – your laptop, your smart phone, your gaming console, your tablet etc. – is connected to the internet has its own assigned unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. It assists with identifying the source and destination for data communication.
With IPv4, there can be 4.3 billion unique addresses. While that is a massive number, we are still running out of unique addresses to assign to people. Therefore, a temporary solution was created, a specific IP is assigned to your router and anything connected to that router would have the internal IP. But we need more than just a temporary solution, so Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) was developed as an actual solution to this problem because it will provide us with way more addresses to use. It is already being used in parts of Asia and will slowly make its way to North America.
Besides providing us with a new pool of IP addresses, what exactly are the advantages of IPv6 compared to IPv4? It is more reliable, provides faster speeds and improved user experience. From a technical standpoint, it has enhanced encryption, more efficient routing, higher website conversion, global reachability and stronger security.
At Novus, we strive to give our customers the best experience possible and are excited at what the future of IPv6 has to offer. Our Novus networking team is working on ways to integrate IPv6 to our service and we are looking for testers to help us along on this journey. If you are interested in becoming a tester, please contact us at customerservice@novusnow.ca and provide us with your account number as well as specific features you would like!
Sources: PureVPN & Link Labs