Network World articles from April 2001

Network World archives from April 2001

Disney takes a ride on ethernet; Most network administrators will do just about anything to keep streaming audio from clogging their enterprise Ethernet networks.(Company Operations)
April 2, 2001... Most network administrators will do just about anything to keep streaming audio from clogging their enterprise Ethernet networks. But Tokyo DisneySea is a different kettle of fish. There, Disney's network architects designed the new theme...

Enterprise optical boxes see the light; Nortel's OPTera Metro 5200 tops the list of DWDM gear tested.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
April 2, 2001... The self-evident truth about fiber infrastructure is you can never have enough. Spare fiber in your infrastructure today will run out tomorrow. The result is fiber exhaust, which occurs when demand exceeds the availability on your backbone...

Some established vendors bow out.(Technology Information)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... DWDM is relatively new to the enterprise space, so we expected some raised eyebrows when we asked vendors for DWDM evaluation equipment. But we had no idea how resistant some vendors would be to our request. Ciena has been providing DWDM...

How we did it.
April 2, 2001... DWDM is used to provide transparent connectivity for multiple network transports. To simulate this for our tests, we used Cisco switches and routers to provide three transports: ATM, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet. Each transport was...

Fill that toolbox before tackling Active Directory; WINDOWS 2000.(Product Support)
April 2, 2001... The votes are in, and it's clear that deploying Microsoft's Active Directory is a task like none other ever attempted by seasoned Windows NT administrators. The complexity of the directory - from planning, to corporate politics, to the...

Excellent customer service via the long view.(Industry Trend or Event)(Column)
April 2, 2001... The success of an IT department, like the success of virtually any organization, depends heavily on customer satisfaction. All IT groups have a set of customers for their services. Many of us have end users as customers, but even those of us...

How to flush out the snakes before you get bitten.
April 2, 2001... Barnacle Bill the sailor used to ask, "Who's that knocking at my door?" Today, a more prudent question might be, "Who's that I'm letting in my door, day after day, as a trusted employee?" Last week, I had the honor of bringing Morgan...

The price is wrong.(Letter to the Editor)
April 2, 2001... Regarding Paul McNamara's "'Net Buzz" column on price errors for online goods (www. nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 3541): To compare the gaffes by United Air Lines or Staples.com to finding a wallet on the street is the wrong analogy. It is more...

International relations; How to conquer the cultural and logistical challenges of managing a worldwide staff.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 2, 2001... What should have been a gratifying event turned sour a few years ago when my IT department provided performance-based bonuses to our worldwide staff. We discovered some international employees view bonuses as entitlements rather than rewards,...

You're on an important business call while driving out-of-state when your allegedly nationwide phone service starts to fade. Apologizing through the static, you find a coffee shop a few miles down the road so you can redial while sitting still.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... The new connection works . . . for a few minutes . . . then craps out. You wish you had skipped the coffee shop and chosen a bar. Such was Pete Blackshaw's end of an abbreviated interview with yours truly. We've all suffered similar...

Optical Ethernet for metropolitan nets.(Technology Information)
April 2, 2001... Since its development in 1976, Ethernet has taken over sector after sector of the networking world, from workgroups to enterprise backbones. Now, a new technology called Optical Ethernet is beginning to revolutionize metropolitan-area networks...

Net provider sold on ASP model.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... etwork service provider Expanets has been growing fast, acquiring more than 25 businesses, including a division of Lucent, during the past three years. Given that uniting these operations would be no easy task, Expanets decided to go the...

Verio CEO touts new worldwide reach.(Company Business and Marketing)(Interview)
April 2, 2001... Web hosting company Verio was acquired by Japan's NTT Communications last year. Now that the merger is complete, the Englewood, Colo., company is redefining its focus and plans to use its new global reach to service bigger enterprise customers....

News briefs.(News Briefs)
April 2, 2001... New-look Iridium takes flight Iridium Satellite, which bought the original Iridium after that company filed for bankruptcy protection in 1999, launched its global satellite voice services last week in Washington, D.C. Iridium says it has...

carrier briefs.(News Briefs)
April 2, 2001... Comcast customers in Philadelphia will soon be able to connect to EarthLink's Internet access service through its Comcast cable modem service. The idea is to offer business and residential users additional Internet access service options. The...

Optical vendors unbowed by slow sales; Optical Fiber Conference sees lots of high-capacity, long-distance gear.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 2, 2001... espite reports that carriers are slow to buy the latest optical networking gear, vendors arrayed a range of faster, more powerful switches and components at the recent Optical Fiber Conference. Vendors such as Nortel Networks and Corvis...

Ask Dr. Intranet.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
April 2, 2001... In a recent column you said network managers should "encourage (or force) users to disable the preview panes" in their e-mail clients. Can you explain why this is important? Preview panes display the message when you highlight the subject...

The Edge briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... AT&T Wireless has signed a five-year deal with Openet Telecom to deploy the Dublin, Ireland company's FusionWorks billing mediation system. FusionWorks is a Unix-based server system that gathers user information across multiple networks for...

Holding the line on call-center sprawl.(Company Operations)
April 2, 2001... Customer service had mushroomed out of control at IBM: Sixty call centers, thousands of 800 numbers and a mish-mash of Web sites were making too many customers see red as they tried doing business with Big Blue. Thus began a radical...

What is a bad P/E ratio?(Technology Information)
April 2, 2001... Relax. Network World is not trying to compete with The Wall Street Journal and, no, I'm not talking about Price-to-Earnings ratio. The P/E that is the topic of this column is the so-called Performance-to-Efficiency ratio - a way of interpreting...

Dell unwraps space-saving data center servers.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... Network professionals responsible for corporate data centers will be able to save space in already-crowded rooms with two servers Dell announced last week. The PowerEdge 2550 is a compact, 3.5-inch-high rack-mount server for data centers,...

The best of both worlds?(Software Review)(Evaluation)
April 2, 2001... Regular readers of this column know that I'm quite a fan of the Apple Computer operating system and have been since the first version came out in 1983. I've also been a Unix geek for even longer. I cannot imagine how I would get my work done...

OSA adds mobile features to Microsoft SMS mix; Open Software Foundation extends software distribution, management features.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... IT executives trying to extend support to a growing number of mobile workers may get a helping hand from the newest version of an automated software distribution and management package aimed at taming road warriors. Open Software...

BRITISH FIRM INVADES U.S. OPTICAL MARKET; ILOTRON TAKES A RUN AT ALL-OPTICAL SWITCHING FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... KENT, ENGLAND - European optical start-up Ilotron hopes to elbow its way into the already crowded U.S. optical market by introducing a remotely manageable and configurable all-optical switch. Based in England, the company makes the Optical...

Apps briefs.(News Briefs)
April 2, 2001... FastLane Technologies last week added features to its delegation management software for Microsoft's Active Directory that provide administrators more options for access control and a policy engine for enforcing data structure. The company's...

Security Options.(Technology Information)
April 2, 2001... My company just went through our first security audit. The auditors recommended that we consider providing an additional layer of security for our sensitive information. They suggested we use the technology of smart cards. This requires the...

NORTHPOINT NETWORK CAUSING HEADACHES IN FINAL DAYS; ISP RESELLERS HOPE TO KEEP NETWORK RUNNING UNTIL NEW PROVIDERS ARE FOUND.(Company Financial Information)
April 2, 2001... SAN FRANCISCO - Even though DSL provider NorthPoint Communications has been in bankruptcy since January, the winding down of the company's operations the past two weeks has been anything but smooth for customers. Last week NorthPoint and...

A poor incentive.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 2, 2001... As the economy softens, an ironic employee retention issue has developed. The very methods you might be using to reassure IT employees that their jobs are safe could be causing them to worry or even leave. The culprits are incentive and reward...

Nokia pumps up VPN appliances; Three new boxes target small to midsize offices and feature firewall support.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... nterprise customers looking to rapidly deploy a single inexpensive box to extend firewall and VPN protection to small offices now have new options from Nokia. Nokia will this month ship three new members of its IP line of Internet VPN...

Mitigating messaging.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
April 2, 2001... Well, we were going to resume our expose on DNS, but we deferred it for another week in favor of another utility you will want. It's not that DNS isn't hugely important and interesting, but it is, as you will have noticed, death by...

CacheFlow revs up server-side Web cache; The new Server Accelerator 725 boosts Web page response times without a content freshness trade-off.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
April 2, 2001... Ever-increasing Internet activity and the demand for quicker, richer Web content has put serious strain on corporate and e-commerce Web servers alike. CacheFlow's new Server Accelerator 725, which off-loads content-delivery tasks from Web...

How we did it.(Editorial)
April 2, 2001... We conducted testing using the Apache 1.3.12 open-source Web server (available from the Apache Software Foundation, www. apache.org). The Mercury Interactive LoadRunner test tool (www.merc-int.com), Version 6.5, simulated HTTP connections,...

The ethics of spam.(Technology Information)
April 2, 2001... During the past few weeks I have written more forcefully than ever about ethics and attitudes in connection with Internet and PC use. What got me focused on these topics are the increasing levels of media piracy, the enormous increase in spam...

Directory standards see renewed vendor action; Novell, Microsoft propose XML-based plans.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... Directory heavyweights Novell and Microsoft are matching wits again, this time with competing proposals to the same standards body for creating an XML-based protocol that promises to foster integration between disparate enterprise directories....

Managed security services are gaining new players; Two security companies and Cisco have separate offerings in the works.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... Managed security services are catching on because they offer corporations a way to hire outside experts to remotely manage firewalls, VPNs and intrusion-detection equipment. This week, two security firms - plus giant Cisco - are each...

Gadzoox ships double-speed Fibre Channel switch.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... SAN JOSE - Users will be able to retrieve data from storage twice as fast with a Fibre Channel switch Gadzoox Networks is expected to introduce this week, the company says. Called the Slingshot 4218, the full-fabric switch is installed in...

NEXT GEN HELPS CREATE FASTER FIREWALLS; REVAMPED CHECK POINT PRODUCTS SPEED SECURITY.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... REDWOOD CITY, CALIF. - Check Point Software is revamping its VPN and firewall software to improve scanning and encryption speeds as much as 10 times, which should help prevent security from becoming a bottleneck to Internet access. The...

Scientist's search dream becomes a reality.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... NEW HAVEN, CONN. - Can an idea in a book become a reality? Computer scientist and entrepreneur David Gelertner hopes so as he launches Scopeware, a new search technology based on musings in his 1991 book Mirror Worlds. Also known as one of...

BANG NETWORKS ADDS NEW TWIST TO INTERNET CONTENT.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... SAN FRANCISCO - Start-up Bang Networks was expected to introduce a service this week that's designed to let businesses serve real-time information over the Internet without using Java applets or Web page refreshes. The service, called...

Palm looks to Pioneer its data synchronization technology; Company to phase out HotSync Server; blend acquired technology into new package.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... Palm plans to use its buyout of Extended Systems to solve one of the biggest stumbling blocks to using handheld computers in the enterprise: copying data between the devices and corporate servers. Palm has put together a blueprint that, on...

Faster 'Net growth rate raises fears about routers.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 2, 2001... Alarm bells are ringing in the Internet engineering community over an obscure statistic that indicates the 'Net is growing - in size and complexity - at a faster rate than today's routers can handle. This recent finding has prompted the...

Marimba back in the game.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - Marimba this week will announce it is revamping its product family and introducing a new Web site performance monitoring product that will let users manage the delivery of their e-commerce applications and transactions....

DSL hell: NorthPoint strands thousands.(Government Activity)
April 2, 2001... With barely a day's notice, thousands of businesses and consumers are finding themselves without Internet access after NorthPoint Communications Group Inc. acted on a warning issued Wednesday and began shutting down its DSL (digital subscriber...

Microsoft launches second worldwide piracy hunt.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... In an effort to cleanse the Web of pirated products, Microsoft Monday announced that it has launched "a second global Internet sweep." Since the start of the first operation last August, nearly five million units of counterfeit Microsoft...

Okena releases proactive security software.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... Start-up computer security company Okena Monday announced its first software product, a program that offers proactive network security and is targeted initially at financial institutions and government agencies. The Waltham, Mass.,...

Swedish researcher claims mouse breakthrough.(Product Information)
April 2, 2001... A Swedish expert in the field of ergonomics has developed a new type of computer mouse that, he says, won't cause some types of repetitive strain injury. The Ullman Mouse, named for its inventor Dr. Johan Ullman, looks like a joystick, but...

Pay-per-use models ready for online business.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... With the demise of the pure-play dot-com business model -- which said you could give away content and make it up in volume -- technology providers are readying pay-per-use content management systems to allow content providers to change the way...

Nextel, Sun, Motorola intro phone that runs Java.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... Nextel Communications and Motorola Monday announced the release of the i85s Java-enabled mobile phone. Manufactured and designed by Motorola, the i85s will be resold by Nextel, Motorola, Southern LINC and Pacific Wireless Technologies and...

Earthlink offers home networking to DSL users.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... ISP EarthLink Monday announced that it will immediately begin offering home networking products from 2Wire to its broadband customers under a program called EarthLink Home Networking. 2Wire's products, called residential gateways, allow...

DSL company Rhythms on verge of delisting.(Company Financial Information)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... DSL provider Rhythms NetConnections this week revealed that NASDAQ may delist the company's stock and that Rhythms is bringing in an investment banking firm to evaluate the company's strategic options. The news comes as Rhythms competitor...

FutureLink strapped for cash.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 2, 2001... FutureLink, one of the first application service providers, is facing tough times as it navigates the choppy waters of the ASP market, announcing that its current cash position and liquidity would not carry it through year-end. During an...

Small Gigabit Ethernet switches on tap from Alcatel and Asant; Companies to roll out switches that link workgroup servers to corporate backbones at gigabit speeds.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... Alcatel and Asante introduced switches last week aimed at users who want to link workgroups to a backbone at gigabit speeds or expand the gigabit capacity in their network core. Vendors say the fixed-configuration gigabit boxes are useful...

Mobile security flaw delivers yet another blow to IPv6.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 2, 2001... Backers of IPv6 - a long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol - have suffered another setback, as security experts punched holes in their planned strategy for supporting mobile communications. The discovery of...

Caldera Systems announced last week Open Unix 8.(Product Announcement)
April 2, 2001... Caldera Systems announced last week Open Unix 8, an operating system that incorporates Linux technology with the UnixWare 7 kernel, letting Linux applications run on top of UnixWare. Open Unix 8 will be backward-compatible with UnixWare 7 and...

Alcatel cuts jobs as other IT firms lower estimates.(Company Operations)
April 3, 2001... French telecom equipment maker Alcatel SA Monday said it will lay off about 5% of its U.S. workforce. The news came amid a stream of earnings warnings and staff cuts at high-tech vendors including Ariba, i2 Technologies and Inktomi. ...

Online privacy survey finds conflicting views.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 3, 2001... A Pew Research Center study released Monday highlights the growing tension between Americans' concern about Internet crime, and their concern about the government's methods to prevent it. Seventy-three percent of Americans are concerned...

Companies told to look local for IT talent.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 3, 2001... IT industry leaders want tech companies to tap the talent present in lesser known community schools and not just from institutions like the University of California at Berkeley or Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even though it was mainly...

Intel, researchers, to create peer-to-peer supercomputer.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 3, 2001... As part of Intel's ongoing campaign to popularize peer-to-peer (p-to-p) computing, Intel CEO Craig Barrett on Tuesday announced his company's involvement in the creation of a p-to-p supercomputing network. Engineered in cooperation with...

Ariba cancels Agile deal, announces job cuts.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 3, 2001... Ariba and Agile Software Monday said they have nixed their proposed merger due to the current economic and market conditions. According to a joint statement, the companies will continue to work together. Ariba said it won't pay any...

Interliant narrows ASP focus.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 3, 2001... PURCHASE, N.Y. - The shakeout in the application service provider market continues with Interliant announcing Tuesday it is narrowing its ASP focus and will make no further investments in high-end applications such as enterprise resource...

NASDAQ halts PSINet trading.(Company Financial Information)(Brief Article)
April 3, 2001... The NASDAQ Stock Exchange Tuesday morning halted trading of the troubled telecom carrier and ISP PSINet. The company Monday told federal regulators that it expects auditors to issue "going concern qualifications" - an indication that the...

EU on course to rule in Microsoft probe.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 3, 2001... The European Commission has given its strongest indication yet that it plans to punish Microsoft for abusing its dominant position in the operating systems software market in Europe. "At this stage, in spite of Microsoft's claim that what...

Start-up tackles service-level management.(Product Announcement)
April 3, 2001... SAN JOSE - Network managers looking to track service levels across their global networks may want to check out the latest offering from a company that says its software can help customers better define and deliver on service-level agreements....

LuxN's ColorSim detects bit error rates in optical Ethernet.(Product Announcement)
April 3, 2001... LuxN claims to have developed a new way of simplifying error detection and shortening the mean time to repair in optical Ethernet equipment. The company's ColorSim is a line card for LuxN's WavSystem wave division multiplexers that...

Ecora adding Solaris, Cisco to its configuration management product.(Product Announcement)
April 3, 2001... Configuration management software vendor Ecora is adding support for Sun Solaris servers and Cisco routers to its stable of modules that automate the collection of system settings. The company Tuesday released Documentor for Solaris, a...

MAYAN buys Ariel for RAS.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 4, 2001... Optical start-up MAYAN Networks said it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire remote access server maker Ariel. The agreement calls for the acquisition of Ariel through a merger with and into Ariel, the companies said. Under...

IBM unveils sleek NetVistas, wireless peripherals.(Product Announcement)
April 4, 2001... If your spring cleaning includes doing something about that hulking monitor, snake pit of wires, and bulky beige CPU (central processing unit), IBM Corp. might have a solution with its slimmer, wireless systems unveiled on Tuesday. IBM has...

Microsoft, HP settle Pocket PC dispute with FTC.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 4, 2001... Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard Tuesday settled a lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission regarding a claim that the companies falsely advertised wireless capabilities of the Pocket PC handheld computer in a number of national print...

Vendors aim to ease certification woes.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 4, 2001... Certification programs for technology skills have helped companies refine their search for qualified workers, but many vendors, educators and employees complain that the certification system leaves a lot to be desired. Companies grumble...

Microsoft launches MSN Music.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 4, 2001... Microsoft has added a new music channel to its Web portal MSN.com, with a search engine that it claims can find songs that sound similar to a visitor's favorites, or that match a particular mood. MSN Music, online in a test version, offers...

Rhythms CEO resigns; COO will take over duties.(Company Operations)
April 4, 2001... One day after DSL wholesaler Rhythms NetConnections revealed that its stock will likely be delisted by NASDAQ, Rhythms chairman and CEO Catherine Hapka resigned. Steve Stringer, Rhythms president and COO, will take over as CEO. Rhythms...

Peace Corps courts the tech-savvy latte set.(Government Activity)
April 4, 2001... For most Americans, the U.S. Peace Corps, a 7,000-member volunteer group working in developing nations around the world, conjures up images of long-haired youngsters leaving suburban homes for a tour of duty among thatched huts and muddied...

ITAA says U.S. to fall short of H-1B visa quota.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 4, 2001... A soured U.S. economic climate has created a drastic change in the country's recruitment of foreign technology talent. As a result, this could mark the first year in recent times that the U.S. does not butt heads against its cap on H-1B foreign...

Accenture tallies scorecard on e-gov initiatives.(Government Activity)
April 4, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - Consulting firm Accenture this week released a report on how e-government initiatives stack up around the world. Its scorecard-style evaluation covers the 22 most active countries online. Entitled "eGovernment Leadership,...

Nokia phones incompatible with new U.S. mobile networks.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 4, 2001... Mobile phones from Nokia sold in the U.S. and Canada since as early as 1997 could be rendered useless when operators launch new CDMA2000 1x networks. Nokia is urging network operators to update their networks before launch so the handsets...

MIT to put course materials online for free.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 4, 2001... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Wednesday unveiled an ambitious plan for making nearly all of its course materials available online to the general public over the next 10 years. The project - MITOpenCourseWare - will create static...

Study bullish on VoDSL market; Forecasts over $7 billion in revenue from small business in 2005.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 4, 2001... The voice-over-DSL market for small business should grow exponentially from 2001 to 2005, according to a report published by Research First Consulting, a market research and consulting firm that focuses on the telecom industry. Although...

Vendors to demo VoDSL interoperability.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 4, 2001... Vendors pushing voice-over-DSL technology will try to impress service providers next week by showing for the first time that their gear is interoperable. Nine vendors of customer site equipment and switching office equipment will...

CommWorks adds "universal port" features, V.92 modem support to its top access box.(Product Announcement)
April 4, 2001... BALTIMORE - A software upgrade for CommWorks' Total Control 1000 Enhanced Data System could allow service providers to terminate voice, data and fax connections from any port in the box's chassis, the company says. CommWorks, the carrier...

Cisco kills the Wavelength Router.(Product Information)
April 5, 2001... Cisco has discontinued its ONS 15900 Wavelength Router platform for the core of service provider networks, due to slow demand. This product, which was designed to allow service providers to build switched optical mesh networks, was obtained...

ADVA installs FSP 3000 in Hannover metro network.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 5, 2001... ADVA's Fiber Service Platform 3000 was deployed by a Hannover, Germany, service provider as part of a field trial to expand its metro network. Hannoversche Telekomunikations-und Netzgesellschaft (HTN) deployed the 32-channel dense wave...

Apache 2.0 beta hits the Web.(Product Development)
April 5, 2001... The beta version of Apache Web server 2.0 was completed Tuesday night, marking the availability of what is seen as the first major reworking of the popular software in some time. The upgrade is expected to make the software more accessible to...

ASPs learn from past mistakes, says IDC.(Industry Trend or Event)
April 5, 2001... A new breed of application service providers that have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors is emerging and offering better service to users, according to a new report published by IDC. Instead of attempting to offer via the...

Microsoft software to filter, rank e-mail.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2001... Microsoft researchers are developing e-mail software that learns what messages are important to users and which aren't, ranking them by urgency, Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates Tuesday said to technologists at the...