Network World articles from August 2001

Network World archives from August 2001

Code Red wakes up with a whimper.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2001... The Code Red worm emerged from its slumber Tuesday night to begin a second wave of attacks on the Internet. Security experts said it could be days before the extent of any damage is known, but there were early signs that efforts to avert a...

Lucent tries to raise $1 billion in stock offer.(Company Financial Information)
August 1, 2001... Beset by hard times, but looking to right the company's financial ship, Lucent Technologies said late Tuesday that it expects to raise $1 billion through a private stock offering. Lucent will make an offering of redeemable convertible...

IBM adds to e-commerce software line.(MerchantReach)(Product Announcement)
August 1, 2001... IBM broadened its electronic commerce offerings with the launch on Wednesday of its MerchantReach for e-commerce package, designed for corporate customers to more efficiently track and tailor consumer data. Based on IBM's WebSphere Commerce...

Sun to eliminate 300 jobs.(Company Operations)
August 1, 2001... Joining a broad trend in the hardware market, Sun on Wednesday confirmed plans to reduce its workforce by 300. The company's employee count will drop from 43,600 to 43,300 over the coming fiscal year, ending June 30, 2002, spokeswoman...

BEA ships Web services-ready WebLogic.(Product Announcement)
August 1, 2001... BEA Systems Wednesday will make the latest version of its WebLogic application server software available to customers. Unveiled in June at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, WebLogic 6.1 for the first time offers support for a range...

Popular demand delays Japanese Bluetooth trial.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 1, 2001... A Bluetooth wireless technology test, which was expected to start mid-July, has been delayed for a month due to greater-than-expected public demand, Nippon Ericsson said Tuesday. The companies planned to invite 100 people to take part in...

Sales of optical gear down sharply.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2001... The worldwide optical transport market will decline 23% in 2001 to $17.7 billion, following annual growth of 49% in both 1999 and 2000, according to the latest data from Dell'Oro Group. Market growth won't return until 2003, the firm...

Microsoft releases renamed NCompass software.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
August 1, 2001... After buying NCompass Labs in April to acquire the company's NCompass Resolution 4.0 software, Microsoft Wednesday announced the general availability of the re-branded NCompass Resolution, now called Microsoft Content Management Server 2001....

Cisco offers HTML-to-WAP conversion appliance.(Product Announcement)
August 1, 2001... Cisco Systems unveiled a new appliance for converting HTML and XML into other data formats suitable for use on wireless devices, cellular phones and personal digital assistants, the company announced Wednesday. The Cisco CTE 1400 Series...

3Com restyles U.S. channel program.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 1, 2001... 3Com on Wednesday restructured its U.S. channel partner program and added a program devoted to wireless network hardware. Mirroring the structure of its international channel partner program, 3Com's "U.S. Focus" program will have a...

WAP 2.0 eases development for small 'Net access devices.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2001... The Wireless Application Protocol Forum industry group on Wednesday released version 2.0 of its specification for communications and application display on Internet-connected wireless devices, promoting its compatibility with Extensible HTML....

Have dial-up modems reached their limit?(Technology Information)
August 1, 2001... It's not likely that users will soon see modems that exceed 56K bit/sec on store shelves, but it is also not impossible. ISPs are slow to adopt V.92, the International Telecommunications Union's latest modem standard, but technically,...

Metricom to end service, sell off assets.(bankrupt Metricom shuts down Ricochet wireless network)
August 3, 2001... High-speed wireless data services company Metricom Friday said it will close its Ricochet network in all of its 15 markets on Aug. 8. It has also terminated 282 staff with immediate effect, according to the statement. Subscribers will be...

Code Red floods helpdesks, not Internet.(Technology Information)
August 3, 2001... The widely publicized Code Red worm may not have caused a significant slowdown of the Internet, but it did flood technical support phone lines at antivirus companies, several European antivirus software vendors said Friday. Many Internet...

Server sales hit by slowdown in Europe, U.S.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 3, 2001... Slowing economies in the U.S. and Western Europe continued to hurt sales of high-end, midrange servers, with the once robust market seeing only minimal growth in the second quarter, according to research released Thursday by Dataquest. ...

Jacada pledges application flexibility.(Product Announcement)
August 3, 2001... ATLANTA - New software from Jacada aims to let enterprise IT managers reclaim a part of computing that was long ago surrendered to Microsoft: the graphical user interface. Using Jacada Interface Server (JIS) 1.0, developers can, in effect,...

Double trouble: Code Red and Sircam plagues continue.(Technology Information)
August 3, 2001... Computer users continue to face attacks on two fronts as the impersonal Code Red worm persists in infecting Web servers and the extremely personal Sircam virus keeps replicating in e-mail in-boxes worldwide. Code Red doesn't directly...

Remember content?(Product Announcement)
August 3, 2001... The wireless Web may be the next frontier to companies, but to consumers it's still a pipe dream. A recent survey from Cahners In-Stat Group found that a mere 3 percent of respondents had used wireless Internet services. Aside from...

NaviSite cuts staff by 25%.(Company Operations)(Brief Article)
August 3, 2001... Less than a month after announcing the voluntary resignation of its CEO, managed application hosting provider NaviSite Tuesday said it will lay off 126 employees, or about 25% of its workforce, as part of continuing cost-saving measures. ...

CIO council tackles business issues.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 3, 2001... Under increasing pressure to help tighten corporate budgets, Global 2000 IT executives are set to kick off a new group called the Technology Leadership Council. The group, which has its start in the U.S. but plans to go international, aims to...

Lucent layoffs could extend to Europe.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
August 3, 2001... Lucent Friday said it has contacted the works councils for its European operations to discuss its restructuring plans. The talks with the worker organizations are a precursor to any move the telecommunication equipment maker may make to cut...

New version of WAP is a step forward.(Technology Information)
August 3, 2001... The latest version of the Wireless Access Protocol, released this week (http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0801wap.html), now aligns with some key Internet standards, which should make it easier to use, and more useful, in microbrowser-based...

Sprint launches phone module for Visor.(Product Announcement)
August 3, 2001... Sprint PCS will roll out a Code Division Multiple Access module for Handspring's Visor next month that will let users turn their Visor into a Sprint PCS phone for voice and wireless Internet access, the companies announced Thursday. The...

IETF stops work VPN protocol.(Technology Information)
August 3, 2001... The protocol widely used to set up VPN tunnels is potentially insecure and work on extending its use should be halted, according to The Internet Engineering Task Force. Administrative groups within the IETF have put a temporary moratorium...

Ockham tackles sales management.
August 3, 2001... For Analog Devices, the task of setting sales quotas for its 300 sales reps is an annual annoyance that it hopes to alleviate with software from start-up Ockham Technologies. In a deal announced Wednesday, the Norwood, Mass., maker of...

Streaming media opens Wisconsin legislature.(Government Activity)
August 6, 2001... Streaming media is doing for the Wisconsin State Assembly what C-Span did for the U.S. Congress: letting constituents see the floor debates and votes on bills and potential laws that are important to them. For the past 2 1/2 years, the...

THE GREAT GLOBAL 3G CHALLENGE; Network problems delay launch of third-generation wireless services.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... Network problems delay launch of third-generation wireless services. BY EVAN ROSEN A small island in the Irish Sea and the island country of Japan are vying to become the first to host 3G wireless services, which bring multimedia...

Favorite training freebies.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 6, 2001... There are countless sources of free IT training on the Internet, though quality varies greatly. Here's a list of sites recommended by Scott Turton, who runs a site called Computer Education, Training & Tutorial Resources at www.intelinfo.com....

How we did it.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... Our test bed consists of 13 clients with a minimum configuration of two 400-MHz Pentium II processors with 128M bytes of RAM. Each client has one 100M bit/sec Ethernet network interface card for connection to a Cisco 2948G Ethernet switch. The...

The LP2000r packs a punch; Hewlett-Packard's 2U server puts a lot of power into a small package.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
August 6, 2001... Hewlett-Packard's LP2000r packs a lot of power into a 2U space, with six drives and two 933-MHz Pentium III processors. The unit, which began shipping in April, scored high enough in our tests to be a strong contender in the battle at the top...

How we did it.(Product Information)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2001... We installed Password Bouncer on a Pentium III 700-MHz machine with 256M bytes of RAM and running Windows 2000 Professional system for use in protecting a Win 2000 domain with 10 systems, 20 users and one domain controller. We created an...

Put a Bouncer at your network's door; MDD's Password Bouncer helps network managers enforce strong password policies.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
August 6, 2001... Because passwords are the lone level of protection against unauthorized access on most systems, their use is essential and the selection of strong passwords is required. Even though the importance of passwords is well-known and often...

Being an industry guru has gotten a lot harder.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... It used to be a lot easier. Predicting the future, that is. Being an industry guru was a fun job. The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times would quote you, your mother could brag to the relatives and you could sit on lots of panels in...

When usage matters: Broadwing's Gigabit in the MAN.(metropolitan-area networks)(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... With the likes of Yipes Communications and Cogent Communications already deploying high-speed Ethernet metropolitan-area networks, Broadwing Communications' May announcement that it will deliver Gigabit Ethernet interfaces to the customer...

Unix vendors go on offensive; OPERATING SYSTEMS.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... Unix vendors, faced with the growing threat of Linux and open systems hardware, have introduced more powerful versions of the operating system, and promise even better support for data center-critical business operations. The latest Unix...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
August 6, 2001... Jackson's judgment In his "Backspin" column "Gorillas and dazey summer laze" (http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2001/0709gibbs.html), Mark Gibbs states that the court ruled Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson "was completely wrong in his...

Advice to Novell.(Company Business and Marketing)(Column)
August 6, 2001... Regarding your Q&A with new Novell CEO Jack Messman (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 5422): I don't think Novell stands a chance of becoming successful again because, despite all the shakeups and changes, Novell still keeps neglecting one...

Dual-chip architecture for mobile devices.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... As real-time, multimedia-rich applications such as videostreaming emerge in the next generation of smart phones and advanced mobile Internet appliances, the processing platforms that power them will need to be capable of processing more than...

There are two ways to look at last week's largely uneventful Code Red fire drill.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)(Column)
August 6, 2001... Either the episode was a sterling example of law enforcement joining hands with network professionals to ward off a worm that would otherwise have brought the Internet to its knees. (Even if that's a stretch, those of you who heeded the call...

Faster wireless LANs may prove a bargain.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... Even before significantly faster wireless LAN products hit the market, the cost of that equipment is said to be plummeting. Surprised analysts and vendors are now saying that 54M bit/sec wireless products that support the 802.11a standard,...

Sheepdog management: nip their heels and keep 'em moving.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... As a manager, I have experimented with a number of management theories and strategies. I have tried micromanagement, delegation and empowerment. I've played around with Theory X management techniques - "crack the whip" - and Theory Y techniques...

Mapping a way forward.(MapQuest.com)(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... I travel too much, far too much! (I got my "million mile flyer" card from United Airlines the other day - I would have put in about three months seat time if everything had been on time, but probably put in twice that in reality.) Most of the...

infra briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... Palm has announced it will form a subsidiary to handle development and licensing of the company's Palm OS, which runs on hardware from Palm and others, such as Handspring and Sony. Palm says the group will be formed by year-end. The move should...

Apps briefs.(Product Announcement)
August 6, 2001... InfoExpress has shipped a new version of its personal desktop firewall, CyberArmor 2.0, that includes a wizard to let systems administrators develop security policies for end users, as well as a digital signature feature to be used by...

Tips for getting the most out of your WAN.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... Companies frequently ask what they can do to get the best bang for the WAN buck. Here are a few recommendations: Centralize wireline and wireless telecommunications planning and management functions. Costs can only be controlled when people...

carrier briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... Everest Broadband Networks, a provider of Ethernet services to multitenant buildings, and metropolitan Ethernet provider Telseon inked a deal last week that will give Everest customers in four markets access to network services from Telseon's...

AT&T, Verizon Wireless probe compromises of customer data; Providers say customers' personal information posted in chat rooms.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... SAN FRANCISCO - Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless Group have started investigations into a security breach that may have let outsiders see confidential information of at least hundreds of customers. Officials from Verizon and AT&T...

Digex boss discusses WorldCom influence.(Company Business and Marketing)(Interview)
August 6, 2001... As the Web hosting market slowly shifts into managed hosting, Digex need not move at all, as managed services have been its foundation from the beginning. WorldCom now owns a 55% majority stake in the company, thanks to its recent merger with...

The PC at 20: Remember your first?; Network World readers recall their very first desktop computers.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... Next week marks the 20th anniversary of IBM introducing its first PC, the 5150, the device that really ushered in the use of desktop machines in the corporate world. To recognize the occasion, we surveyed readers to learn about their earliest...

News briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... NSA outsources $2B net project The National Security Agency has awarded a $2 billion, 10-year contract to a joint venture called the Eagle Alliance, led by systems integrator Computer Sciences, to manage the NSA's internal networks. As...

Software tackles CRM for professional services firms; Interface Software emphasizes contact management rather than salesforce automation.(Interface Software's InterAction)(Product Information)
August 6, 2001... CHICAGO - There's nothing like a corporate spinoff to jump-start a company's customer relationship management project. When Adams Street Partners gained independence from its parent company in January, Brinson Partners, the asset management...

START-UP METRO NETWORK FIRM SEEKS NEW NICHE; OVERTURE NETWORKS LOOKS TO BE FIRST PURE IP VENDOR.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. - Start-up Overture Networks is looking to build a niche for itself in the crowded metropolitan optical equipment space - that of a "pure" IP systems vendor. Despite the billions of dollars of installed SONET...

Equipment sales will slow into 2002.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... Sales of core and edge switching and routing equipment will slow significantly in North America this year and next due to declining growth in Internet traffic and excess inventories, analysts say. Because of sharply decreased spending by...

Ask Dr. Internet.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 6, 2001... The latest server virus alerts are making us nervous. We patched our servers and want to ensure quality of service (QoS) between our Internet-connected sites so our important network traffic will get through in time, even when the Internet is...

The Edge briefs.(Lucent Technologies' ClientCare Call Center Deluxe Edition 3.1)(Product Announcement)
August 6, 2001... Lucent announced the availability of Release 3.1 of its ClientCare Call Center Deluxe Edition software. The product lets a service provider transform telephone systems at small and midsize business customers into contact management centers....

Messaging vendors rally around SIMPLE protocol.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... An emerging communications protocol called SIMPLE is the front-runner to become the standard method for sharing online presence information and instant messages across the Internet, thanks to backing from market leaders AOL Time Warner and...

VPN vendor RedCreek gets firewall friendly.(Product Announcement)
August 6, 2001... NEWARK, CALIF. - RedCreek last week announced its VPN Expansion System, a combination of equipment and consulting that lets users integrate RedCreek gear with other vendors' firewalls. The hardware and services package is intended for users...

Yet more FTPing.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... Week 3 of FTPing and, boy, is this getting exciting! We've opened connections to FTP servers, given commands to set up data transfers, sent other commands to find out what files the servers have and issued commands to navigate around the...

Triple your remote office protection; LinkSys, Trend Micro and Zone Labs make for a great security team.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... We all know that two-thirds of corporate hacks come from inside the firewall, making internal security as important as external. But what about your remote offices and SOHO workers? Are they as vulnerable to attacks as your corporate workers?...

IBM putting big bucks behind grid computing; Effort could speed delivery of massive computing technology.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... ARMONK, N.Y. - IBM last week said it is investing $4 billion in grid computing, a move that could help extend this technique for exploiting the power of thousands of distributed computers beyond its scientific and university roots and make it...

Storage smackdown amid the lights of Vegas.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... Storage demands are skyrocketing as companies scramble to stay in front of a data tidal wave pushed by everything from e-mail to CRM. In some companies storage requirements are doubling every year. Fortunately the options for dealing with...

Auction action; Online bids for net gear reap big savings.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... Kurt Anderson does a lot of buying on eBay. "The key is to never be in a panic," he says. "Instead of getting into a bidding war, I'll wait and look around... and eventually those jewels will come along."The "jewels" in this case are not...

Metro vendors question Spanning Tree standard.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... A debate is brewing over whether a new standard will help boost the resiliency of Ethernet enough to enable metropolitan-area services to really take off. While Ethernet-based metropolitan services have gained a following in pockets across...

Entrust answers Microsoft users' security needs.(Product Announcement)
August 6, 2001... DALLAS - Entrust this week will ship upgraded digital certificate management software that aims to address network security concerns of Microsoft customers. The software, Entrust 6.0, has been redesigned so the company's digital...

Media warnings help limit Code Red damage.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... The worm called Code Red did not cause an Internet meltdown as some had predicted last week, but it certainly did cause the network world to sit up and take notice. The extraordinary volume of press coverage about the dire warnings focused...

Cisco box translates Web pages for PDAs.(Product Announcement)
August 6, 2001... SAN JOSE - Cisco last week jumped into the burgeoning wireless Web market with an appliance it says can translate Web data for 'Net-enabled cell phones and PDAs. The Cisco CTE (Content Transformation Engine) 1400 could be used by a company...

correction.(Correction Notice)
August 6, 2001... The story "CNT looks to link storage nets over IP" (July 23, page 12) should have stated that SANcastle's GFS-8 product is iSCSI- and Fibre Channel IP-ready, not iSCSI- and Fibre Channel over IP-compatible, as standardization of those...

The 'Net is strategically important.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)(Column)
August 6, 2001... Faithful reader Jim McQuaid wrote regarding last week's column, in which I chastised the government for not being concerned about carriers grouping important Internet links in a tunnel in Baltimore where they were knocked out by a fire: "The...

Experts call MPLS bad for 'Net; VPNs based on Multi-protocol Label Switching said to be risky. Backbone mgmt. challenges also cited.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... Two prominent Internet researchers from AT&T Labs are among a growing number of experts raising red flags about Multi-protocol Label Switching, a next-generation traffic engineering technology backed by network industry leaders such as Cisco,...

Is free IT training really a bargain?; While free educational opportunities abound, experts warn of shallow offerings and.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... There's boatload of free technical training out there for the asking. And in these days of shrinking IT budgets, the temptation to partake - some might say the necessity - can appear compelling. But what would you be getting in the bargain?...

Why you need a VPN.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... I have DSL with two computers sharing Internet access. Each one has a Category 5 cable through a hub. Can I have access to this network from a distance of approximately 2 km? Can you advise me on what type of hardware or software can allow...

Severance pay.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a time where being laid off meant receiving some type of severance package. Ranging from as little as two weeks salary and the ability to convert unused vacation time into cash,...

More serious Code Red II worm on the loose.(Technology Information)
August 6, 2001... A new and potentially more serious version of the Code Red computer worm began circulating over the weekend, according to several computer security-related companies and services. Code Red II is said to be more aggressive than the original...

Google names Schmidt CEO.(Company Operations)(Brief Article)
August 6, 2001... Search engine company Google officially named Eric Schmidt CEO Monday. Schmidt, formerly CEO of Novell, was appointed chairman of Google's board of directors in March after having made investments in the company. Schmidt is known for...

EchoStar makes $32.3 billion bid for Hughes.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 6, 2001... Touting the possibilities for broadband services, satellite TV company EchoStar Communications made a public offer Sunday to buy its larger rival, Hughes Electronics, for $32.3 billion in a stock-for-stock swap. EchoStar offered three of...

Handheld shipments dipped in Q2.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... Worldwide personal digital assistant shipments dragged in the second quarter of the year as the consumer market dried up and the corporate market failed to reach its volume potential, according to a report released Monday by Dataquest, a unit...

DataViz upgrades its Office for Palm software.(Documents To Go Professional Edition 4.0)(Product Announcement)
August 6, 2001... DataViz on Monday announced Version 4.0 of its Documents To Go Professional Edition software for users of Palm OS-based handheld computers. Added in this latest version is the capability to edit Excel spreadsheets and view PowerPoint...

WQuinn bolsters storage management software.(StorageCentral Storage Resource Management (SRM) 5.0)(Product Announcement)
August 6, 2001... Storage tools vendor WQuinn is expected to release in September a new version of its storage resource management software. The company's StorageCentral Storage Resource Management (SRM) 5.0, now in beta, includes a number of new features,...

Code Red II includes dangerous 'backdoor' trojan.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 6, 2001... The new and potentially more dangerous variant of the Code Red worm, which appeared over the weekend, can add a 'back-door' Trojan to any Microsoft Web server that is vulnerable to a specific exploit. The Trojan could let anyone with a Web...

Sprint PCS, Verizon ask for more time to implement e911.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... With major wireless network operators Sprint PCS Group and Verizon Wireless Inc. asking the Federal Communications Commission for a delay in the October implementation of mandatory wireless technology for emergency services, the rollout of...

Grasping for sanity.(surviving in the environment of low street prices in the telecom industry)(Industry Trend or Event)
August 6, 2001... During the past 18 months or so, telecom street prices have hit the floor, then hit it again a few more times. Each year enterprises continue to demand large decreases in contract values (despite industry reports to the contrary on increased...

Q&A: Ellen Hancock guides Exodus into managed services.(Company Business and Marketing)(Interview)
August 7, 2001... The once-high-flying Web hosting firm Exodus has faced some tough times of late: laying off staff, cutting back capital expenditures and trying to move into managed services as its dot-com customer base erodes. Analysts have been skeptical...

Analyst: Intel expected to halve Pentium 4 price.(Company Business and Marketing)
August 7, 2001... Intel is expected to cut the price of its fastest microprocessor by more than 50%, one financial analyst company said Monday - a move that will likely mean cheaper PCs for customers. As the chip maker prepares for the next battle in its...

Congressman lends an ear to high-tech firms.(Government Activity)
August 7, 2001... Officials from high-tech companies including Microsoft and Intel met with a U.S. congressman Monday, urging him to support various pieces of legislation that they said would help pull the U.S. economy out of its slump and continue the build-out...