Network World articles from December 2003

Network World archives from December 2003

Adding 'oomph' to your network; Eight tips for squeezing bandwidth out of, and adding new speed-enhancing technologies to, your LAN and WAN.
December 1, 2003... Byline: PHIL HOCHMUTH AND TIM GREENE Some companies operate finely tuned environments with network packets humming along at a disciplined pace; others operate at a halting cadence on shared media and cabling from the first Bush...

Q&A: Get more bang for your telecom bucks.(Hank Levine)(Interview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Denise Pappalardo Telecom spending represents a big chunk of most IT budgets, but industry competition and negotiating finesse can reduce costs. Hank Levine, a Washington, D.C., attorney with Levine, Blaszak, Block & Boothby, has...

Fighting spam.
December 1, 2003... Byline: Cara Garretson and Ellen Messmer Fighting spam by CARA GARRETSON AND ELLEN MESSMER The idea of saving millions of dollars annually would be a hit with any company. Combine it with increased end-user productivity and reduced...

Spammers stay one step ahead.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Ellen Messmer Spammers stay one step ahead Despite advances in anti-spam technology, spammers consistently manage to foil the products designed to thwart them. As long as sending unwanted e-mail remains a profitable proposition...

Patching: Process matters.
December 1, 2003... Byline: JOHN FONTANA The list of all-too-familiar names - Nachi, Klez, Lovsan, SoBig, BugBear, Swen, Blaster and Yaha - represents only a sampling of the most prevalent worms and viruses that slithered into corporate networks this fall....

How to get to utility computing; It's called grid, utility or on-demand, but it's all about the same thing: Creating computing infrastructures that can dynamically change tasks as processing needs ebb and flow. It's a grand vision, but getting there won't be easy. Here's how to start.
December 1, 2003... Byline: ANN BEDNARZ AND DENISE DUBIE In football, an audible is a quarterback's opportunity to change his strategy after seeing the defense line up on the field. A slew of vendors - advocates of so-called utility computing - are promising...

What you should know about the carriers.(attorney Hank Levine spoke about best telecom deal )(Interview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Denise Pappalardo Q&A: What you should know about the carriers Hank Levine, an attorney at Levine, Blaszak, Block & Boothby, has helped large companies squeeze the carriers for years. Levine spoke recently with Network World...

net buzz.
December 1, 2003... Byline: Paul McNamara Mail call . . . Two things about reader e-mail makes me thankful: First, it means someone is reading; second, it makes possible these periodic "Letters to 'Net Buzz" columns. Here's a sample of what has been...

Linking SAN islands.(Storage-area networks)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Deni Connor and Jennifer Mears Linking SAN islands by DENI CONNoR AND JENNIFER MEARS Storage-area networks have helped scores of organizations more easily allocate and manage storage resources, but most SAN installations...

Answering the big question: How to?(Editorial)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Bob Brown Journalists learn early on that each story they write needs to address the five W's and the H: Who, what, where, when, why and how. We won't ignore the five W's in this issue but we will give the H some extra...

'Tis the season to be paid off.
December 1, 2003... Byline: Edward Horrell I recently got a call from a colleague who sells to the technology sector. He asked how to respond to a customer's request asking each of its vendors to make a substantial donation to the customer's IT department...

Deception is harder in a digital world.(Industry Overview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Linda Musthaler One quick scan of the business press will tell you that on-the-job ethics seem to be at an all-time low. In case after case, big executives are caught in their webs of corporate deception. But the irony is that it...

Blame game.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... Blame game I disagree with the analogy Dave Kearns uses in his column "Looking for blame in all the wrong places" (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 8722). If someone breaks into my car, that person is the bad guy. If Ford tells me my car has...

Anti-spam market braces for shakeout.(Industry Overview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: CARA GARRETSON With the onslaught of vendors jumping on the spam-fighting bandwagon, choosing the right anti-spam product can be almost as tedious as wading through an in-box of junk mail. But signs are pointing to a shakeout in...

They are out to get you.
December 1, 2003... Byline: mark gibbs Yep. It's true and you aren't paranoid. At least not in the aliens-are-about-to-abduct-me-is-that-a-black-helicopter-Kennedy-was-assassinated-by-the-Mafia-or-was-it-LBJ kind of way. No, your feelings of paranoia are...

Brix Networks, a maker of appliances used to monitor network service quality, has received $8.1 million in a fourth round of venture funding.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Brix Networks, a maker of appliances used to monitor network service quality, has received $8.1 million in a fourth round of venture funding. The company, which has compiled $55 million in funding since starting up in July 1999, says it will...

Utopia, except for the phone companies.(Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Scott Bradner Is there a viable business model for commercial ISPs in an end-to-end Internet? Telephone carriers looking forward to an Internet-based future don't seem to think so. Instead, the carriers are looking for ways to be...

Server mgmt. standard gaining steam.(Intelligent Platform Management Interface )(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: JENNIFER MEARS As organizations move toward running heterogeneous servers as a single pool of resources designed to respond to business needs, a looming issue is how best to manage those disparate systems. The Intelligent Platform...

AT&T's Eslambolchi talks IP.(Hossein Eslambolchi)(Interview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: Denise Pappalardo Hossein Eslambolchi is in the unusual position of holding three executive roles at one of the largest U.S. companies. A 17-year AT&T veteran, he is president of AT&T Labs, CTO and CIO. Eslambolchi says the...

There's something to be said for worrying about the cloud.(cybersecurity)(New York State Office of Cyber Security & Critical Infrastructure Coordination)(Industry Overview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: johna johnson I was recently asked to moderate a panel discussion at the Executive Council of New York on the topic of Security and Business Continuity. One of the keynote speakers was William Pelgrin, director of the New York...

short takes.(brief items)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... n AT&T inked a multi-million dollar deal with athletic footwear retailer The Finish Line last week. The three-year contract includes local and long-distance voice, frame relay and Internet access services across the country. AT&T is connecting...

Calling for real tech support.
December 1, 2003... We don't need new technology; we need to use the technology we have better. I just got off the phone with a technology support operation. As most of you know, the automated telephone systems are built by specialists who go to college to...

Start-up manages storage with grids; Mix of servers, disks and WAN technology replicates data to remote sites.(Grid Protected Storage architecture from ExaGrid Systems Inc.)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: PHIL HOCHMUTH Start-up ExaGrid is looking to change the way businesses handle data backup and recovery with a grid-computing system for storage. The company, which launched last month, has designed what it calls a Grid...

Enterprise Applications briefs.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: staff writers NetPro Computing last week released Version 3.0 of its DirectoryLockdown tool for Microsoft's Active Directory. The tool monitors the Configuration and Schema Naming Contexts in the directory and prevents unauthorized...

Olympic net gets gold security protection.
December 1, 2003... Byline: ELLEN MESSMER Imagine spending three years and millions of dollars to plan a campus-style LAN for 10,500 PCs and 900 servers, knowing it would only be in place for three weeks, with thousands of TV and magazine reporters watching...

LWAPP brings harmony to WLANs.(Lightweight Access Point Protocol )
December 1, 2003... Byline: JEFF AARON AND PAT CALHOUN Centralized security and management of wireless LANs is a rapidly growing trend in which a WLAN device such as a switch, appliance, or router is used to create and enforce policies across many streamlined,...

Tackling app performance mgmt. Research shows IT managers need to start building better application management into their infrastructures.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: DENISE DUBIE It used to take Michael Lubanski up to 30 hours trying to pinpoint the source of poor application performance in Towers Perrin's benefits administration application. Now the process can take less than 30 minutes. ...

ask dr. internet.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Byline: steve blass Steve Blass Our Microsoft Access database is growing rapidly and getting harder to share effectively. Our IT team said we can use table space in a central MySQL-DB database. Can we still use Access at the desktop to...

Radvision updates videoconferencing appliance.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: PHIL HOCHMUTH Radvision last week announced new versions of its IP videoconferencing appliance that can be used to add ISDN or IP videoconferencing to an enterprise network, with support for up to 10 or 20 simultaneous users. ...

Finding gold at Comdex.(trade show)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: keith shaw Unlike trade shows such as the Consumer Electronics Show or the CTIA mobile phone extravaganza, Comdex generally tends to be low on the "cool stuff" radar screen. Still, if you look long enough and dig through the maze...

News briefs.(brief items)(Industry Overview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: staff writers NetMeeting, once hyped as Microsoft's answer to online conferencing, is being gradually phased out in favor of the company's newest real-time collaboration tool, according to company officials. Microsoft already has...

Congress set to enact opt-out spam law.
December 1, 2003... Byline: CARA GARRETSON Congress last week reached an agreement on the first piece of federal legislation to curtail spam, marking a coup for e-mail dependent businesses that can continue sending messages until recipients tell them not to....

Beware . . . there's more VMware!(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: mark gibbs This week we will wrap up some of the technical delights of how VMware works and conclude with a higher-level look at where this product fits into IT operations. On the technical side, one thing we haven't covered is...

TechNet to release enterprise security tool.(Interview)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: John Dix TechNet, a national organization of technology industry CEOs pushing a policy agenda, tackles four to six issues per year, and this year one of the main agenda items was cybersecurity. The TechNet task force that was...

Dell brings some tech support home.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Byline: TOM KRAZIT Dell last week said it has brought some technical support work back to the U.S. after corporate customers complained about the quality of service they were receiving from workers in other countries. The company has...

App server rivals team on specs.
December 1, 2003... Byline: ANN BEDNARZ IBM and BEA Systems last week announced they are working jointly on three specifications aimed at making it easier for customers to port applications between the two companies' rival application server platforms, IBM's...

3Com-EDS deal in the works; mum on details.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Byline: PHIL HOCHMUTH 3Com and Electronic Data Systems are working out the final details on a deal for EDS to resell 3Com enterprise hardware products as part of the integration firm's services offerings. With 3Com on EDS' menu,...

Mirage protects the LAN.(Mi40 Inverted Firewall from Mirage Networks)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2003... Byline: TIM GREENE Mirage Networks is wheeling out an appliance designed to halt quick-spreading, LAN-based worms and viruses by neutralizing individual infected machines rather than cordoning off entire parts of affected networks. ...

ReefEdge, others aim to advance wireless LANs.
December 1, 2003... Byline: JOHN COX ReefEdge Networks, a specialist in security gateways, this week will jump into the crowded wireless LAN switch market with products designed to help customers more fully centralize WLAN management. Industry observers...

A better VPN on the way?(Internet Key Exchange to be replaced?)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Byline: TIM GREENE There might soon be a new standard that makes IP Security VPNs more secure and easier to configure. After two years of deliberations, a committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force is just about ready with a...

Server market shows signs of life.(Industry Overview)
December 1, 2003... Byline: ROBERT MCMILLAN After two years of contraction the worldwide server market is growing again, according to the latest figures from IDC. Server revenue for the third quarter grew by 2% compared with the same period a year...

Lock down your WLAN; Take these nine steps, then breathe more easily.
December 1, 2003... Byline: JOHN COX In August, engineers with AirDefense, a wireless LAN security software vendor, made war drives in Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco, using scanners to find WLAN access points around downtown office buildings. The...

Whirling through the world of propeller beanies; From geek chic to gang style, the tale of this techie lid gives those behind it their props.
December 8, 2003... Byline: BOB BROWN While business isn't bad, Stacy Samuels can't help longing for the boom days of the early '90s. If your memory is fuzzy, that was the time of the last big propeller beanie craze, most notably in Baltimore, where the...

WLAN shakeout ahead; Crowded field expected to thin out in 2004 as established switch vendors weigh in.(Industry Overview)
December 8, 2003... Byline: Laurianne McLaughlin WLAN shakeout ahead Crowded field expected to thin out in 2004 as established switch vendors weigh in. By Laurianne McLaughlin The wireless LAN switch market is facing a major shakeout in 2004, so...

The right Rx: Adventist Health chooses Symbol.
December 8, 2003... Byline: Laurianne McLaughlin The right Rx: Adventist Health chooses Symbol Greg McGovern, CTO at Adventist Health, decided to go with Symbol Technologies for his wireless needs, even though his company's wired network heavily favors...

'Net Buzz.(internet privacy impinged)
December 8, 2003... Byline: Paul McNamara Had enough of Plaxo, et al There are so many annoying things about Plaxo - and other address-book update services like it - that one scarcely knows where to begin. So let's just dive in: "This is the second...

oped letters.(Letter to the Editor)
December 8, 2003... Disruptive technology Howard Anderson's column "The ultimate disruptive technology" (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 8823) contains good observations, but they are just the beginning. IP is really the disruptive technology. As the days...

Preparing for industry inversion.(Industry Overview)
December 8, 2003... Byline: jeff kaplan When people look back at 2003, some might see it as the beginning of an economic recovery that sparked renewed growth in the IT and telecom industries. However, there are numerous indicators that these industries are...

XML appliances speed Web services.
December 8, 2003... Byline: SUNIL GAITONDE XML is becoming the lingua franca for Web services. However, XML's flexibility places significant demands on network infrastructure, consuming as much as 80% of server processing power to perform CPU-intensive tasks...

NORTEL LEADS THE WAY IN VOIP APPLICATIONS THAT SUPPORT TELEWORKERS.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 8, 2003... Byline: EDWIN MIER, NETWORK WORLD GLOBAL TEST ALLIANCE TELEWORK TELEPHONY IP telephony is extending new features and capabilities to mobile employees and road warriors, and revolutionizing the way teleworkers connect and work with...

1208teleworkvoiphowwedidit.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 8, 2003... All voice-over-IP calls we placed and tested during this review had exactly the same impairments applied to them. Our "Internet" profile, based on ongoing research of Internet quality-of-service conditions, applied - in each direction - 100...

Managing offshore outsourcing; How customers plug the culture gaps that are exposed in sending IT work overseas.(Industry Overview)
December 8, 2003... Byline: linda leung Managing offshore outsourcing How customers plug the culture gaps that are exposed in sending IT work overseas. n By Linda Leung Last month, staffers at the IT department in New York of Guardian Life...

Another case of security by denial.
December 8, 2003... Byline: winn schwartau Large consultancies are paid a lot of money to provide companies with information to help them run their businesses. But sometimes the statements issuing forth from these consultancies has me questioning their value...

Wireless LANs getting priorities straight; WIRELESS LANS: What to do about voice and video traffic.
December 8, 2003... Byline: JOHN COX With wireless LANs starting to be used for more than just data traffic, quality of service is getting taken more seriously. Some wireless voice-over-IP (VoIP) vendors have created simple proprietary schemes to give...

The real meaning of CAN-SPAM.(Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003)
December 8, 2003... Byline: Scott Bradner A s I write this, Congress is just about to finish up the approval of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, aka the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The term "mixed bag" was...

Notes from the State of LAN road.(Industry Overview)
December 8, 2003... Byline: Kevin Tolly A few weeks back, we concluded this year's Network World State of the LAN tour. For those who attended, here are some observations about what we heard - and perhaps more importantly, some comparisons with previous...

Brightmail stands out from me-too crowd.(Company Profile)
December 8, 2003... Byline: CARA GARRETSON As proof of the recent explosion in spam-fighting products, an analyst report issued last month highlights the $100 million in venture capital that has been poured into these companies over the last 12 months....

short takes.
December 8, 2003... n Plasmon and Sony have launched a technology for securing archival storage. Ultra Density Optical drives and media are available in write-once or rewriteable formats. HP and IBM have adopted the drive format for their server platforms. Ultra...

NetContinuum boosts security gateway.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 8, 2003... Byline: ELLEN MESSMER NetContinuum this week is scheduled to launch an updated version of its application-firewall appliance for protecting HTML-based and some non-Web applications from about 4,000 known attacks aimed at subverting...

short takes.
December 8, 2003... n NTT DoCoMo and NEC have developed a mobile handset that marries 3G cellular telephony with the wireless LAN. The handset is compatible with Wideband Code Division Multiple Access and the 802.11b WLAN standard, and is expected to be launched...

Cisco issues patch for Aironet vulnerability.(IBM hopes new computer language to become standard)(IDC predicts increase in worldwide IT infrastructure spending)
December 8, 2003... Cisco is warning customers using its Aironet wireless access points about a security vulnerability that could let attackers obtain keys used to secure communications on wireless networks. The vulnerability affects Aironet 1100, 1200 and 1400...

FCC hears views on VoIP regulation.
December 8, 2003... Byline: GRANT GROSS WASHINGTON, D.C. - The FCC should take a mostly hands-off approach to regulating voice over IP so the technology can continue to mature and provide consumers with a choice of telephone services, vendors told regulators...

Enterprise Applications Short Takes.
December 8, 2003... Windows utility vendor Winternals last week released Defrag Manager 2.5, which includes the company's SmartPhase multi-phase defragmentation engine designed to produce faster and more thorough defragmentation operations. The software supports...

ExpertCity tries to change its image.
December 8, 2003... Byline: TONI KISTNER Everybody knows ExpertCity's GoToMyPC. Download a client to your office computer, and then access the machine and all its resources remotely from any Web browser. So easy to use, employees signed up for the service by...

Net.Worker Short Takes.
December 8, 2003... 2Wire last week announced the HomePortal 1000HW and 1800HW. The new residential gateways extend the reach of 802.11b wireless networks by increasing the gateway's transmission power to 400 milliwatts, seven times higher than typical Wi-Fi...

Swiss army knife treats for tool lovers.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 8, 2003... Byline: Mark Gibbs We love tools, whether they are hardware or software. We suspect it is something to do with that Tim Allen guy thing. Anyway, a few tools have landed on our desks with a delightful thud and we decided we needed to share...

ask dr. internet.(Brief Article)
December 8, 2003... Steve Blass We've heard about a Linux tool for scanning Windows systems for vulnerabilities called Nessus. Is this a scanner like Nmap that produces text output about open ports, or does it provide more help? Nessus runs under X...

Portability's debut comes up short.
December 8, 2003... Byline: JIM DUFFY The first week of wireless number portability proved to be underwhelming in terms of demand, but technically challenging, as some reports said carriers failed to fulfill half or more of requested changes. There was...

The rise and rise of scumware.
December 8, 2003... Byline: Mark Gibbs Earlier this year I wrote about scumware, the generic term for various kinds of software that hides on your PC and displays ads and/or reports on your online behavior. Well, it looks as if the problem is going to get...

cool tools.
December 8, 2003... Byline: keith shaw After Comdex and the holiday gift guide, there were some new products launched that got under the radar screen. Here's some of the latest stuff we've heard about. Mirra ships personal server Launched at this...

Database gets United there on time; Event-processing system shares time-sensitive data to save millions.(United Airlines Inc.)
December 8, 2003... Byline: ANN BEDNARZ Software for disseminating real-time operational information is helping United Airlines save $46 million this year by letting the airline react more quickly to unplanned events such as inclement weather, mechanical...

Radware switch targets attacks.(DefensePro - security software)
December 8, 2003... Byline: PHIL HOCHMUTH Radware last week debuted a security appliance that could help businesses stop Web-based attacks such as Welchia and MS-SQL Slammer at the network gates. The DefensePro appliance is a modified version of Radware's...

56K modem inventor wants his due.(Brent Townshend holds five patents on the 56K modem technology)
December 8, 2003... Byline: TIM GREENE While 56K bit/sec modems have been on the market since 1997, the wrangling continues over who deserves credit - and royalties - for the technology. Analog Devices, which makes modem chipsets, last week settled out...

Rating your service provider.
December 8, 2003... Byline: johna johnson You've got to love Warren Buffett. Not because he's an investment genius who's made a bazillion dollars betting on down-home businesses. Nor even because from all accounts he appears to be a genuinely nice guy (how...

Catching up with the Quovix community.
December 8, 2003... Byline: John Dix With outsourcing an increasingly hot topic, we were curious how a company profiled here in 2001 was faring in its efforts to build a community-driven outsource software business. Instead of hiring a legion of...

Nortel leads the way in VoIP applications that support teleworkers; Telework telephony.
December 8, 2003... Byline: Edwin Mier Telework telephony Nortel leads the way in VoIP applications that support teleworkers n By EDWIN MIER, Network World Global Test Alliance P telephony is extending new features and capabilities to mobile...

How we did it.(testing voice-over-iP connections)
December 8, 2003... How we did it All voice-over-IP calls we placed and tested during this review had exactly the same impairments applied to them. Our "Internet" profile, based on ongoing research of Internet quality-of-service conditions, applied - in each...

HP looks to extend utility computing options.(Hewlett-Packard Co.)
December 8, 2003... Byline: DENI CONNOR HP last week moved to add meat to the bones of its utility computing framework through new capabilities for servers and desktop blades that the company says will make it easier for IT managers to adjust computing...

Sun alters focus with low-end blades; Company's attempt to grab market share is intended to offset drop in Unix spending.
December 8, 2003... Byline: JENNIFER MEARS Sun might be best known for its high-end boxes, but for the past year or so it has stressed its commitment to the low-end server market. The company used its quarterly product rollout last week to announce that it is...

New AT&T president talks telecom.(William Hannigan)(Interview)
December 8, 2003... Byline: Jim Duffy Faced with declining sales, AT&T last week announced the resignation of President Betsy Bernard and the appointment of her replacement, William Hannigan, chairman and CEO of travel company Sabre Holdings. After 36 hours...

Volo lures businesses with free IP PBXs; Start-up tries to remove barrier to voice over IP.
December 8, 2003... Byline: TIM GREENE Volo Communications wants businesses to sign up for its IP voice services so badly that it plans to give away IP PBX software. Starting in January, the 2-year-old company will provide IP PBX software at no cost to...

CA tackles Web services management.(Computer Associates)
December 8, 2003... Byline: JOHN FONTANA AND DENISE DUBIE Web services still might be in the early-adopter stage, but that's not stopping vendors from aligning their management tools with the nascent technology. Computer Associates this week is scheduled...

IP PBX push signals Avaya's evolution.
December 8, 2003... Byline: PHIL HOCHMUTH Avaya this week is scheduled to announce a parcel of IP PBX advances, including a new midsize system, and unveil a licensing scheme that analysts say shows the company's mindset shifting from hardware to software. ...

Start-up readies storage controllers.(Maranti Networks)
December 8, 2003... Byline: DENI CONNOR Start-up Maranti Networks this week will launch its first products, a pair of storage controllers that industry watchers say can run applications much faster than typical Fibre Channel switches. The company's...