Network World articles from December 2005

Network World archives from December 2005

Managing the CIRT: Professionalism; * DISA on maintaining professionalism in a CIRT.(Computer Incident Response Team management, Defense Information Systems Agency)
December 1, 2005... Byline: M. E. Kabay This is another in an occasional series of articles looking at Computer Incident Response Team management. The primary source for this series is the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency training course listed at...

Cisco IOS hole surfaces; * Patches from Cisco, Apple, Mandriva, others* Beware latest Sober variant* Second sample of Windows attack code posted, and other interesting reading.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Jason Meserve Today's bug patches and security alerts: Cisco IOS security hole surfaces in Web server code Security researchers this week said they discovered a hole in the Web server code in Cisco's IOS software. The flaw...

Iron Mountain snaps up online storage company.(Iron Mountain Inc. acquired LiveVaull Corp.)(Brief article)
December 1, 2005... Data protection company Iron Mountain Thursday announced it is buying LiveVault, a provider of online server backup and recovery services. The companies know each other well. Iron Mountain has been an investor in LiveVault since 2000...

Orbital Data debuts WAN acceleration products; * A look at what the Orbital 6000 series will offer customers.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Denise Dubie Orbital Data this month made available a new set of products that the company says will increase throughput and enable more automation when tackling WAN acceleration and optimization. The Orbital 6000 series...

Linux Networx zooms into supercomputing; * Linux Networx's Linux Supersystems.(Brief article)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Deni Connor Linux Networx recently launched the first of its Linux Supersystems for high-performance computing environments. The LS Series is a cluster of AMD Athlon-based servers that the company says is focused on industry,...

WLANs keep going strong; * Studies show strong growth.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Jeff Caruso If there's one area of LANs where the hyperbole truly remains hyperbolic, it's wireless LANs. A research firm called ABI Research last month released a study that says wireless mesh networking will attain a...

Marathon servers; * Novell shows off servers with longest uptime.(Brief article)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Dave Kearns How long has your server been up? According to Novell's "Cool Solutions" Web site, as of Nov. 10 the champion server (a NetWare 3.12 box) had been up for 2,263 days, 3 hours, 47 minutes, and 59 seconds. That's...

Whale's SSL VPN gear adds compression; * Whale Communications takes on compression.(secure socket layer virtual private networks)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Tim Greene Whale Communications is adding compression to its SSL VPN platform, making it more apparent that its Intelligent Application Gateways are not just remote access boxes. The gear now contains a compression engine...

Dust-up over Storage Networking World's RFID tagging of attendees, Part 2; * More of the e-mail conversation with Storage Networking World's Ron Milton.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Mike Karp Today, we continue relaying an e-mail exchange I had with Ron Milton, executive vice president of Computerworld, the publication that runs Storage Networking World. A few weeks ago this newsletter published an...

Primary Rate Interface vs. Basic Rate Interface; * BRI was designed to provide two bearer channels for digital voice.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Steve Taylor, Jim Metzler Last time, we began a retrospective look at ISDN. In particular, we examined the Primary Rate Interface in some detail, so this time we'll move on to the Basic Rate Interface. The BRI was designed...

MailShadow's mailbox-level disaster recovery; * Software provides disaster-recovery option for Exchange.(developed by Cemaphore Systems Inc.)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Michael Osterman One of the fundamental challenges in managing an e-mail system is making sure that e-mail continues to be accessible during big disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes - but also during more common...

RIM one step closer to Judgment Day?(Research in Motion Ltd. lost the patent infringement case against NTP Inc.)
December 1, 2005... Byline: John Cox BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has lost its latest move in the long-running patent infringement case brought by NTP, according to published reports. U.S. District Court Judge James Spencer Wednesday denied a...

Heads roll at Nortel; more expected.(Brian Mc Fadden and Sue Spradley)(Brief article)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Jim Duffy In a sign of a further shakeup to come, Nortel has dismissed two senior-level executives two weeks after a new CEO took up the reins of the troubled company. Nortel confirmed that Brian Mc Fadden, a 28-year Nortel...

Opinion: Holiday shopping online? Beware of the e-commerce Twilight Zone.(Column)
December 2, 2005... Byline: Kevin Tolly As network and system architects and product designers, we deal with a world of black and white. We deploy technology to optimize and enhance legitimate business transactions while simultaneously fighting a...

Putting lipstick on the Internet porno-pig.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Mark Gibbs Before I begin this week's tirade, allow me to point out that the Sony BMG fiasco keeps getting better. Sony has been accused of fraud, false advertising, trespass, violations of state and federal statutes...

Vendors mix voice, mobile tools.(Avaya and Symbol Technologies partnered to develop mobile internet telephony and computing applications)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Phil Hochmuth Avaya and Symbol Technologies last week announced a product partnership aimed at delivering mobile IP telephony and computing to healthcare and retail customers. Avaya's IP Softphone client has been fine-tuned...

Vendors tackle SOA management, security; Five companies plan to release this week products aimed at corporate environments.(service oriented architecture)
December 5, 2005... Byline: John Fontana As the concept of service-oriented architecture begins to find life in corporate computing, a handful of vendors this week plans to unveil software to help companies manage and secure their SOAs, as well as...

ZigBee: What's in it for me?
December 5, 2005... ZigBee is a new technology being deployed for wireless sensor networks. A sensor network is an infrastructure composed of sensing, computing and communications elements that allows an administrator to monitor, observe and react to events...

Automation: Better but not yet automatic.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Denise Dubie Automation has come a long way since the days of running batch jobs on mainframes, but given the complexity of today's distributed networks, the technology still has plenty of growing up to do, experts say. ...

When IT, politics collide.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Adam Gaffin In September, Massachusetts' Information Technology Division adopted a new "Enterprise Technical Reference Model" aimed at making it easier for state departments and the public to find and share information. It's a...

Network Life ezine download page; 12/05/05.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Keith Shaw Click here to subscribe and download a Free copy of the latest Network Life issue in ezine format. Home networks are great for sharing printers or an Internet connection, but what your users (friends, relatives and...

The home network of the future; Thinking like an IT guy will save you money and frustration down the road.
December 5, 2005... Computers without networks are hard to imagine these days, but they did once exist as islands of capability. Sneakernet was the norm - life was hard. With the LAN, and eventually the Internet, the power and convenience of networking became...

A new peer-to-peer network option; MioNet combines file sharing and remote desktop control.
December 5, 2005... Byline: James E. Gaskin Does the world need another remote control desktop program, so you can reach out and click someone else's icons? Perhaps we do. A new product called MioNet offers an inexpensive way to share files, access remote...

Detective agency scores big with makeover; Chicago firm gets IT overhaul from CDW, Intel, Lenovo and Linksys.(CDW Corp.)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Sandra Gittlen A few months ago, I told you about a makeover contest that CDW, a technology retailer, was running along with its partners Intel, Lenovo and Linksys. The gist was that CDW would choose five small companies for a...

Northrop Grumman to deliver IP conferencing net to DoD.(US Department of Defense)(Brief article)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Phil Hochmuth The U.S. Department of Defense last week picked Northrop Grumman to build its $51 million IP videoconference network, based on hardware and software from Cisco and Radvision, network services from AT&T and...

Linking networks wirelessly.(wireless routers networking)(Brief article)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Ron Nutter Can you tell me whether it's possible to have two wireless routers communicate with each other via their wireless protocol? I'm hoping to add an Ethernet access point at a remote location in my house without having...

Sun expands menu of free software.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Jennifer Mears Sun, which early this year released a free version of its Unix-based Solaris operating system, last week announced plans to unleash its entire software stack to the open source community. Following through on...

How we did it.(Juniper Networks Inc. testing ISG 2000)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Joel Snyder We installed the ISG 2000 with IDP blades into our production network at its very edge, connected directly to our two upstream routers. With two 45M bit/sec circuits coming into our network, we kept the ISG 2000...

'Reverse engineering'; IT shops finding buyers for their in-house software.(Merrill Lynch and Company Inc. selling its X4ML software to SOA Software Inc.)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Ann Bednarz Like many of the largest companies, Merrill Lynch can't always buy the IT tools it wants. Sometimes they just don't exist. That's why four years ago the financial services firm started building its own software to...

Sun shipping eight-core Niagara servers.(Sun Microsystems Inc., )
December 5, 2005... Byline: Jennifer Mears Sun this week is aiming to change the way corporate customers look at rack-dense servers by unveiling low-power-consuming, high-processing systems based on its new multicore, multithreaded UltraSPARC T1...

In brief: CommonTime releases mSuite 4.1.(Brief article)
December 5, 2005... * Mobile software vendor CommonTime last week released mSuite 4.1, which delivers wireless, push Lotus Notes e-mail, personal-information management and instant messaging capabilities to users of devices that run on Windows Mobile 5.0....

In brief: Radware to buy IPS vendor V-Secure.(intrusion-prevention-system )
December 5, 2005... * Radware last week announced plans to purchase intrusion-prevention-system vendor V-Secure for $15 million. The V-Secure acquisition gives Radware a pure intrusion-prevention and -detection technology to run on its Layer 4-7 switch...

Windows management service debuts.(FullArmor planning to introduce PolicyPortal)
December 5, 2005... Byline: John Fontana FullArmor this week is expected to introduce a service designed to help companies use policies to manage Windows-based mobile laptops and remote machines that are not routinely connected to a network. ...

Check Point offers security appliances.(Checkpoint Systems Inc)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Tim Greene Check Point has expanded its small- and midsize-business offerings with two multifunction security appliances for corporate settings with many small sites that can be managed remotely in large numbers. Called...

Under pressure; Inside the high-stress life of a chief information security officer.(AT&T Inc.'s Ed Amoroso)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Sandra Gittlen He has commanded a war room at home in his pajamas, led a disaster response team from a Little League field and received an alert about the Zotob virus while sunning on a Cape Cod beach. When you're the chief...

News briefs: Cisco IOS security hole surfaces.(Cisco Systems Inc.'s internetwork operating system)(Nortel Networks Corp. appoints Mike Zafirovski)(Iron Mountain acquires LiveVault corp.)
December 5, 2005... * Security researchers last week said they discovered a hole in the Web-server code in Cisco's IOS software. The vulnerability, as reported by the security organizations Secunia and SecurityFocus, could let a potential attacker view a...

Oakley Thump 2 and X-OOM MP3 Radio Recorder for iPod.(Product/service evaluation)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Keith Shaw The scoop: Thump 2 (1G-byte version), about $450, from Oakley. What it is: The latest version of Oakley's digital music eyewear, the Thump 2 adds more memory (available in 256M-, 512M- or 1G-byte versions)...

Pity the poor telephone company?
December 5, 2005... Byline: Scott Bradner From a distance it looks like a good time to be a traditional phone company in the United States. The FCC has given these companies an open license to exploit their dominant market positions. The U.S. House and...

Open source GPL to get major revision.(General Public License)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Phil Hochmuth A proposed revision of the GNU General Public License could have lasting effects on users and developers of open source software. Radio: The GPL roadmap Peter Brown, executive director of the Free...

Juniper's chassis combines firewall, VPN and IPS.(Juniper Networks Inc., intrusion-prevention system, virtual private network)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Joel Snyder When Juniper shipped the Integrated Security Gateway 2000 late last year, the company said it was more than another low-density NetScreen firewall. In addition to the basic firewall and VPN capability built into the...

Nokia pushes harder for enterprise mobility.
December 5, 2005... Byline: John Cox Nokia's recently announced plan to buy Intellisync, a wireless e-mail vendor, for $430 million will give the cell phone giant key software for crafting mobile data applications for business. Intellisync will be...

Creating PDF files on Windows.(portable document format)(Brief article)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Steve Blass A few years ago you wrote about GhostScript-based PDF creation tools. We haven't been successful with this and wonder whether there's an update or another open source option for creating PDF files on Windows...

Users urge BlackBerry maker to settle.(NTP Inc. filed case against Research in Motion Ltd. for Patent infringement)
December 5, 2005... Byline: John Cox The latest setback for Research in Motion in its long-running patent infringement battle has at least some users saying it is time for the BlackBerry maker to give up the fight and settle. The company's legal woes...

HP bolsters utility services.(Hewlett-Packard Co.)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Tom Krazit HP last week introduced several utility computing services that will cater to companies looking for a way to handle rapidly changing demands for computing resources. HP's new Infrastructure Provisioning Service...

Open source firm to challenge VMware.(XenSource launches operating system software 'Xen 3.0')
December 5, 2005... Byline: Jennifer Mears XenSource, the company founded to provide support and maintenance for the open source Xen virtual-machine monitor, is releasing its first commercial product, a set of tools that the company says will make it...

SAML 2.0 simplifies federation.(Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0)
December 5, 2005... Until this year, identity federation has suffered from the problem of too many standards. Companies that deployed federation before the fourth quarter were forced to deal with five incompatible protocols: OASIS Security Assertion Markup...

It's a content conundrum.(Verizon Communications Inc.acquiring MCI Communications Corp.)(AT&T Inc. acquiring SBC Communications Inc.)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Johna Till Johnson It's official - the Verizon/MCI and SBC/AT&T mergers have gotten final approvals from federal and state authorities. The next step, the joke goes, is for AT&T and Verizon to buy each other, thus...

ZigBee: What's in it for me?
December 5, 2005... ZigBee is a new technology now being deployed for wireless sensor networks. A sensor network is an infrastructure comprised of sensing, computing and communications elements that allows the administrator to instrument, observe and react to...

Mirapoint bolsters messaging server.(Message Server M50)
December 5, 2005... Byline: John Fontana Messaging vendor Mirapoint this month plans to begin shipping an appliance combining e-mail, management and security that is designed to help small and midsize businesses simplify their infrastructures and reduce...

The need for (enough) speed.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Kevin Tolly As we progress through each year, one thing is certain - network gear gets faster. Sometimes the increase manifests itself by a move up the Ethernet speed ladder, from 100 to 1,000 or now 10,000M bit/sec. Other...

IT leaders go public; Seeking challenge, some go to government work from private sector.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Jennifer Mears Art Stephens began his career as a programmer at Accenture and worked his way up the ranks, eventually heading Deloitte Consulting's office in Harrisburg, Pa. But when an opportunity arose to stray from his...

Game over, start new game.(Computer games market growth)(Column)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Howard Anderson My last column discussed the need for a line of technology products for those older than 50 ("curmudgeonware"). This time let's go to the opposite end of the spectrum and talk about what new-genre games are...

Wireless laptops get new defense.(Network Chemistry launches beta version for network security software 'RFprotect Endpoint')
December 5, 2005... Byline: John Cox Network Chemistry is extending its security software to cover laptops running various kinds of wireless connections. The new product, called RFprotect Endpoint, will include an agent that runs on laptops and enforces...

Application servers get SOA treatment.(service oriented architecture )
December 5, 2005... Byline: Ann Bednarz As more corporate architects adopt a new approach to building applications, the vendors responsible for the foundation - the application server - are getting their own products in shape to accommodate the new...

Let's have some fun with our network!
December 5, 2005... Byline: Keith Shaw Home networks are great for sharing printers or an Internet connection, but what your users (friends, relatives and co-workers) really want to do with them is have some fun. They[sup.1]re going to want to view...

Branch office IT strategies are vital.(Survey)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Robin Gareiss Welcome to your first weekly newsletter addressing emerging strategies and best practices for managing the branch office. Branch offices - and particularly the employees in them - have quickly become critical...

LAN party planning tips and other entertaining answers.(local area networks)
December 5, 2005... Byline: James E. Gaskin My son tricked me into giving him a LAN party for his 13th birthday. What do I need to make this party work? - Marnie from Seattle Seems like only yesterday that the kids were happy with Chuck E. Cheese,...

You say you can smell phish in your in-box?
December 5, 2005... Byline: Paul McNamara Discovering that your online street smarts aren't up to snuff has got to sting, yet more than a half-million individuals have unflinchingly summoned the courage to take MailFrontier's Phishing IQ Test since July...

The GPL roadmap.(Peter Brown speaks about General Public License)(Podcast)(Brief article)
December 5, 2005... Senior Editor Phil Hochmuth talks with Peter Brown, the executive director of the free software foundation about the roadmap for General Public License, an open source licensing scheme for software. Note: If you want to send an audio...

HP set to unveil management dashboard.(Hewlett-Packard Co.,OpenView Dashboard 1.0)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Denise Dubie HP this week is set to share details on its latest OpenView offering, which promises to help organizations better track application performance by delivering different statistics to people with different jobs. ...

In brief: InMage adds to disaster recovery software.(InMage Systems enhanced its DR-Scout software)(Brief article)
December 5, 2005... InMage Systems is adding business-event-based recovery and automated information tiering features to its DR-Scout suite of disaster-recovery software, according to an executive of the company. InMage is expected to announce this month that...

The insanely cool VMware Player.(Product/service evaluation)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Mark Gibbs Last week we finished with a brief discussion of VMware's free VMware Player, which is essentially an amazingly useful run-time for virtual machines that runs under Windows and Linux. As was noted in Gibbsblog a...

Web application firewalls take on more heat.
December 5, 2005... Byline: Tim Greene Over the next few months Web application firewall vendors Citrix, F5 Networks, Imperva, NetContinuum and Protegrity will add features that let their products take on bigger roles in speeding traffic to server farms...

Malware and rootkits team up for mayhem.(F-Secure Corp.'s BlackLight Revealer)(Column)
December 5, 2005... Byline: Deb Radcliff Home alone after school one day, Tommy scans through the latest blogs and teen Web sites, stopping for a chat or two. Somewhere along the way, the computer's browser hits a site that instantly and silently loads a...

Why you should Trust Eli with most security updates.(Electronic Lifestyle Integration)(Product/service evaluation)
December 5, 2005... Most homes now have more than one PC connected to a broadband line. Adding several laptops to the equation multiplies the problem of keeping them all protected from the bad things that occur with an always-on Internet connection. Tasks...

Retro gaming has never been better (wakka wakka wakka).
December 5, 2005... Byline: Keith Shaw In 1976 my world changed forever when I went to the new Clifton Country Mall (in Clifton Park, N.Y.) and walked into the Electric Circuit, the new "arcade" that had a bunch of pinball machines, foosball tables and...

Ojo videophone looks great, but issues remain.(Motorola Ojo)(Product/service evaluation)
December 5, 2005... Byline: James E. Gaskin The Motorola Ojo videophone is like a super model: stunning but temperamental. But once the videophone wow factor cools down and you get used to the looks, will it fit comfortably into your everyday life? ...

The networked living room; Battles rage for the hearts and minds (and money) of home network users.
December 5, 2005... Several battles are raging in the war to control the home network. Telecoms and cable companies are facing off, bludgeoning each other with service bundles that combine video, voice and data. Consumer electronics and PC vendors are...

Letters to the editor: "Beware cybersquatters".
December 5, 2005... Battling squatters "Beware cybersquatters" is a timely article. I am a small business owner and have trademark rights to the name RCS Advisors. A few days ago, Unasi registered the domain name RCSAdvisors.com through BelgiumDomains.com...

Content is king.(digital rights management software)
December 5, 2005... The core of the network living room relies on sharing digital content, but content providers hate the idea of sharing. When Napster came along, the music industry fought tooth and nail and lost a ton of money in doing so.While iTunes and...

Debunking the set-top box safety net - "Entertainment Bypass" will rule.
December 6, 2005... Byline: Daniel Briere, Patrick Hurley The set-top box is becoming less important. That's right, less important. Wow, how can you say that? Cisco just paid bazillions for Scientific Atlanta. Microsoft is plowing money into its IPTV...

Foundry lands Microsoft for high-performance computing initiative; * Microsoft joins Foundry's HPC Ethernet Alliance.(Brief article)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Jeff Caruso Foundry Networks last month continued to build its case for high-performance computing by signing Microsoft to its HPC program and holding the first meeting of its HPC Ethernet Alliance at the SC2005 supercomputing...

Chambers outlines video challenge for carriers, enterprises, Cisco.
December 6, 2005... Byline: Phil Hochmuth Video over IP will drive carrier and business network loads to new highs, forcing users to look to Cisco for products and services to manage this network stress, CEO John Chambers said to a group of industry and...

Utility computing: Are we there yet? * The idea behind a utility storage environment.
December 6, 2005... Byline: Mike Karp Utility computing, the overused and continuously-redefined term that we have heard so much about during the last two years, keeps edging closer to reality. It is tempting to apply one of Zeno's paradoxes in...

Is Cisco's ASA a headache-in-waiting? * Reader weighs in on Cisco's all-in-one security appliance.(Cisco Systems ASA 5500)(Adaptive Security Appliance )(Column)
December 6, 2005... Byline: M. E. Kabay Reader Noman Bari wrote to me some time ago from Karachi, Pakistan, with a thoughtful comment on Cisco's new multifunctional ASA security appliance. Bari has a B.S. in Electronics and has the certifications...

Exinda says the price is right; * Exinda rolls out Exinda 1700 and 6700 app acceleration and WAN optimization tools.(Exinda Networks Inc.)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Denise Dubie When it comes to application acceleration and WAN optimization - in which appliances often need to be installed at either side of a WAN link - price and performance go hand in hand when picking a product. ...

Sun rolls out Sun Fire T2000 Server; * Sun introduces first server using its UltraSparc T1 CoolThreads technology.(Brief article)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Deni Connor Sun this week at its quarterly announcements introduced the first of its servers that uses its UltraSparc T1 (formerly Niagara) CoolThreads technology. The 2U high Sun Fire T2000 Server uses the UltraSparc T1...

Career planning for 2006; * Suggestions for planning and meeting career goals.(Brief article)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Amy Schurr With only a few weeks remaining in the year, it's a good time to start planning your career goals for 2006, job site CareerWomen.com recommends. Regardless of your gender, CareerWomen.com President JillXan...

Aventail sets its sights big with a 2,000-user device; * Aventail EX-2500 supports 2,000 concurrent users.(Brief article)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Tim Greene Aventail is going bigger with its new SSL VPN appliance. Called EX-2500, the device supports up to 2,000 concurrent users and comes with a package of standard features including:* Secure Desktop, which creates a...

Data quality for dummies, Part 1; * The challenge of maintaining data quality.
December 6, 2005... Byline: Johna Till Johnson Garbage in, garbage out: That's an adage dating back to the dark ages of computing. It can also serve as a call to arms for any organization seeking to make effective use of organizational data to improve...

Novell rolls out Identity Manager 3; * Novell updates its identity management offering.
December 6, 2005... Byline: Dave Kearns Novell keeps repeating the mantra that, going forward, the company will emphasize the "twin pillars" (as CEO Jack Messman calls them) of Linux and identity management. But lately all we've heard from the company is...

ISDN: Where did it go wrong? * ISDN history 101.(Brief article)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Steve Taylor, Jim Metzler The last couple of newsletters discussed some of the background surrounding ISDN. Today, we'll discuss why ISDN didn't do well in the market. The motivation for this discussion is to drive a better...

Mirapoint offers all-in-one e-mail, calendaring, address book device for SMBs; * Mirapoint announces the M50 for small and midsize businesses.(Brief article)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Michael Osterman Mirapoint last week announced a self-contained appliance for small and midsize businesses that houses an e-mail server, calendaring server and address book, along with anti-virus and anti-spam capabilities....

PostX boosts e-mail authentication management.(Brief article)
December 6, 2005... Byline: Cara Garretson PostX on Tuesday released a new version of its e-mail encryption offering that includes enhancements to its policy management and authentication features. PostX Messaging Application Platform (MAP) lets...