Network World articles from February 2001

Network World archives from February 2001

Norwood demos Bluetooth office network.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 1, 2001... Norwood Systems had kept quiet for several months about its wireless office network technology based on Bluetooth, but for ComNet, the Australia and U.K. company decided it was time to move into full-disclosure mode. Founded just over a...

Jobs calls demand for new laptop 'gratifying'.(Product Announcement)
February 1, 2001... Claiming that his company has successfully combined power with sex appeal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs Wednesday announced proudly that the new Titanium PowerBook G4 laptops started shipping on schedule this week. Speaking at Apple's headquarters...

ComNet: DSL optimism abounds.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 1, 2001... New products designed to advance the deployment of DSL services are being promoted at ComNet by a number of companies, who seem to remain confident about the technology despite recent layoffs and financial difficulties at large DSL service...

Terra Lycos CEO likely to resign.(Company Operations)
February 1, 2001... There is friction in the top ranks at Terra Lycos SA, a source at Lycos Europe NV confirmed Thursday. Terra Lycos CEO Robert Davis is set to leave the company he partly created, according to published reports. "However, it has not been...

IDC: 2001 a turning point for ASPs.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 1, 2001... This year will be a turning point for application service providers as they rethink their business models and battle to be among the survivors in the fast-growing market, market research firm IDC says in a newly released report. "We're at...

FCC postpones March wireless auction.(Government Activity)
February 1, 2001... The Federal Communications Commission has postponed the upcoming auction of wireless spectrum licenses, previously scheduled for March, until Sept. 12, at the request of Verizon Wireless, the commission announced Wednesday. Verizon...

Sprint earnings just top expectations.(Company Financial Information)
February 1, 2001... Sprint's earnings for the fourth quarter narrowly beat analysts' expectations for its fixed-line unit, FON Group, while results at its mobile division, PCS Group, tallied with analysts' forecasts for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2000 according...

Sun unveils Java for Linux appliances.(Product Announcement)
February 1, 2001... Sun Wednesday shipped two components of its Java 2 Micro Edition, or J2ME, for Linux which together can provide a software platform for consumer and business networked devices, according to the company. The announcement beefs up Sun's support...

WorldCom picks Ericsson for converged network.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2001... Swedish telecom equipment maker L.M. Ericsson Telephone says it is to upgrade the telecom network of WorldCom, integrating circuit-switched and data traffic on a single network. Ericsson Thursday announced that it will deliver its Engine...

Cabletron split-up: One year later; The four spinoffs and Cabletron have all seen revenue grow over the past four quarters.(Company Operations)
February 1, 2001... One year after Cabletron reinvented itself as four "start-up" companies, users and analysts are giving the move good grades. Last February, the network vendor announced a major restructuring plan, which involved splitting the firm, with...

Compaq CEO emphasizes wireless, storage efforts.(Company Operations)
February 1, 2001... LONDON - With the U.S. economy growing soft and the PC market going flat, these are interesting times for the IT industry, Compaq Chairman and CEO Michael Capellas told a group of journalists at a breakfast meeting Thursday. But he thinks...

Virus may steal AOL users' passwords.(Technology Information)
February 1, 2001... Members of AOL Thursday were warned to be on the lookout for a Trojan horse virus that can steal their passwords, potentially allowing a hacker to access their e-mail and other personal information. The virus, dubbed APStrojan.qa, emerged...

Update: Cisco finally ratchets up to 10 gigabits.(Product Announcement)
February 1, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - A year after its closest competitor, Cisco at the ComNet trade show said it will ship 10G bit/sec capabilities for its Internet core routers in March. Cisco's re-announcement of an OC-192c line card and a 320G bit/sec...

Verizon CEO: Speed spurs wireless services.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 1, 2001... Mobile phones are on the verge of becoming the centerpiece of personal computing, with higher data transmission speeds and a wireless infrastructure in place, spurring demand for services, Dennis Strigl, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless,...

New car alarms can call home and track thieves.(Technology Information)
February 1, 2001... With the rollout next month of anti-theft devices that will phone home as well as use global positioning technology to follow a stolen car, the eternal struggle between car thieves and the police will take on a new dimension. After-market...

Pink-slip nation; Layoff numbers hit a new high in December and January - and not just among Net Economy workers. Axes are falling all over the U.S.(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
February 2, 2001... A total of 15,448 Internet workers at 120 companies were shown the door in January, making it the worst month yet of the dot-com implosion, according to TheStandard.com's Layoff Tracker. But the trail of pink slips isn't just following...

Juno aims to resell subscribers' computer cycles.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 2, 2001... In the latest example of a company seeking to reduce its dependence on online advertising, free ISP Juno Online Services hopes to use the processing power of its customers to form a virtual supercomputer for biomedical research, the company...

IBM lands $1.7B deal with pharmaceutical firm.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
February 2, 2001... Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca PLC will outsource its IT operations to IBM in a deal worth $1.7 billion over 7 years, the companies announced Thursday. Under the deal, IBM's Global Services division will run AstraZeneca's global IT...

Microsoft to leave Judge Jackson out of appeal.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 2, 2001... Although Microsoft sharply criticized Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in its brief filed on Jan. 29 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the company said it wouldn't bring up the topic in court later this month. ...

LG launches Internet microwave.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
February 2, 2001... After launching an Internet refrigerator and washing machine in 2000, Seoul LG Electronics kicked off 2001 by unveiling a microwave oven that can be connected to the Internet. The microwave includes a modem and LCD touch-screen monitor, and...

Internet sales tax unlikely to hit stride this year.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 2, 2001... E-commerce companies this year may sidestep a major Internet tax blow. State government groups recently scaled back an effort to streamline and standardize sales tax collection across the multitude of states with such a tax. That effort...

E-mail marketers question EU proposal.(Government Activity)
February 2, 2001... BRUSSELS - The direct marketing industry has hit back at attempts by European legislators to ban marketing by e-mail. The European Commission Friday published a study that estimates that Internet users worldwide pay $9.5 billion a year in...

Oral argument topics announced in Microsoft case.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 2, 2001... Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice agreed on Friday to a schedule of topics for oral arguments in the company's appeal of the antitrust case that threatens to split Microsoft into two separate companies. The parties will appear...

Putting your wireless house in order; It's an ideal scenario. In the office, you roam the floors with your notebook, always connected to the corporate LAN via an 802.11b wireless connection. At the end of the day, you head home, and connect the same notebook to your wireless home network to s.(Buyers Guide)
February 5, 2001... If only it were that simple. Today, on the corporate side, your only choice is 802.11b. But when your workers head home, they're confronted with home network products - PC cards, Universal Serial Bus devices and residential gateways - that may...

Let's TALK about NICs; Looking at wireless network interface cards (NIC) from nine vendors was an eye opener. There are five basic take-home messages:.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
February 5, 2001... None of them are awful, but they all could be better. If you have a desktop machine, you need an external antenna. Processing power in the PC counts for a lot. If you are still running Windows 95 that isn't OS Release 2 or later,...

Putting 802.11b to the test; Cisco's Aironet access point knocks us out in the 802.11b arena, but others aren't far behind.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
February 5, 2001... While this may be the fourth or fifth straight year you've heard this, it's finally the year of the wireless LAN. With the acceptance of the 802.11b standard, a number of products and vendors have hit the market with access point products...

How we did it; Cisco's Aironet access point knocks us out in the 802.11b arena, but others aren't far behind.(Product Information)
February 5, 2001... It's hard to look at a wireless LAN access point by itself. It's a part of a network, and as part of an enterprisewide network it extends communications beyond the LAN. We were concerned with performance, security, manageability,...

Go ahead, cut the wires; Enterprise network managers give wireless LANs a stamp of approval.(Technology Information)
February 5, 2001... Engineers at Dow Corning in Midland, Mich., were wasting their time in too many meetings where they couldn't access the network for important documents. So network managers installed an Enterasys wireless LAN in the office to support 130 users...

infrastructure briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... Dell and Unisys recently announced an agreement to sell notebooks, desktops and servers from one another's lines over the next three years that could result in $1 billion in sales, the firms say. The deal will extend some new services to Dell...

BizRate.com founder Farhad Mohit eyes every aspect of his business the same way comic Steve Martin's cop character on "Let's Get Small" looked at a shrunken motorist: "We're gonna have to measure you.".(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... "Everything in our company is quantified," Mohit says. "And over the past six or eight months that the market has gone into its tailspin, we have stepped that up even further." This measurement mania has BizRate on track to break into the...

HostPro offers dedicated hosting in a shared package.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... LOS ANGELES - Aiming to meet the needs of businesses that want the control of dedicated servers, but without the cost, HostPro last week rolled out a Web-hosting product it says provides the best of both worlds. HostPro Freedom is a...

E-comm needs real-time management.(Technology Information)
February 5, 2001... Traditional management tools that rely on postevent warnings just don't suffice in the real-time e-business world. By the time you're aware of a problem, your e-business customers are already gone. What's needed is an early warning system...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
February 5, 2001... I have read many articles and letters of response about the strict policies at some firms regarding users installing and downloading software, and tinkering with the network ("Should users be allowed to add whatever they want to the network?"...

IT evangelism; Talking up technology with others in your corporate industry pays dividends.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... he cons seem to quickly outweigh the pros when it comes to promoting technology within your industry. Why help a competitor reap gains from technology insights you've fought hard to master on your own? What do you get in return? Actually,...

is windows 2000 ready for full rollout?; Proponents give the package a green light; others cite training issues as reason to proceed with caution.(Product Information)
February 5, 2001... Taking into account the usual woes encountered with Version 1.0 of Microsoft products, the security issues associated with the lack of interdomain partitioning and the high cost of upgrading hardware to Windows 2000 compatibility levels, the...

Is Windows 2000 ready for full rollout?; Proponents give the package a green light; others cite training issues as reason to proceed with caution.(Product Information)
February 5, 2001... Of course Windows 2000 is ready for full rollout. If you use Windows today, you cannot afford not to use Win 2000. Win 2000 is not just a remake of Windows NT; it is a completely new system based on NT concepts. Several of Win 2000's new...

The forgotten side of network security.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... With network security, thoughts quickly turn to hackers, viruses, Trojan horses, denial-of-service attacks and other perceived threats. However, after products are developed and deployed to minimize risk and vulnerability, we may find that we...

apps briefs.(Product Announcement)
February 5, 2001... Users of Hummingbird's enterprise information portal (EIP) will soon have the ability to send secure e-mail with a click of the mouse, thanks to a strategic alliance between the software maker and ZixIt, an e-mail security service provider....

Cabletron split-up: One year later; The four spinoffs and Cabletron have all seen revenue grow over the past four quarters.(Company Operations)
February 5, 2001... One year after Cabletron reinvented itself as four "start-up" companies, users and analysts are giving the move good grades. Last February, the network vendor announced a major restructuring plan, which involved splitting the firm, with...

News briefs.(News Briefs)
February 5, 2001... Novell launches Volera spinoff In a long-anticipated move, Novell last week announced that it's spinning off its Net Content group into a separate firm called Volera. As first reported in Network World, the new company will market and...

Talking to a mirage?(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... Security is expensive. It's expensive in terms of complexity, management and non-ease of use. It's also expensive in terms of the processing power required. But attempts to minimize the impact of the latter on Web servers are now affecting the...

Carrier briefs.(News Briefs)
February 5, 2001... Verizon Wireless last week announced its Mobile Messenger service that lets users send and receive text messages using wireless handsets. The service is available in more than 200 cities, including Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York, San...

Managed services moving more international data; INTERNATIONAL DATA NEEDS.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... Selecting a service provider to handle your company's international data communications requirements can be an overwhelming chore. As the largest companies in the world set up e-commerce and industry-specific electronic exchanges that span...

Start-ups vie to defeat DoS attacks.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... obody's claiming it's easy to prevent and stop denial-ofservice attacks, but three security start-ups are vying to prove that they can minimize the threat. If they succeed in developing monitoring gear to fend off denial-of-service...

ASC adds management to access aggregation.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... VIENNA, VA. - Broadband multiservice access vendor Advanced Switching Communications has introduced an element management system that aims to integrate with myriad other devices in service provider networks. ASC's rackable and...

RBOCs report strong demand for DSL services; SBC Communications adds more than 250,000 new lines in the fourth quarter.(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
February 5, 2001... Year 2000 DSL numbers for the regional Bell operating companies are finally in. The common thread? Explosive growth. SBC ended the year with about 767,000 subscribers, Verizon with 540,000, Qwest with 255,000 and BellSouth with 215,000. In...

Redback offering aims to reduce 'time to service'; SmartEdge 100 - a scaled-down version of the SmartEdge 800 - moves metropolitan access closer to the edge.(Product Announcement)
February 5, 2001... SUNNYVALE, CALIF. - Redback Networks last week unveiled a low-end version of its metropolitan optical access platform designed to let service providers extend services downward into multitenant buildings and other metropolitan edge...

PHP: Ending the fun.
February 5, 2001... Well folks, it has been a fun three weeks with PHP. In week one (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 2831), we took a 5,000-foot view of PHP, its history and market. In week two (DocFinder: 2830), we looked at how to include PHP scripts in Web pages....

Looking to smooth out DSL delivery; Virtual Access hopes to improve wholesaler/reseller relationship.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... irtual Access is aiming to solve the thorny issue of identifying and resolving problems in DSL networks without involving the DSL wholesaler. The Ascot, England, firm's recently announced DSL Service Managed Gateway is designed to let DSL...

Spectrum auction exceeds expectations.(Government Activity)
February 5, 2001... ith the imminent rise of third-generation wireless standards, established service providers and start-ups have demonstrated a willingness to empty their pockets for spectrum licenses in prime markets such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago....

Dr Intranet.(Industry Trend or Event)(Questions and Answers)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... We're running out of IP addresses and must implement Network Address Translation (NAT) on our school district's four-school WAN. Our Windows NT network uses 3Com's Linkbuilder FMS 2 and Netbuilder Remote Office routers and hubs at each site. We...

Don't turn your back on all new, young ventures.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... With the failure of so many young telecom ventures it's tempting to turn back to the big old incumbents and leave it at that. But some of these newfangled carriers still seem to have a future. Take Yipes Communications. Only 18 months old,...

New distribution meets old media.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... B etter late than never, but too little too late: Thomas Middelhoff, Bertelsmann's CEO, announced a second Napster service to go live in June or July to offer music downloads from the BMG catalog for a monthly fee. I quote from Network...

Emperative looks to speed provisioning of optical circuits.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... WALTHAM, MASS. - Emperative is taking its expertise provisioning DSL services into the optical arena, where it hopes to speed service-delivery times. The company this week will introduce ProvEn Optical software it claims can provision...

edge briefs.(Product Announcement)
February 5, 2001... Rapid5 Networks last week introduced the RCP-700 Rapid Convergence Platform, which provides Internet traffic offload, multiservice gateway functionality and broadband access concentration. Among other capabilities, the RCP-700 intercepts and...

ARIBA'S PURCHASE OF AGILE POSES CHALLENGE.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. -Communication between manufacturers and suppliers exchanging product design information is generally hit-or-miss at best. The process of shoring up those links, increasingly known as collaborative commerce, will be a hot...

ComNet Reporter's Notebook.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... Here is a sampling of sights seen and words heard around the show last week: Hands down the most popular booth giveaway items at the show were plastic "walk-a-pet" toys. Antara. net's dragon and Emerge-corp's dinosaur were the big...

Novell aims to ease service pack installs.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... Novell last week said it is rolling out new technology to make it easier and faster for customers to install service packs on their servers. The ZENworks for Servers 2 feature will let administrators automate the rollout of support packs...

Report says 2001 to be turning point for ASPs.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... This year will be a turning point for application service providers as they rethink their business models and battle to be among the survivors in the fast-growing market, research firm IDC says in a new report. "We're at the point where...

Cisco reannounces 10G Internet core router.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - A year behind its closest competitor, Cisco now plans to ship 10G bit/sec capabilities for its Internet core routers in March. At ComNet 2001 last week, Cisco said an OC-192c line card, a four-port OC-48c module and a...

Open source databases preparing for prime time.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... NEW YORK - Open source databases may not yet be armor-clad enough for use as back-end corporate data stores, but observers say those displayed at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo last week are on the right track. At the very least, analysts...

VoIP hubbub heard over ComNet din.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - The voice-over-IP development machine was running full bore last week at ComNet 2001, with a slew of companies cranking out services and products for enterprise and carrier networks. Big carriers such as AT&T and WorldCom...

WorldCom eyes a 'smarter' VPN service.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... WorldCom is looking to expand its VPN services through a partnership with upstart service vendor SmartPipes, offering enterprise customers a potentially powerful alternative to frame relay as a way to connect corporate offices. With such a...

Vendors grapple with security threats, each other.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - Companies need to pick and choose from a variety of security vendors to ensure they get the best products to protect their networks. That's what a panel of security vendors told a ComNet 2001 crowd last week at the...

Cisco aims to add oomph to IP nets.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - Cisco demonstrated a few unannounced products at ComNet 2001 last week, designed to let users implement secure, high-performance VPNs and more tightly meld IP and ATM WANs. The company said it also expects to ship a 10G...

Sprint boosts ATM offerings to support ION service; Provider serves up voice over ATM that company says will whet appetites for ION.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... KANSAS CITY, MO. - Sprint ATM customers got a double enticement last week - a voice-over-ATM service that lets them push data as well as voice traffic over one line and a service-level agreement guaranteeing a restored network connection within...

NAI IS LATEST DoS VICTIM.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... Antivirus software vendor Network Associates was hit by a denial-ofservice attack last week that hampered access to the company's Web site for about 90 minutes. Network Associates says the site never went fully offline. Some users were...

AT&T and WorldCom dive into voice over IP.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - AT&T and WorldCom last week separately introduced services designed to help customers cut costs and simplify their networks by running voice traffic over new or existing IP and frame relay links. However, the actual cost...

Microsoft dubs new versions of Win, Office 'XP'.(Product Announcement)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... To paraphrase the term: it's about the Internet, stupid. With that in mind, Microsoft Monday announced it has anointed its new versions of its popular software programs Windows and Office with an "XP" at the end of the names. The initials,...

Sun snags storage vendor LSC.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... Sun said it signed an agreement to acquire storage software vendor LSC, part of an effort to strengthen its data-warehousing play against rivals like EMC. Eagan, Minn., LSC makes file systems and data storage software. Sun hopes to add the...

Hackers hit World Economic Forum servers.(Industry Trend or Event)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... Hackers have attacked servers containing sensitive information at the World Economic Forum, a spokeswoman for the Davos, Switzerland organization confirmed on Monday. She was unable to give further details, but according to a report in the...

Bell Labs cryptologist sees DSA flaw, fix.(table)(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
February 5, 2001... A scientist at Bell Labs, the research and development wing of Lucent, has discovered a flaw in the Digital Signature Algorithm that could have affected the integrity of secure transactions on the Internet and adversely impacted VPNs, online...

Dataquest: Server, workstation shipments up in 2000.(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
February 5, 2001... Server shipments rose 14% over 1999 shipments, while workstation sales increased 11.3% in 2000, two new studies released Monday said. Server shipments for 2000 reached 3.9 million units, according to research by Gartner Dataquest, a unit of...

Novell unlocks directories.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... Novell is preparing a dual-pronged strategy for directory services that includes wireless connectivity to its directory and enabling its own applications to access non-Novell directories, according to sources at the company. Looking to...

JavaScript spy creates an e-mail wiretap.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
February 5, 2001... A newly identified snooping technology allows someone sending an e-mail to see what the recipient wrote when it is forwarded on to another user, an Internet privacy group announced Monday. It really is a wiretap and it's "very illegal and...

Researchers uncover wireless security flaws.(Technology Information)
February 5, 2001... Wireless devices, including laptop computers and PDAs, that are widely used to access corporate computer networks rely on a protocol that has "major security flaws" and are vulnerable to hackers using easily obtained equipment, a research group...

BugTraq members used to launch attack against Network Associates.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... A denial-of-service attack that hindered access to Network Associates Inc.'s Web sites last week was launched against the security software vendor through a Trojan horse program that was sent to members of the popular BugTraq security mailing...

In search of port density in COs and collocation spaces.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... Vendors of integrated-access devices for the customer premise face an inherent challenge. IADs are not the kind of thing that end users just wake up one day and decide to buy. The very idea of "integrating" access implies that the customer is...

Tie your bundle with Scotch tape and string.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 5, 2001... The original idea behind AT&T's four-way breakup announced last fall was to let stockholders better realize the value of each separate business. But new information suggests another reason for the move: AT&T could never integrate its...

A year after meltdown: No silver bullet for DoS.(Industry Trend or Event)
February 5, 2001... A year after distributed denial-of-service attacks blasted the likes of Yahoo, eBay and eTrade offline, no one has found an easy way to defend against a flood of unwanted IP packets. In fact, everyone's still pretty much in the dark -...

Sun answers Microsoft with Net services push.(Company Business and Marketing)
February 6, 2001... In a move that appears aimed squarely at Microsoft's .Net Internet initiative, Sun Monday unveiled the Sun Open Net Environment - Sun ONE, which includes server software, development tools and other products for building Web-based e-commerce...

Sprint outlines new international strategy.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
February 6, 2001... Sprint Tuesday announced it will build out its global IP network across Europe and Asia as part of its revamped international strategy. Sprint plans to expand its IP network to connect 15 cities in 13 European and Asian countries by...

EToys, Petopia close down.(Company Financial Information)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
February 6, 2001... The e-commerce shakeout continues as online pet site Petopia.com and beleaguered Internet toy retailer eToys close their virtual doors. In a Monday news release, eToys announced it had sent job elimination notices to its remaining 293...

Nortel grabs JDS optical biz.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
February 6, 2001... Telecom manufacturer Nortel Networks Tuesday announced a definitive agreement to buy JDS Uniphase's 980 nanometer pump-laser chip design and manufacturing subsidiary for up to $3 billion in stock. JDS Uniphase's subsidiary, in Zurich,...