Network World articles from July 2001

Network World archives from July 2001

Network fundamentalism is not a bad thing.(Industry Trend or Event)(Column)
July 2, 2001... During a recent period of severance, I interviewed for a variety of positions, one of which was for a network architect/engineer. Being more of a manager than an engineer, I didn't expect much out of the interview, but I went anyway. The...

Needed: An Electronic Bill of Rights.(Government Activity)(Column)
July 2, 2001... Like it or not, Congress is coming to the firewall nearest you. The recent spate of computer security legislation is going to have an effect on every U.S. citizen. These laws include: * The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act...

FCC/FDA FAQ.(Government Activity)
July 2, 2001... Q Which federal agency is in charge of regulating mobile phones? A The Federal Communications Commission, although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has oversight of the cell phone industry and health-related issues. Q Has the FCC...

CELL PHONE SAFETY; Recent legal claims against employers who issuecell phones raise questions about corporate liability. How can you protect yourself?(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Mark Hart was hired in August 1998 as director of worldwide sales for smartphone maker NeoPoint. As someone who demonstrated cell phones, often prototypes, to pick up sales, you could say being on the phone was Hart's job. He started using...

Cell phone industry faces legal tests.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... Gibb Brower, a 41-year-old, self-employed landscaper in San Diego, used a cell phone to help run his business from the road or on job sites for four years. He says his cell phones - an analog Motorola flip phone and a digital Sony - caused...

Patent filings raise questions.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... The debate over the potential connection between cell phones and health problems has been fueled by the discovery that even as major cell phone manufacturers argued that phones pose no health risks, the companies were filing patents for devices...

The law.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... Q. If an employee decides to use a cell phone for business purposes, can that employee file a claim against the employer? A. No. Although, a company is open to liability if the company issues the phone to the employee. Q. If an...

U.S. military sees its future in wireless.(Government Activity)
July 2, 2001... The U.S. military has long used proprietary private radio equipment, but the Pentagon now wants to put off-the-shelf wireless voice and data technologies in the hands of American soldiers as well. To that end, the military has begun...

Jamming, military style.(Government Activity)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2001... Given its plans to embrace more wireless network technologies, the military is doing lots of upfront research. To address concerns about the jamming or interfering with wireless network signals, some long-term research sponsored by the...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2001... Regarding your face-off on whether IT workers need a union (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 4925): Doctors are now forming unions. Airline pilots have been unionized for years. IT workers are sometimes the darlings of their companies, but...

[0] Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2001... NARUS, Digital Island respond I am writing to clarify the article "Digital Island and Xacct lock horns over billing software" (http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2001/0615di.html). The genesis for this story was Digital Island's search for...

Alternative work arrangements; Worker-friendly options such as telecommuting are on the rise. Here's how two companies make it work.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... As the network operations team leader at Lotus in Cambridge, Mass., Jay Bendonis often finds himself woken in the middle of the night to repair a network outage. But if he stays all night, his colleagues might have a tough time finding him...

Improving the Web experience.(Adlex customer-experience improvement products and services)(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Adlex - a maker of performance monitoring and management tools - is housed in a striking blue office building perched on pillars atop a hill off the busy Route 495 high-tech corridor in Marlboro, Mass. Prior to repair work and Adlex's tenancy,...

Carrier briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Covad Communications recently introduced an online tool designed to give customers up-to-date information on their DSL orders. Called Web Self Service, the tool lets customers track the separate stages involved in a DSL installation, letting...

Don't give up on 'extranet service providers'.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... In my last column I covered the seismic shifts that are forcing carriers to restructure their services, geographies and business models. Today, I'll zero in on a particular change that has broad implications for the services that you'll be...

Infrastructure briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Dell last week announced a software partnership with Inktomi that effectively turns some Dell servers into caching appliances. Dell will make Inktomi's Traffic Server Engine software available on its PowerEdge 1550 and PowerEdge 2550 servers....

MPLS proposal to aid service levels; The four service classes could reduce lead times from service providers deploying technology.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
July 2, 2001... Multi-protocol Label Switching is gaining momentum within the service provider community. In addition to being well-suited to handle the traffic engineering and scaling issues associated with large carrier backbone networks, MPLS will...

Apps briefs.(News Briefs)
July 2, 2001... Infoteria last week announced the Asteria Platform for RosettaNet, XML-based software that lets businesses integrate front and back-office systems into RosettaNet standard-based trading communities. The platform consists of the Asteria...

Network management for next to nothing; NETWORK MANAGEMENT Some tools for managing networks without breaking the bank.(Product Information)
July 2, 2001... Plumbers don't throw out the 50-year-old copper pipes every time they spring a leak; they plug the hole. As caretakers of the network plumbing, network professionals also face problems that need reliable and inexpensive fixes. That's where...

The view depends on where you stand.(Global Crossing completion of core network)(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... If The Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Global Crossing has built itself a coffin, under budget and on time. Global Crossing holds a different view of its achievement. Two weeks ago Global Crossing announced that it had completed its...

Spam rebel with a cause.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... If you've recently sent me e-mail expecting a reply, and you didn't get one, a possible reason is that your mail host is blocking my mail server. Yes, it seems that my domain, vquill.com, has shown up on the self-proclaimed Mail Abuse...

To ring or to mesh: Which is best?; Industry players say, 'A place for everything and everything in its place.'.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... With this ring . . . or with this mesh? The debate over which architecture is better-suited for metropolitan networks rages on with no consensus in sight. Some say that mesh networks are more cost-effective and easier to scale than ring...

Utilities poised to be telecom players.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... Executives from the country's gas and electric utilities see a window of opportunity in today's slumping telecommunications market and are poised to take advantage. More than 60 investor-owned utilities operate telecommunications-focused...

Sirius gets serious with service-level management.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... DALLAS - Service-level management is about to gain a new player in North America, as a German company sets up shop with claims of a unique perspective and approach to the market. Sirius, which began operations in Munich in 1994, says it is...

New Florida NAPs to improve connectivity to Latin America.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Well known as a hip nightspot, Miami is also becoming the place to build Internet traffic exchange sites because of its proximity to Latin America and because it's one of the largest, most southern cities on the East Coast. Last week...

RiverSoft helps identify net problems.(Network Management Operating System 3.0)(Product Announcement)
July 2, 2001... SAN FRANCISCO - RiverSoft Technologies has unveiled a new release of its flagship network management software that may help users more quickly identify problems and track network resource changes. RiverSoft last week heralded Version 3.0 of...

Multilingual domain name usage lags.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... Internationalized domain names have attracted great interest among non-English speaking users of the Internet and are a top priority for the 'Net's policymakers. But technical difficulties and a lack of industry standards are hampering...

You recently mentioned a Perl tool called Mail-Sender that sends Web forms by e-mail. Does it work with Windows?(Product Information)
July 2, 2001... You recently mentioned a Perl tool called Mail-Sender that sends Web forms by e-mail. Does it work with Windows? First, several readers shared advice that one should attach the forms to the mail message rather then sending HTML in the...

The freedom to organize.(Software Review)(Evaluation)
July 2, 2001... A few weeks ago we discussed Nelson E-mail Organizer, which we liked a lot. Nelson indexes all of your e-mail and allows you to search, categorize, flag, move, delete and generally organize all the messages you get and have ever gotten if you...

Covad Communications halts BlueStar network operations.(Company Operations)
July 2, 2001... SANTA CLARA - Covad's announcement last week that it is shutting down the network of its BlueStar subsidiary could leave some customers in smaller cities without broadband service, but shouldn't affect the lion's share of BlueStar's 9,600...

WatchGuard locks down Microsoft Web servers; AppLock/Web software keeps corporate data safe from hackers.(Product Announcement)
July 2, 2001... SEATTLE - WatchGuard this week is introducing a security tool that automatically locks content on corporate Web servers so intruders can't alter Web page content or steal data such as customer credit card numbers. Called AppLock/Web, the...

Edge briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Lucent last week announced Kenan Revenue Locator, software that helps service providers identify and recover revenue leaks t. The Kenan Revenue Locator analyzes data generated by network elements and points out abnormalities that may...

SCHMIDT TALKS OF SUCCESSES, FAILURES.(Company Business and Marketing)(Interview)
July 2, 2001... Outgoing Novell CEO Eric Schmidt officially relinquishes the helm next week to take a less active role as chairman of the board. Schmidt arrived at Novell in April 1997 with a mandate to turn around a suddenly struggling software giant, and...

Compaq taps Intel 64-bit server technology.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... In a series of moves made last week, Compaq committed to revamping its business and unifying its server family under a single chip technology that will be co-developed with Intel. The most tangible move was a multiyear agreement that lets...

Fixed wireless: Coming to your remote offices soon.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... Although the industry is young and the technology often incompatible, fixed wireless will soon play a last-mile role in your support of teleworkers and branch offices. At least that is what some of the biggest players were saying at the...

NetScreen pushes firewall speed to 2G bit/sec; NetScreen 1000 enables managing one firewall as if it is many.(Product Announcement)
July 2, 2001... SUNNYVALE, CALIF. - NetScreen plans to boost the firewall speed of its NetScreen 1000 firewall/VPN appliance to 2G bit/sec so users can avoid installing multiple firewalls and traffic load balancers to protect busy corporate sites. When it...

Microsoft to loosen reins on .Net code, snubs Linux.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... With its promise to selectively release source code to key pieces of its .Net software, Microsoft is seeding the academic market with its technology and thumbing its nose at Linux and Java, observers say. Microsoft said last week it will...

News briefs.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Linux vendors announce changes Changes are afoot in the Linux vendor community. VA Linux announced last week that it is leaving the server and network-attached storage business and refocusing on application software. The company will lay...

'Day One' at Novell promises big shakeup.(Company Operations)
July 2, 2001... PROVO, UTAH - July 11 has been dubbed "Day One" at Novell. While details remain guarded, sources say the latest in a series of organizational shakeups by the reeling network giant is likely to raise anxieties among enterprise customers and...

A strong enterprise PDA; HandEra 330 continues TRG's tradition of strong backup and expansion flexibility.(Hardware Review)(Evaluation)
July 2, 2001... Only a few short months ago, they were known as TRG Products. Now, HandEra has emerged in its place, and hasn't missed a beat. Their first product offering under the new moniker, the HandEra 330 is the latest in their line-up of Palm OS...

GAO says more research needed; none.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... "According to FDA and others, the research to date does not show that mobile phone radiofrequency emissions have adverse health effects but there is not enough information at this point to conclude that these products are not without risk....

Palm revamps operating system, adds APIs.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... NEW YORK - Palm is walking a tightrope between the success of its current operating system and the demands that new processors, applications and memory are making on it. Several companies have turned to Microsoft PocketPC or Linux to power...

Scientific studies are a mixed bag; Research into the safety of cellular phones has resulted in some studies that show no adverse effects, and others that raise questions.(Technology Information)
July 2, 2001... No Problem * Epidemiology: A study conducted by members of the National Cancer InstituteOs Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics and published this spring in The New England Journal of Medicine showed no association between cell...

Should B2B markets start over?(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... CHICAGO - The retail industry's three main competing business-to-business exchanges have rushed over the last year to spend almost a half-billion dollars on comparable software that barely works, and the best thing for the retailing industry...

NextWave, FCC battle continues over wireless licenses.(Government Activity)
July 2, 2001... Despite several rounds in court and a second auction that brought in a potential $17 billion in revenue for the federal government, it's still not clear who owns 216 Personal Communications Service wireless licenses. Last month the U.S....

Microsoft ruling may spur more software integration.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 2, 2001... WASHINGTON, D.C. - Regardless of what happens to Microsoft in the wake of last week's U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, IT executives will likely see major vendors aggressively step up their software integration projects as they scuffle to grab...

Report: BT, AT&T discuss closing down Concert.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... British Telecommunications and AT&T Friday held talks to discuss a possible break-up of their joint-venture telecommunications carrier Concert Communications, The New York Times reported on Monday. BT Chairman Sir Christopher Bland and AT&T...

EDS, Sabre get approval for giant outsourcing deal.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Electronic Data Systems and Sabre Holdings have received approval from the Department of Justice for a multibillion-dollar deal in which Sabre will sell its airline IT outsourcing business to EDS, the companies said in a statement Friday. They...

Microsoft releases full testing version of Windows XP.(Product Development)
July 2, 2001... Microsoft Monday announced it has made the first full testing version of Windows XP available for evaluation. The testing version - or first release candidate (RC1) - is the version of the operating system that will be put through its paces...

Intel releases 1.8 GHz Pentium 4.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
July 2, 2001... Intel Monday announced it has released its new Pentium 4 1.8 GHz processor. Sold in units of 1,000, pricing is $562 per processor for the 1.8 GHz version, and $294 per processor for the 1.6 GHz version, Intel said in a statement. The...

Monster parent snatches up HotJobs.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 2, 2001... Monster.com parent company TMP Worldwide announced that it is purchasing rival job-search site HotJobs.com for approximately $460 million in stock, in a deal, which will effectively unify the top two online recruitment services. Although...

The road to 40G optical networking.(Technology Information)
July 2, 2001... Optical equipment manufacturers are on the brink of releasing equipment that will pave the way to 40G bit/sec network transmission speeds that are four times current data rates - the equivalent of transmitting seven CD-ROMs worth of data in one...

ATG Technology cuts 20% of workforce.(Company Operations)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2001... Blaming a slowdown overseas and continued weakness in domestic IT spending, application server maker ATG Technology Monday said it would cut 20% of its workforce and issued an earnings warning for its second quarter, ended June 30. ATG...

Motorola divests network services division.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 6, 2001... Motorola Thursday announced that it has agreed to sell its Multiservice Networks Division to private equity firm Platinum Equity. MND offers WAN services including network design, implementation, integration and management. Last year, for...

Slowing storage market slams EMC sales.(Company Financial Information)(Statistical Data Included)
July 6, 2001... Storage vendor EMC Thursday warned that its second-quarter sales would fall short of Wall Street expectations, blaming a slowdown in the worldwide IT industry and shrinking demand for its products. The company said that it now expected...

AMD sees Q2 income fall well below forecasts.(Company Financial Information)(Statistical Data Included)
July 6, 2001... Advanced Micro Devices Thursday announced that revenue and earnings for its second fiscal quarter were lower than previous estimates, blaming weak demand for flash memory chips and competitive pricing in the market for PC processors. AMD...

Shell signs $100 million deal with IBM to consolidate servers.(Royal Dutch/ShellGroup buys IBM's eServer pSeries, iSeries)(Company Business and Marketing)
July 6, 2001... Global giant Royal Dutch/ShellGroup Friday announced that it has signed a $100 million deal for IBM storage arrays and servers to consolidate and run its enterprise resource planning and e-business applications. The company is...

Iogear users can simultaneously share a PC.(Product Information)
July 6, 2001... Siblings used to fight over which cartoon to watch on TV; now they bicker over what to do on the family PC. Iogear is offering to bridge the family divide with a tool that enables the elementary idea of sharing the PC. Consumers don't need...

Look Ma, no hands!(hands-free devices for drivers using cellular phones)(Buyers Guide)
July 6, 2001... While driving down Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles several weeks ago, I found myself stuck behind what is unfortunately becoming a cliche on wheels. Some guy in a black BMW was weaving perilously between lanes crowded with traffic, his eyes...

New WorldCom guidance raises revenue, lowers earnings.(Company Financial Information)(Statistical Data Included)
July 6, 2001... WorldCom Thursday reduced its cash-earnings guidance for 2001, citing restructuring plans for its investment in Brazilian long-distance telephone company Embratel Participacoes and its purchase of Intermedia Communications. WorldCom...

Time-bomb found in Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET Beta 2.(bug will cause product to expire on July 31, 2001)(Product Information)
July 6, 2001... Microsoft sent attendees of its recent TechEd developer conference a notice on Thursday stating that a 'time-bomb' bug has been found in Visual Studio.NET. The memo, sent by Yuval Neeman, a vice president of Redmond, Wash.-based...

Eli Lilly cites programming error for e-mail privacy gaffe.(Company Operations)
July 6, 2001... Pharmaceutical maker Eli Lilly and Co. today blamed a programming error for an incident last week in which it accidentally disclosed the e-mail addresses of about 600 medical patients who had registered to get messages reminding them to take...

Trend Micro issues revenue guidance.(Company Financial Information)(Statistical Data Included)
July 6, 2001... Japanese antivirus software company Trend Micro Friday announced revenue expectations for its second quarter, which ended June 30. The company expects to earn 6.1 billion to 6.4 billion yen ($48.5 million to $50.88 million) for the second...

Report: IBM dismisses 500 workers in Hungary.(Company Operations)
July 6, 2001... IBM's Hungarian subsidiary IBM Storage Products has cut 500 workers and reduced its staff size to 5,500 because of a drop in orders, according to several press reports. Hungarian business daily Napi Gazdasag first reported the news on Friday....

Time for another installment of "Letters to 'Net Buzz.".(News Briefs)(Column)
July 9, 2001... An item lamenting those pop-up Internet ads that dominate the desktop even after you toggle out of your Web browser brought this reminder about columnists who throw stones in glass newsrooms. "So I pop over here [to the Network World Fusion...

Script: VPN audio primer.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
July 9, 2001... [Slide 1] As companies become more decentralized, they find themselves with employees all over the country and around the world. Increasingly, these workers need the same access to corporate information as those still at headquarters. ...

Covisint chief talks up auto exchange; CEO Kevin English discusses what it will take to make exchange more viable.(Company Operations)(Interview)
July 9, 2001... Covisint Communications, the automotive industry's online marketplace founded by General Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler, was supposed to offer end-to-end supply chain integration, demand forecasting and capacity planning to its...

Windows 2000 adoption.(Product Information)(Statistical Data Included)
July 9, 2001... According to a recent survey of 1,200 IT managers by Giga Information Group, only 30% of organizations have begun migration to Windows 2000 Server. And of those which did, only one in four have attempted a full-blown native Active Directory...

Managing the Windows mixed-mode MONSTER; Third-party utilities make it easier to run Windows 2000 when you haven't yet migrated everything to Active Directory.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 9, 2001... Many companies that adopted Windows 2000 are wrestling with a mixture of directory structures, configuration tangles and a potpourri of network and system challenges. Unwilling or unable to migrate entirely to Active Directory, they're stuck...

Adlex - a maker of performance monitoring and management tools - is housed in a striking blue office building perched on pillars atop a hill off the busy Route 495 high-tech corridor in Marlboro, Mass. Prior to repair work and Adlex's tenancy, the four-st.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 9, 2001... Sort of like popular Web sites do from time to time, a fate that Adlex says it can help customers avoid. The company sells UserVisibility appliances that it says provide more granular - and therefore actionable - customer-experience data...

How we did it.(testing of protocol analyzers)(Editorial)
July 9, 2001... We ran each protocol analyzer software product on a Windows 98-based Dell OptiPlex G1 computer equipped with a 350-MHz Pentium II processor, 64 M bytes of RAM and a 4G-byte hard drive. The machine's network adapter varied in the tests. For...

Hosting plays well for Columbia House; Company turns to Rackspace rather than continuing to expand in-house servers.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 9, 2001... Entertainment company Columbia House, famous for music club mailings that promise CDs at cut-rate prices, has courted business online since 1994. But in the past six months, online interest has really picked up, thanks in part to Columbia...

Epicentric's portal targets 'intelligent' Web services.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 9, 2001... SAN FRANCISCO - Portal software vendor Epicentric is partnering with digital content provider NewsEdge to create a "smart portal" that automatically assembles relevant content for users so they don't have to dig for information manually. ...

Competing against the specter of Cisco.(Company Business and Marketing)
July 9, 2001... Competing with Cisco, even a somewhat humbled one, is no picnic. But, having your product lab-tested against Cisco's marketing claims is enough to put the most grizzled network professional into a state of shock. As bizarre as it sounds, this...

One-way ticket home; Getting laid off is bad enough, but for H-1B visa holders, it could mean having to leave the country.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 9, 2001... Layoff. It's a word that every employee dreads. But for foreign workers living in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, a layoff is like drawing the "Go directly to jail," card in the board game Monopoly. They have to pack up their belongings and return to...

carrier briefs.(News Briefs)
July 9, 2001... Linux NetworX has announced enhancements to its clustering management software. ClusterWorX 2.0 now includes secure remote access and complete system and node monitoring. Remote monitoring lets customers view and manage several clustered nodes...

IETF stays course on international domain names.(Industry Trend or Event)
July 9, 2001... Patents be damned! That's the consensus of network engineers developing an industry standard for supporting foreign-language domain names in the Internet. Non-English speaking Internet users are demanding domain names in their native...

How to stay in front of VPN management; VPN TOOLS.(Buyers Guide)
July 9, 2001... As companies build larger and larger VPNs, they are faced with a chore that grows with the networks: effective management. It's an important issue to pay attention to because a good VPN management platform is not just a matter of convenience;...

Setting your IT spending priorities.(Industry Trend or Event)(Tutorial)
July 9, 2001... Speaking the LANguage . Linda Musthaler It has been a wild couple of years for the IT industry, with double-digit growth rates in IT budgets since the late 1990s. Many organizations went hog-wild on their IT spending in preparation for Y2K...

The next great thing: video instant messaging.(Technology Information)
July 9, 2001... Due Diligence. Jeffrey Young Recently a group of bruised, battered and bedraggled high-tech executives floated the idea of a government bailout for the networking industry. The plan - promoted by Cisco CEO John Chambers, a loose...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2001... After reading the story "Fixed wireless no wipeout, despite recent troubles" (www. nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 5022), I was concerned that you were throwing out the baby with the bath water. While the service providers mentioned certainly have had...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2001... Open source I take issue with several of the points Dave Kearns makes in his article "Jousting with the Open Source movement"(http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2001/0604kearns.html). One: Kearns suggests that the word "relaxed" in...

Hosting glut should mean bargains for companies.(Industry Trend or Event)(Statistical Data Included)
July 9, 2001... Empty server racks line the walls of data centers throughout the U.S., casualties of a gold rush that never quite materialized. In the past few years, hosting service providers were joined by telecom companies and real estate investors in...

A Hierarchy of Techie Needs.(Humor)(Column)
July 9, 2001... "Abraham Maslow . . . posited a hierarchy of human needs. . . . [He] published his first conceptualization of his theory over 50 years ago. . . . An interesting phenomenon is that in spite of a lack of evidence to support his hierarchy, it...