Network World articles from June 2004

Network World archives from June 2004

Reykjavik leads the way on fiber to the curb; 100M bit/sec links allow teleworkers to run high-bandwidth applications.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Evan Rosen Reykjavik leads the way on fiber to the curb 100M bit/sec links allow teleworkers to run high-bandwidth applications. By Evan Rosen Reykjavik, Iceland, likes to set records. In April 2003, the world's first...

Sun CTO talks interconnects.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Deni Connor On the eve of Sun's quarterly product announcements last week, Network World Senior Editor Deni Connor spoke with Balint Fleischer, CTO for Sun's storage division about the company's future direction for a number of...

WiMax starting to make its move; Broadband wireless could offer alternative to DSL, cable modem services.
June 7, 2004... Byline: STEPHEN LAWSON With phones and LANs steadily going wireless and consumer electronics not far behind, one part of the networked world - broadband to the home or business - has stubbornly remained wired in most cases. Cost,...

Worth the wait; Security clearances take more than a year to obtain, but federal IT work pays well.
June 7, 2004... Byline: CAROLYN DUFFY MARSAN If you're looking for job security, consider working on a top-secret IT project under development by the federal government. Government contractors have thousands of unfilled IT jobs, including network design,...

Is open source IP telephony ready for prime time? Two industry insiders debate whether users should deploy open source VoIP today.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Yes, by Zenas Hutcheson St. Paul Venture Capital Now is the time to begin implementing open source IP telephony. Here's why: l Open source business models are changing market dynamics. Open source, coupled with subscription-based...

Is open source IP telephony ready for prime time? Two industry insiders debate whether users should deploy open source VoIP today.
June 7, 2004... Byline: No, by Zeus Kerravala The Yankee Group In theory, an open source IP telephony system will increase the demand for IP telephony, create better interoperability between IP phone systems and drive down the cost of IP telephony by...

A tale of stupidity and liability.
June 7, 2004... Byline: winn schwartau While viruses and worms relentlessly pound away at our perimeters, the latest challenge to corporate and small office/home office users is phishing. This is where you, the user, are the fish, susceptible to the...

Take a SIP, but don't bury H.323.
June 7, 2004... Byline: chuck yoke During my 20 years in IT, I have seen the premature death notices of many technologies that are still very much alive. I have read the obituaries of SNA, token ring, ISDN and COBOL. Analysts have invited me to witness...

No getting away from 'itiots'.
June 7, 2004... No getting away from 'itiots' Regarding Mark Gibbs' Backspin column "The fall of the 'itiot'" (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 2324): I like Gibbs' suggestion that companies adopt a Total Computing Initiative, but in my estimation, the...

McAfee's low-end AV management tool shines.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Mandy Andress McAfee's low-end AV management tool shines n By Mandy Andress, Network World Lab Alliance Beagle. NetSky. Sasser. Three viruses, all wreaking havoc in one month's time. Anti-virus software is no longer just an...

Identity mgmt. takes on new shape, importance; SECURITY: Controlling resource access.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JOHN FONTANA Driven by network security concerns, regulatory legislation and cost savings, identity management is climbing the corporate importance meter. The trend is seen in end-user projects, in consolidation of vendors and...

MPLS adds lift to Boeing net.
June 7, 2004... Byline: PHIL HOCHMUTH For a jumbo corporation such as Boeing, becoming a smaller, leaner organization might seem like a flight of fancy. But the aerospace giant has made that aspiration a reality, in part by building a converged,...

Start-up picks up bad behaviors; Intrusion-prevention software fends off memory-based attacks.
June 7, 2004... Byline: ELLEN MESSMER Start-up Determina makes its debut this week with server-based intrusion-prevention system software that blocks attacks - such as buffer overflows often seen with computer worms such as Blaster and Sasser - that can...

VoWLAN: Two degrees of separation.
June 7, 2004... Byline: kevin tolly C ommentary on last month's NetWorld+Interop show seemed to cite the buzz as either VoIP or wireless. From my perspective, the real buzz was the combination of the two technologies - VoIP over wireless LANs. ...

Under pressure: Pa. county upgrades network and saves.
June 7, 2004... Byline: CAROLYN DUFFY MARSAN When Jack Pond joined Montgomery County, Pa., as CIO last year, he faced an immediate network crisis: AT&T could no longer support the county's aging FDDI metropolitan-area network, and Pond had 45 days to...

Enterprise Applications briefs.
June 7, 2004... Byline: staff The JBoss application server and MySQL database got a boost from HP last week when the computer company said it would offer technical support for the two open source projects. HP has entered into partnership agreements with...

ASk Dr. Internet.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Steve Blass Steve Blass What will come next, after phishing scams? Phishing is the use of spoofed e-mails and Web sites to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data by convincing them to respond to what seem...

Google upgrades search appliance.
June 7, 2004... Byline: ANN BEDNARZ Google last week released a new version of its enterprise search product, an appliance built with the same code base and content-crawling technology as the software that runs the company's public Webwide search site,...

Netegrity updates eProvision product.
June 7, 2004... Byline: PAUL ROBERTS Identity management software company Netegrity last week unveiled IdentityMinder eProvision 4.0, with improved workflow features that let administrators create and manage policies for extending or curtailing user...

Maintaining general unreachability.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Scott Bradner I have a cell phone, you don't have the number, and I want to keep it that way. But if some of the good people in the cellular phone industry have their way, I soon might have to pay for the privilege of privacy...

short takes.
June 7, 2004... n Iomega recently announced two network-attached storage servers. Geared to small and remote offices and department workgroups, the NAS 200d Series is based on Microsoft Storage Server 2003 and works with heterogeneous client computers and...

OPM report links telework to emergency readiness.
June 7, 2004... Byline: toni kistner A new survey indicates the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is tightening the noose on the federal government's mid-level managers adverse to telework. For one, OPM has figured out how to accurately...

WSS protects SOAP messages.
June 7, 2004... Byline: HAL LOCKHART The Web Services Security specification defines mechanisms to protect messages designed for use with Web services. The Web Services Security Technical Committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured...

Axiowave touts debut router as key to turning IP profits.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JIM DUFFY Axiowave Networks, a 4-year-old, privately held maker of core routers, last week unveiled its first product. The XCR128 is designed to bring TDM-grade service levels to IP networking and service convergence. The...

'Net was born of economic necessity, not fear.
June 7, 2004... Byline: johna till johnson W as the Internet really designed to withstand nuclear war? In an earlier column, I characterized that description as an "urban legend." A reader wrote in to disagree, noting that the Internet was funded...

DataPower, Reactivity add to their XML security line.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JOHN FONTANA Amid the growing corporate interest in Web services-based infrastructures, DataPower and Reactivity this week will introduce upgrades designed to help users boost XML security. DataPower will ship Version 3.0 of...

short takes.
June 7, 2004... n Equant announced recently that it is polishing up its VoIP services. The carrier's Voice for IP VPN service also is available in 17 additional countries - 93 total - and will support multiple vendor products by year-end. Equant says it will...

Cool tools.
June 7, 2004... Byline: keith shaw We're taking a break from testing this week to catch up on some of the latest news . . . Axis launches megapixel network camera Axis Communications last week announced the Axis 206M network camera, which it says...

Fighting for fair telework tax; New York state's practice spurs draft federal legislation.
June 7, 2004... Byline: TONI KISTNER What began as a tax squabble between New York and neighboring states today threatens to deter telework across the country and compromise key aspects of the Bush administration's national agenda. At issue are...

Infrastructure briefs.
June 7, 2004... Byline: staff Dell is offering its PowerEdge servers with Oracle 10g Database software pre-loaded, configured and tested. The database systems also can include storage on Dell/EMC and PowerVault hardware. Dell executives say the pre-loaded...

Vendors offer tools to control, secure WLANs.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JOHN COX Newbury Networks and ActivCard respectively this week will roll out tools to let customers better manage and secure their wireless networks. Newbury builds on its current location-based security product to create a new...

RSS technology, the really final take. Really.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Mark Gibbs S o this week will really be the final week of covering RSS. For two weeks now, we have promised to wrap up this topic and, well, we failed. That said, we failed with panache, with moxie, with a certain je ne sais...

'NetBuzz.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Paul McNamara Have you ever read one of those reader-submitted movie reviews online and asked yourself: "Who cares what these chuckleheads think? Anyone with a browser and too much time can play film critic." Well, here's who...

A history of singing the Big Blues; Before there was Notes, there was the IBM songbook.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Deni Connor A history of singingthe Big Blues Before there was Notes, there was the IBM songbook. So you need a few cocktails before you'll risk singing the ol' college fight song? Be thankful you didn't work for IBM in a...

Kumar calls it quits at CA.
June 7, 2004... n Sanjay Kumar, Computer Associates' chief software architect and former CEO, has left the company. Kumar already had stepped down as CA's chairman and CEO in April, after questions about his role in an accounting fraud that saw CA record...

A few Interop notes worth sharing.
June 7, 2004... Byline: John Dix Although NetWorld+Interop has come and gone, a review of my notebook turned up some exchanges that are worth passing on. l John McHugh, vice president and worldwide general manager of HP's ProCurve Networking Business,...

Compliance costly; Network World survey finds urgency, increased spending.
June 7, 2004... Byline: CARA GARRETSON Keeping pace with ever-more-stringent federal regulations has rocketed to the upper reaches of network executives' concerns, according to the 10th annual Network World 500 survey. About 60% of respondents said...

IBM enhances data integration package.
June 7, 2004... Byline: ANN BEDNARZ IBM this week is expected to take the wraps off the next version of its data integration software. Code-named Masala, the forthcoming release of IBM's DB2 Information Integrator software aims to make it easier for...

IBM hooking .Net into access mgmt.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JOHN FONTANA IBM this week for the first time will add support for Microsoft's .Net development tools to its access management software, letting corporations build support for IBM's identity management platform directly into...

How we did it.
June 7, 2004... How we did it The Network World 500 survey, conducted jointly by Network World and Research Concepts, includes data from four separate surveys of 125 participants each, totaling 500 organizations. Participating companies have multiple...

NEC to roll out Itanium blade servers.
June 7, 2004... Byline: DENI CONNOR NEC to roll out Itanium blade servers NEC this week is expected to roll out the industry's first Itanium-based blade servers for use in high-performance technical computing, pharmaceutical and financial...

Conferencing vendors readying new wares.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JASON MESERVE A handful of vendors hope their new offerings, set to be announced this week, will make rich-media conferencing - mixed voice, video and data - more accessible and easier on the wallet for business users. Among...

EMC adding features to Centera storage.
June 7, 2004... Byline: DENI CONNOR EMC this week is announcing enhancements to its Centera compliance-oriented storage array, as well as software bundles that make it easier to prioritize, tier and migrate storage. The Centera software enhancements,...

Industry awaits Juniper's next enterprise move.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JIM DUFFY Juniper's entry into the enterprise market is based on much more than expanding its revenue opportunity. A presence in this market is key to fulfilling Juniper's Infranet Initiative, an effort to coalesce the industry...

Sun to rein in spending, expand partnerships.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JENNIFER MEARS AND DENI CONNOR Sun, smarting from 12 consecutive quarters of revenue declines, last week announced expanded subscription pricing models, new features for Solaris - including plans to open up the source code for...

Worrying about the 'Seven Ugly Dwarves'.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Mark Gibbs A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my worries (see www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 2344), and my last worry was what malware might be lurking in our e-mail archives. To recap: When I recently tested a new e-mail...

Tropos boosts outdoor wireless LAN system.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JOHN COX Tropos Networks this week plans to air updates to its hardware and software intended to make it easier to build and run outdoor wireless mesh networks. The company says the changes to its Wi-Fi Cell System Release 3...

Microsoft boosts business intelligence tools.
June 7, 2004... Byline: JOHN FONTANA Microsoft last week released two Office-based tools for letting users extract and view business data from back-end systems. The company introduced the Office Business Scorecards Accelerator and Office Excel Add-in...

Keeping Cisco IOS under control.
June 7, 2004... Byline: Phil Hochmuth One of the major challenges in running Boeing's predominantly Cisco-based WAN and LAN infrastructures is managing IOS router and CatOS switch software across tens of thousands of network devices. "There is a...

Trend Micro, Cisco to fight worms.
June 7, 2004... Byline: ELLEN MESSMER Cisco and Trend Micro this week plan to announce a partnership under which Cisco will improve its routers, switches and firewalls with Trend's worm-blocking technology. Trend Micro, which uses the technology in...

New frontier for wireless: Sensor networks.
June 7, 2004... Byline: John Cox Next frontier for wireless: Sensor networks n By John Cox Wireless sensors finally are moving from starry-eyed predictions to hard-eyed but limited production. As a result, network executives eventually can...

Security titans intensify rivalry.
June 14, 2004... Byline: ELLEN MESSMER Network Associates and Symantec long to be more than anti-virus vendors. The rivals want to be one-stop security shops where businesses buy everything from intrusion prevention to spam control to firewalls. Each...

BookCrossing.com: Chapter 2.(Column)
June 14, 2004... Byline: Paul McNamara BookCrossing.com: Chapter 2 When we first visited BookCrossing.com two years ago, the fledgling online community had 3,400 registered members and a driving force, Ron Hornbaker, who saw the site as a pleasant...

On point; A tour of some of the top point products in application performance management.
June 14, 2004... Byline: R. LYNN NYE JR. Unless you lived it, it sounds a lot like a fable. But once upon a time, under IBM's System Network Architecture, IT systems had real end-to-end visibility and traffic control. If you listen to the vendor claims, it...

Three steps to app management.
June 14, 2004... Byline: LYNN NYE Within any IT system the three basic elements of a management solution are information, resolution and control. l Information within most IT organizations is typically contained in or organized to support a particular...

Application management: A work in progress; With multiple point products available, managers must mix and match to find the best approach for their networks.
June 14, 2004... Byline: DENISE DUBIE Cosmetics giant Mary Kay is in the midst of an extreme makeover - one that will overhaul and enhance the company's application performance management strategy. Steve Moore, technology leader for Mary Kay...

Battle for bandwidth; Packeteer's WAN application acceleration appliances make better use of bandwidth at ABM.
June 14, 2004... Byline: DENISE DUBIE American Business Maintenance in 1999 found itself between a rock and a hard place. The company wanted to standardize multiple application platforms on Citrix and deliver the applications from a centralized data...

VoIP requires wide range of planning; Factors to weigh in setting up VoIP environments are not always obvious.
June 14, 2004... Byline: TIM GREENE When network executives evaluate their networks to see if they are ready for VoIP, they must look beyond the factors that jump to mind immediately, say those who have been through the process. Checking a corporate...

Who funds innovation?
June 14, 2004... Byline: Chris Shipley First the good news: Technology innovation is returning to levels not seen since the start of the Internet boom. In the past few months, I've seen dozens of great product concepts, working prototypes of exciting...

The customer loyalty conundrum.
June 14, 2004... Byline: Howard Anderson Last month, Cisco rolled out its CRS-1 router in an effort to win back customers that had migrated to Juniper. The product's main attraction: a streamlined version of IOS. But it was IOS that had won the hearts,...

Letters to the editor.
June 14, 2004... Byline: readers Regarding "Redmond enlists security vendors to automate policy compliance" (www.nwfusion.com, DocFinder: 2423): The idea that Microsoft can stop an exploit at the software level, without using the switches and routers, is...

Justifiying anti-spam costs; Analyzing the toll unwanted e-mail takes on productivity, bandwidth, storage and support aids your attack.
June 14, 2004... Byline: John Fontana Justifying anti-spam investments Analyzing the toll unwanted e-mail takes on productivity, bandwidth, storage and support aids your attack. By John Fontana If spam has a bright side, it's that the...

Open source on the desktop: Hurry up and wait.
June 14, 2004... Byline: Dave Kearns Just like many of you, I have a box near my desk running Linux. So far it's not a critical part of my network, but it does provide a bit of convenience. It's running Fedora, with Ximian's Gnome interface, and I use the...

Enterprise Applications briefs.
June 14, 2004... Byline: staff writers RSA Security last week announced RSA Sign-On Manager, a rebranded version of its SecurID Passage product the company says will make it easier for companies to manage user passwords. The product will be able to manage...

Cool Tools.
June 14, 2004... Byline: Keith Shaw The scoop: SimpleDrive 400G-byte External Hard Drive, from SimpleTech, about $470. What it does: The SimpleDrive attaches via USB 2.0 cable (or USB 1.1) to a PC to provide an instant external hard drive for all your...

Investing in thin air, again.
June 14, 2004... Byline: Scott Bradner Author Casey Corr called his 2000 book about Craig McCaw Money from Thin Air in reference to McCaw building up a cell phone network that AT&T bought for $11.5 billion in 1994. McCaw is again trying to make money from...

Nortel doubles Shasta performance, density.
June 14, 2004... Byline: JIM DUFFY Nortel last week unveiled an upgrade to its Shasta Broadband Services Node 5000 edge router that more than doubles the performance and density of the 6-year-old incumbent, the company says. The Services Edge Router...

As CLECs get a second chance, users get deals; ALTERNATE CARRIERS: Some narrowing their focus, others looking to get bigger.
June 14, 2004... Byline: GRANT GROSS Anderson Columbia Co., a road construction contractor in Lake City, Fla., chose to switch to telecom provider ITC DeltaCom just five months before the competitive local exchange carrier filed for bankruptcy. But...

Adobe goes to the office; Releases server, components to manage corporate information.
June 14, 2004... Byline: JOHN FONTANA Adobe, with its eye on addressing corporate needs to manage electronic information, last week rolled out a Java-based server and a set of services designed to help corporations create and share documents and integrate...

Infrastructure briefs.
June 14, 2004... Byline: staff Aten Technologies introduced this week a keyboard video mouse switch that lets as many as four users access and control up to 32 computers connected to it. By a combination of daisy-chaining and cascading, the Matrix KVM...

Externalization: Changing the shape of business.
June 14, 2004... Byline: Johna Till Johnson I f you thought the communications revolution happened in the last century, think again. A seismic shift is under way that's likely to reshape the world of business. That shift is called externalization,...

Service Providers Short Takes.
June 14, 2004... n Verizon Online has lowered the price of its business DSL service. Verizon's 1.5M/384K bit/sec packages now start at $59.95 per month for DSL with a dynamic IP address and $89.95 per month for a static IP address, a savings of $30 to $40 per...

Dell tries 4-way Itanium again.
June 14, 2004... Byline: NETWORK WORLD STAFF Dell is expanding its 64-bit server line with a new, four-processor Itanium 2 server aimed at high-performance workloads such as databases, engineering clusters and heavy-duty ERP applications. One and a...

Deepfile enhances file management.
June 14, 2004... Byline: DENI CONNOR Deepfile is expected to announce this week the next product in its file management portfolio for users of network-attached storage and file servers. Deepfile Sentinel joins the Auditor and Enforcer software in...

How DidTheyReadIt does it.
June 14, 2004... Byline: Mark Gibbs F inally, we're over our RSS obsession. So here on the Gearhead technical beachhead the topics of news feeds and aggregators, along with Atom, RSS and JSMsg, are drifting away to join the geek flotsam and jetsam....

Interest in ASPs, Web hosting picking up.
June 14, 2004... Byline: JENNIFER MEARS Enterprise customers in growing numbers are taking a look at application service providers and Web hosting companies as they seek ways to make their IT operations more efficient by using on-demand services. ...

Bells win major fight on network sharing.
June 14, 2004... Solicitor General Theodore Olson announced last week he will not ask the Supreme Court for an appeal of a March decision by a lower court that threw out much of the FCC's so-called triennial review, a road map that tells incumbent telephone...

Ask Dr. Internet.
June 14, 2004... Byline: Steve Blass Steve Blass What security implications are there in using Open Database Connectivity in a client/server environment? Can we use it over a wireless LAN? ODBC does not encrypt your data for transmission, so to...

DS-UWB enables convergence.
June 14, 2004... Byline: IAN GIFFORD The PC, consumer electronics and cellular markets are in a state of convergence as mobile communications devices are being used to carry an array of datastreams such as photographs and streaming video. But current...

Grape grower juices up its planning systems.
June 14, 2004... Byline: ANN BEDNARZ Welch's is in the final stages of a 30-month project to overhaul a number of its key operational systems. When it's done, the Concord, Mass., food manufacturer will have integrated two functions that traditionally are...

Net scans delivered as a service.
June 14, 2004... Byline: John Dix When we last caught up with Qualys a year ago, the young company was performing about 400,000 customer network vulnerability scans per month, looking for about 2,500 unique vulnerabilities. Today the company is performing...

Saluting digital dads.
June 14, 2004... Byline: NEAL WEINBERG Don't forget the men behind MPLS and spam. James Gosling is one proud papa. The father of Java says he gets recognized quite often, mostly in "geek contexts.'' In Asia he gets asked to sign autographs, and...

E-mail AUPs and monitoring.
June 14, 2004... Last week I discussed "The Seven Ugly Dwarves," a name coined by Elizabeth Charnock, CEO of Cataphora, for e-mail content that reveals dirty secrets and behaviors. After relating some examples, I mentioned the need for acceptable-use policies...

Switches taking on new security roles.
June 14, 2004... Byline: ELLEN MESSMER Security innovations being built into switches are attracting attention from buyers who not long ago focused primarily on feeds and speeds. Network executives say they need all the help they can get to cope with...