Techworld.com Networking Features

Predict Wi-Fi performance and plan your wireless LAN

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:37:00 GMT

The site survey is an approximation, but is the best we can do

Whenever I plan and configure an enterprise WLAN system, I always advise that an additional 10 percent to 20 percent of the capital budget be reserved for expansion and filling in holes in coverage or capacity that couldn't be anticipated during the planning process.

Get tough on telecommuting: 6 questions to ask before you say yes

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:58:00 GMT

Proceed cautiously - teleworking can change office dynamics in ways you hadn't anticipated.

Unified communications won't displace insecure IM

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:29:00 GMT

Dealing with clients often means leaving the light on for AIM, Skype and the like.

Today, its Office Communications Server software handles a million IM conversations per month. That has lessened employees' use of outside IM services but hardly eliminated it, according to IT director Oyvind Kaldestad.

"We are encouraging people to use Office Communicator for all internal IMing," he said. "But we are a client-driven company and some of our customers...

Network behaviour analysis secures university

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:01:00 GMT

Wayne State University implements Q1 Labs QRadar technology.

NBA tools monitor and analyse network traffic, looking for abnormalities and patterns that could indicate a zero-day attack, such as a server sending too many queries or one that is trying to connect to the Internet in the middle of the night. The products prove to be another layer of security: in addition to identifying top talkers on the network, NBA technology can help network and...

Proxim plans to buck the standards

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:54:00 GMT

Non-standard WiMax, and no hurry for 802.11n

10G Ethernet: can copper cut the mustard?

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Copper's coming, but fibre's here already.

The power struggle

Amazingmail drops Cisco to cut costs

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Cisco routers are out and Juniper gear is in at Amazingmail.

Amazingmail.com tossed its Cisco routers, switches and firewalls for Juniper gear and wound up saving enough in ongoing support costs that the project will pay for itself in eight months.

The sweet smell of WAN acceleration

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Riverbed smells good to Coty.

Glen Dalgleish, vice president of infrastructure services at global perfumer Coty, well remembers why he and his staff had implemented WAN acceleration technology last January: to improve download speeds for some 6,000 users world-wide.

Too much network control is a bad thing

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:00:00 GMT

Spread that knowledge and authority around.

The City of San Francisco's IT department has been in the news recently, but it is certainly not unusual when it comes to allowing just one person to have unfettered rights to make password and configuration changes to networks and enterprise systems.

Brocade deal to help drive data-centre transition

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Bringing together Fibre Channel and Ethernet.

Brocade Communications Systems' planned US$3 billion acquisition of Foundry Networks is a major strategic move in a brewing war over the future of data-centre connectivity, industry analysts said this week.

NAT gets added to IPv6 after all

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Unwanted feature finds itself wanted.

The Internet engineering community working on IPv6 is considering reintroducing NAT - one of the very features that the upgrade to IP was meant to eliminate.

Skype wants to do business

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:00:00 GMT

But how much is it willing to compromise in order to go business-friendly?

Once synonymous with consumer-grade voice-over-IP and a target for the ire of network managers everywhere, Skype is changing tack. It now wants to attract more business users, and its plans for doing that include new tools for managing groups of users - plus the claim that it is "unified communications made simple."

BT commits to large fibre investment

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

And expects access to Virgin Media's network.

UK carrier BT is to spend £1.5bn pounds ($2.99 billion) rolling out super fast broadband to 10 million (or 40 percent) of UK homes by 2012.

Tracking the truth of unified communications

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

We talk IP comms and email vacations with Shoretel MD Mark Swendsen.

"The term 'unified communications' has become so over-used it's almost trite," says Mark Swendsen, Shoretel's European managing director. "Do people understand it? I'm not sure the vendors do - they all have different versions of it."

Femtos and the 4G world

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

New networks, new paradigm?

Femtocells were developed to aid 3G networks, but their real impact may be much greater on the successors: the 4G networks, WiMax and LTE.

Is fixed-mobile convergence worth the bother?

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

And what exactly does it mean, anyway...?

Whether fixed-mobile convergence is for you in the near-term depends in part on how you define it, but for most, there's no rush.

The challenges of in-building wireless coverage

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Is it less of a black art now?

Attempts to make buildings more energy-efficient in terms of heating and cooling could backfire badly on the networking front, if radio expert Daniel Lewing is to be believed.

Why Quality of Experience matters to network managers

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Many metrics for VoIP monitoring and maintenance.

There are a lot of terms floating around to describe how to set up metrics for evaluating service performance over the network. The best established is Quality of Service, or QoS, which has generally taken on a fairly technical, bandwidth-centric definition where it remains valuable as a metric, but is far from summing up what really counts in the eyes of the end user.

Where are the 3G femtos?

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Delayed by standards and markets

Femtocells, the indoor cellular base stations that are tipped to be a big seller in the next few years, could shake up the prospects of all wide-area network technologies, according to last month's Femtocells Europe 2008 conference in London. But before they appear on today's 3G networks, they have issues to overcome.

The lowdown on the Techworld product awards

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Why the winners won

One of the hardest tasks that the judges in the Techworld awards have to do is assess the winners of the product awards. It's a particularly difficult task because often we're judging between products that offer very different technologies for very different users - how, for example, do we distinguish between a router aimed at the small business which offers little in the way of features but which comes at a fantastic price and easy configuration?

How to upgrade a home office router

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Putting enterprise power on to a small device.

Your small, home-office router has the potential to be as powerful as an enterprise device, it's just a question of getting the power out of it.

Security's virtual badlands

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Sourcefire's Martin Roesch on what to worry about, and when not to sell up.

Virtualisation is changing everything. It's already changing how we deploy and manage servers and storage, and now we need to understand and deal with its security implications too.

Outsourcing your WAN optimisation

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:00:00 GMT

When is a managed WAN-optimisation service the best option?

A tech-support call starts it all. Why is my application running slow? What happened to my spreadsheet data? Is HQ using a 56K modem to handle traffic for my branch office - again? The number of calls suddenly increases, and network analysis reveals unforeseen usage spikes at a new marketing location. The dream of data-centre consolidation turns into a nightmare.

Take a new tack for better IT

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Four ways to improve IT and get better app performance.

1. Take a SWAT team approach

New directions in WAN and app acceleration

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Four cool network optimisation start-ups.

When Rich De Brino agreed to let a start-up come on-site and demonstrate how its technology could optimise video applications by aggregating multiple network connections, he didn't make it easy on the vendor.