Infrastructure Insights

By Mary Petrosky

Search Infrastructure Insights

Minoli is an adjunct professor in the Stevens Institute of Technology's graduate school and co-author of Minoli-Cordovana's Authoritative Computer & Network Security Dictionary, which compiles more than 5,500 up-to-date definitions of security terms, concepts and methods. E-mail him.

Whatever Happened to the OTN?: 06/04/07; At the beginning of this decade there was a lot of fanfare about the Optical Transport Network. OTN is intended to be the next evolutionary step in a carrier's infrastructure. It's designed to address the requirements of next-generation networks by efficiently transporting heterogeneous data-oriented traffic directly over light beams carried on the same optical backbone.
IPv6: Today or tomorrow?: 03/06/07; The industry has produced several well-documented mechanisms to support a transition to IPv6, including the dual-stack approach, translation (the direct conversion of protocols between IPv4 and IPv6) and tunneling. These mechanisms are amply documented by a family of RFCs. IPv6’s designers have developed mechanisms and address types so that IPv6 nodes can communicate with one another in a mixed environment, even if they are supported at the core by an IPv4 infrastructure.
Metro Ethernet: Where's the beef?: 12/07/06; Where is Metro Ethernet now? Certainly, there is a lot of hype about it.
Do we need computing in the network?: 10/02/06; The 1990s saw the commoditization of LAN technology. Today we are seeing the beginning of commoditization of the IP routing function in the intranet, with more on the way as new players enter the network element market.
Enterprise architecture is not rocket science: 07/24/06; Building an enterprise architecture is not rocket science. Its goal is to create a unified IT environment of standardized hardware and software systems across the firm, with tight links to the business side of the organization.
Needed: an enterprise security architecture: 05/08/06; What all organizations need is a comprehensive framework for the uniform and organized treatment of all aspects of security. This can be accomplished through a well-thought-out security architecture.
The virtue of virtualization: 02/27/06; Virtualization is a well-known concept in networking, from virtual channels in ATM, to virtual private networks, virtual LANs and virtual IP addresses. However, an even more fundamental type of virtualization is achievable with today's ubiquitous networks: machine cycle and storage virtualization through the auspices of grid computing and IP storage.
ZigBee: What's in it for me?: 12/05/05; ZigBee is expected to become a global specification for reliable, cost-effective, low-power wireless applications, providing interoperability and desirable radio frequency performance characteristics.
Start planning for the nanorevolution: 07/25/05; Nanoelectronics is here: Magnetic RAM chips are shipping, organic light-emitting diode displays are in prototype, and carbon nanotube interconnects and nanowires will appear in a couple of years. Nanotechnology is entering the telecom and IT fields, so start learning about it now.