Are multiple-point devices more 'green'?

10/09/08

In a recent newsletter, we began a discussion of the 'Green IT' movement, and, in that newsletter, we concentrated primarily on the economics. And while the discussion there concentrated on a single equipment component, there also are arguments that in some cases, having a multifunction device as opposed to multiple-point devices can significantly reduce the overall power consumption.

Clarifying the lack of consolidation in the application delivery market

10/07/08

Today we're taking a break from the 'green IT' discussion we began last week to clarify some points we made the recent newsletter "Why consolidation is not happening in the application delivery market". In that, we discussed that in spite of the spate of recent acquisitions we do not see the application delivery market consolidating any time soon. We received a number of e-mails seeking clarification on some of the points we made and we'll use this newsletter to respond.

What does 'green IT' really mean?

10/02/08

"Green IT" has recently received a lot of attention, especially now that folks in the United States are seeing energy prices that are similar to those that some parts of the world, such as Western Europe, have dealt with for years. But as we investigate "green" further, we find that there are many shades of green.

Cable vs. DSL vs. dial-up vs. cellular - which to lose?

09/30/08

For the past several years, both Steve and Jim have been working in an environment where they felt like some form of backup for network access is mandatory. And, since customers can purchase both DSL and cable modem basic access for roughly the price of an ISDN line, it made all the sense in the world to simply use both. And if one fails you can switch the router (or switch) to the other service. However, as noted in the last newsletter, both services have become much more reliable and both services also have increased in speed (and, to a certain extent, price). So Steve found himself with three ISPs - DSL, cable modem, and a dial-up service - plus the possible need for a fourth, a cellular data service. So the question was how to decide what to do away with.

Dual access for the SOHO/ROBO revisited

09/25/08

Over the several years that we've been writing this column, a topic that we've revisited from time to time is how best to provide for backup for small branch offices and/or telecommuters. At one time, ISDN was recommended since it was a dial service that was relatively widely available. Of course, with the limited bandwidth of a Basic Rate Interface (BRI) connection at a maximum of 128Kbps, this option today is not much more attractive than dusting off the old 212a modem.

Why it's time to let the OSI model die

09/23/08

One of the most enduring models in networking is the famous seven-layer OSI model. X.25 roughly, but pretty accurately, is based on the first three layers. And it stopped there. Subsequently - partly because of technology and partly because of marketing - Layers 4 through 7 have taken on a life of their own in the network as well as the applications.

How do CIOs current priorities stack up against future ones?

09/18/08

This is the fourth newsletter in a series that has been looking at the overall role of the CIO. We have based this series on our survey of 243 IT professionals as well as our interviews with a network tools architect, an enterprise networks manager and a CIO. In the last newsletter we identified what we believe should be a CIO's top five priorities. We are going to use this newsletter to look at what CIO priorities currently are and compare that to what we think they should be.

Top 5 priorities for CIOs

09/16/08

This is the fourth newsletter in a series that has been looking at the overall role of the CIO. We have based this series on our survey of 243 IT professionals as well as our interviews with a network tools architect, an enterprise networks manager and a CIO. Today, we'll discuss what we think are the top five priorities for CIOs.

The CIO as technology leader

09/11/08

This is the third in a series of newsletters that looks at the overall role of the CIO. We have based this series in part on a survey that we gave to 243 IT professionals as well as interviews that we conducted with a network tools architect, an enterprise networks manager and a CIO. We are going to use this newsletter to look at the role that the CIO plays relative to leveraging technology for business value.

Do CIOs get their hands dirty?

09/09/08

In our last newsletter we discussed the role of the CIO and looked at whether or not the CIO is an innovative, strategic thinker who is closely aligned with their company's senior business and functional managers. The discussion was based on our survey of 243 IT professionals as well as on an interview that we conducted with the CIO of a major financial institution. In general the survey data and the interview supported the notion that more often than not CIOs are strategic thinkers who have done a good job of aligning themselves with their company's senior business and functional managers. Having established that, we will use this newsletter to explore whether or not CIOs actually get their hands dirty with operations.

How CIOs can align themselves with the business

09/04/08

We don't normally critique CIOs because we have a healthy appreciation of the difficulty of their job. That being said, we believe that there are some fundamental changes that have to occur inside the majority of IT organizations and that won't happen unless there is active involvement of CIOs. Based on that belief, we are going to use the next couple of newsletters to present some recent market research into the role of the CIO and will use subsequent newsletters to talk about CIO priorities - what they are and what we think they should be.

Why consolidation is not happening in the application delivery market

09/02/08

This is the fourth and last in a series of newsletters that resulted from Jim's participation in a recent Network World chat on the topic of application performance management and WAN acceleration. This newsletter will deal with the question raised by one of the participants about the consolidation underway in the application delivery market and in particular, Blue Coat's acquisition of Packeteer.

How WAN deduplication can aid WAN acceleration

08/28/08

Jim participated in a recent Network World chat on the topic of application performance management and WAN acceleration. This is the third in a series of newsletters that will expand upon the questions raised during that chat. Today's topic - WAN deduplication.

WAN acceleration: What problems are you trying to solve?

08/26/08

The last newsletter noted that Jim participated in a recent Network World chat on the topic of application performance management and WAN acceleration. Today, we'll continue that thread by discussing how different performance problems require different optimization techniques. The point being that the questions that you should ask vendors when evaluating WAN acceleration products will depend upon the performance problems you are trying to resolve.

Define your WAN problem before evaluating products

08/21/08

Jim participated in a recent Network World online chat on the topic of application performance management and WAN acceleration. The way these chats work is that for an hour Network World readers type in questions and Jim types his response. All of this occurs live. Since Jim is not the world's fastest typist he did not provide the most in depth answers to some of the questions. As a result, we are going to use the next several newsletters to expand on the answers to the questions that were raised by the Network World community.

Should you block P2P traffic?

08/19/08

In the past two newsletters we've been discussing the FCC's ruling on Comcast selectively blocking certain applications - especially peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic - in its Internet service. This raises once again the question of whether P2P traffic is inherently "bad."

How the FCC's ruling against Comcast could affect corporate networks

08/14/08

Last time, we discusssed the FCC's Aug. 1 ruling that Comcast was acting improperly in using deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to selectively block certain types of traffic, especially concentrating on peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic that might be considered to be competitive with its own service offerings. Today, we'll offer some further opinions on this ruling and its impact on corporate networks.

The fallout from the FCC's order against Comcast

08/12/08

On Aug. 1, the FCC released an order with a press release titled "Commission Orders Comcast to End Discriminatory Network Management Practices." The title of the release, which was picked up by some national media, left us wondering exactly what was going on. So we headed over to the FCC's Web site, and what we found there seemed to be a milestone.

Optimizing network performance in the face of growing spam

08/07/08

Today, we're addressing an issue related to the simpler days of e-mail, and, in particular, the assumptions of the times. For more than 10 years, every newsletter has contained Steve's "public" e-mail address - taylor@webtorials.com. And that address still works, although there are rather tight spam filters applied to it. The problem comes with the basic assumptions that were in place when some of our most fundamental protocols, such as SMTP, were written. And the most fundamentally flawed assumption was that people would obey rules and not abuse the network, which made sense roughly 25 years ago. The fundamental problem with SMTP is the ability to spoof the "from" address.

Reducing network outages

08/05/08

In most situations when the subject of network availability is raised, the conversation immediately turns to implementing network devices that are highly fault tolerant, and also turns to implementing network designs that have diverse end-to-end paths and which feature fast failover protocols. Those standard network design techniques are all reasonable. However, if IT organizations just implement those techniques they may be missing the bigger picture.

The evolution of the WAN over the past 10 years

07/31/08

We forgot to notice a significant milestone a couple of months ago. This newsletter is now over 10 years old. Joanie Wexler and I took over the newsletter in May of 1998, after the prior authors - who shall remain nameless - wrote six newsletters on frame relay and decided that they had nothing else to say.

What's the impact of virtualization on application delivery?

07/29/08

In Jim's 2008 edition of the "Handbook of Application Delivery," virtualization was addressed as a meaningful trend, but, within the scope of the 140-plus page book, it was not a major theme.

The mandate for SIP to be interoperable

07/24/08

This is the sixth and last in a series of newsletters devoted to the standards process. We will use this newsletter to wrap up the discussion of standards by looking at Session Initiation Protocol. We look at SIP as being a good example of a technology that is very slowly being standardized. According to Wikipedia, SIP was originally designed by Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University) and Mark Handley (University College of London) starting in 1996. The latest version of the specification is RFC 3261 from the IETF SIP Working Group.

Do standards take too long to develop?

07/22/08

This is the fifth in a series of newsletters devoted to the standards process. This newsletter will discuss the impact on IT organizations of the contentious and lengthy standards process that was discussed in the two preceding newsletters.

The lengthy standards process

07/17/08

This is the fourth in a series of newsletters devoted to the standards process. This newsletter will discuss the potentially unacceptable length associated with the standards process.

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Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.