* Welcome to the afternoon edition of Network World Daily News.
Review
IP PBXs built on open source software show promise
In this Clear Choice test of four open source-based IP PBX systems, we found products that are well suited for the low end – defined in this testing as supporting as many as 250 concurrent users. By providing simple installation processes, automatic endpoint configuration and straightforward Web-based management interfaces, these products could go a long way in easing IT fears about dealing with open source VoIP products.
From the blogs and forums
We have a couple new Cisco bloggers this month: Mark Kadrich is a network-security expert, while Jeff Riddel is the man to go to for cable networking questions.
Mark Gibbs reports the spam he gets keeps getting weirder and weirder and offers up the best Star Trek/hip-hop mashup ever.
Brad Reese posts job-hunting tips for Cisco professionals. Users debate whether SiteKey makes sense as an anti-phishing and Web authentication tool. Also, is desktop anti-virus dead? One user predicts: Verizon will buy Vonage.
Users debate whether H-1B visas take jobs away from Americans. Some users like HughesNet satellite service for really remote locations, but one says it’s awful with VPNs. Paul McNamara keeps having problems with the Bank of America Web site. Will records-retention cases and regulations cause problems for unified communications systems? One user brings up the age-old argument: What good is certification without real-world experience?
How to
Ron Nutter helps a user figure out how to patch 500 Windows servers that haven’t been patched in five years.
Video
Diving into ITIL
Andrew Brill from Kaiser Permanente talks about how a reorganization around the Information Technology Infrastructure Library process framework helped improve service and capacity planning management.
Windows Mobile 6 highlights
Keith gets a look at the new features of Windows Mobile 6 and some of the new phones that will support the latest Microsoft mobile OS.
In depth
RAID 6 covers more bases
RAID technology – Redundant Array of Independent Disks – lets you establish varying degrees of data protection depending on the particular requirements of a given application. RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 10 have been the most widely used, with RAID 5 (rotational parity) reigning supreme for fault tolerance because it allows data on a failed drive to be rebuilt without losing accessibility to stored information. RAID 6 (double parity) provides a higher level of fault tolerance by protecting data on two drives in the event of a failure.
How to win the battle for network talent
Numerous sources have reported that the number of available technology jobs is on the rise but there are fewer workers available to fill them, creating a market where technology professionals are in a position to demand better salaries and perks.
More news
Vendors hail Fibre Channel over Ethernet spec
A group of storage vendors on Thursday proposed the development of a new specification that would allow the Fibre Channel storage-area networking protocol to run over Ethernet.
Many colleges see drawbacks to VoIP
Even the lure of phone systems that withstand disasters combined with the benefits of unified messaging don’t outweigh the costs to bring IP communications to college campuses, according to a survey by ACUTA, the Association for Communications Professionals in Higher E ducation.
IT management done right
Yes, it’s plumbing, but you still need good plumbers. It is true that these services are now ‘dismissed’ as dial-tone, but the lack of a well-designed infrastructure hurts. The approach we take to network design is to define the business problem to solve.
