Opinion

Cisco vs. Microsoft: The battle over the branch office, unified communications, and collaboration

* Cisco makes moves that put Microsoft on the defensive

Mistletoe chips make firewall/VPN gear faster and cheaper

* The advantage of inexpensive high-speed firewalls

Storage World Conference attendees receptive to grids

* What Silver Peak, Neverfail and Abrevity are doing with grids

Microsoft fixes critical IE bug

* Patches from Microsoft, Gentoo, Debian, others * Beware Microsoft IM worm dubbed Heartworm * Sophos tool takes aim at unwanted applications, and other interesting reading

NetFlash: Microsoft offers peek at future technologies

* Microsoft offers peek at future technologies * Sophos tool takes aim at unwanted applications * Customers applaud IBM services’ face-lift * HP CEO calls pretexting probe a 'rogue' investigation * Automating the management freight * Buzzblog: Helpin

U.S. Open gets the edge with IBM virtualization technology

NIST guidelines on cell phone forensics

* NIST publication discusses extracting data from mobile devices

How Indiana cleaned up its big IT mess

Cool Tools at Demofall 2006

Extreme, Reconnex share information for security

* Extreme switch talks to Reconnex security appliance

The most-read stories in September

Welcome to The Best of Network World. Here is this week's Readers' Choice, with the most-clicked stories of the month.

Is it worth going for the CNE 6 certification?

* Should network managers recertify on an NOS that may not be around for long?

Georgia Tech, BellSouth and ISS target VoIP security

Highlighting the Web

Scrapbooking for the digital set

Research project targets radio tag security, privacy

DEMO: Helping Web surfers wipe out registration

Search getting specialized

DEMO: News travels fast, all right

Security market is ripe for consolidation

Microsoft embarrassed into IE patch release?

Google hates Massachusetts

Everybody’s blogging in China

Dumb PR move of the day

Video highlights from DEMOFall 2006 – day 1

Google Apps for Your Domain: A new era of hosting?

* A new service from Google that could potentially redefine the value of hosting

Navy touts benefits of enterprise architecture for big IP nets

* Q&A with NMCI technical director

VON announcements take convergence another step forward

* News from Global Crossing, Broadsoft and Sylantro

MOMs the word for a federated CMDB

* How many CMDBs does it take to manage an SOA?

HP has an identity crisis – with other people’s identities

* HP board scandal raises questions over the integrity of ID mgmt. at HP