Wireless, Management Top Agenda at N+I

John Shelest was disappointed with the absence of a "technical presence" when he attended the spring Networld/Interop exposition and conference in Las Vegas in May. "There were mostly sales and marketing people giving out a lot of business cards, and many of my technical questions were not being addressed," Shelest said.

Nevertheless, Shelest, a senior network engineer at Equity Residential Properties Trust in Chicago, said he will be in Atlanta next week to take in the fall Networld/Interop. He's willing to put up with the sales pitches from vendors to keep up-to-date on networking trends, he said.

The two areas that interest Shelest most seem to be prominent at Networld/Interop: network security and wireless connectivity. Shelest said he wants to see the new virtual private network software for remote offices from CheckPoint Software Technologies Ltd. in Redwood City, Calif. He said he's interested in using the product to secure network connections for Equity Residential's 1,000 remote offices.

Shelest is also among those interested in wireless LAN technologies that save time and trouble in setting up networks in remote workgroups and branch offices.

Internet service provider UUnet Technologies Inc., a WorldCom Inc. subsidiary in Ashburn, Va., said it's planning a major wireless announcement but declined to give details prior to Networld/ Interop.

Another busy area at the show will be network management tools. Among those planning to show their wares is New York-based Entuity Inc., which will debut its Eye of the Storm network management suite.

Mark Clayam, director of network services at application service provider Surebridge Inc. in Lexington, Mass., said his company will soon use Entuity's software to help track down and fix network problems from a central screen. Surebridge hosts enterprise-level applications for large corporate customers. "We need to be able to detect and solve problems [on the network] before a customer is interrupted," Clayman said.

Notable among the network equipment makers that will be at Networld/Interop are San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. in Murray Hill, N.J. Cisco will announce enhancements to its Catalyst 6000 line of network switches, and Lucent will try to give Basking Ridge, N.J.-based Avaya Inc., its enterprise network equipment spin-off, some market traction.

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