Stories about: Verio

The last thing a collision repair shop needs to worry about is a data-storage crash. So when John Sweigart realized the software he'd been using to manage his business, The Body Shop, was no longer compatible with the way they were backing up data, he knew it was time for a different option.

Everywhere you turn nowadays, another company is targeting the Small and Medium Business (SMB) marketplace. SMBs are growing, and represent a segment of the IT market that has not been fully exploited by many, including open source software vendors that boasted early successes with large enterprises.

Privacy advocates are concerned that a move by Verio to stop hosting a controversial Web site points to a growing control of the Web by big business and governments.

The maxim that timing is everything in business has special application to today's enterprise storage service providers. SSPs have evolved to the point where most experts and users say their time has come. With utility storage, state-of-the-art management services and savvy partnerships, today's SSPs can offer full-featured services tailored to specific enterprise needs. Also, with such new big-name players as HP, Sun and Verizon jumping into the market, interest in SSPs is intensifying.

Verio has introduced new hosted-service plans for Microsoft's Windows Server platform that allow companies to purchase multiple Web sites for the price of what a single site would have cost previously, a company executive said.

Engineers at NTT Communications have developed a secure instant-messaging system that supports logging and archiving of messages to satisfy compliance regulations and can interact with some third-party instant messaging networks.

IPv6, the long-awaited upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol, may be showing signs of life with Tuesday's announcement of MCI's first commercial customer for IPv6 services.

MCI is providing a direct connection between its commercial Internet backbone and Moonv6 , the world's largest test bed running IPv6, an upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.

Early adopters of IPv6 say deployment of this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol is significantly easier than expected and costs less than anticipated.

An early test of a multisite, next-generation Internet, powered by IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) went well, and the coalition of groups working on the so-called Moonv6 project will conduct more comprehensive tests starting in February, said two people involved in the project Tuesday.

Last October's hacker attack on the global root servers that run the core addressing system of the Internet knocked out seven of the 13 servers for a time, but caused nary a problem for most Internet users.