Networking: Reviews

With the economy slowing down and IT budgets getting tighter, trying to sell your boss on some new network equipment might defy conventional wisdom. But if the equipment helps reduce time wasted when working over a WAN, or better yet, improves overall WAN usage and user productivity, it might not be as difficult a sale as you thought.

Building a big data center and looking for a switch to match? How do 256 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and nearly 1.7 terabits of capacity sound?

I've had a Comcast cable Internet connection for years. Last year I got a shiny new fiber connection from Mstar. But rather than uninstall the cable connection, I asked FatPipe Networks if they'd be willing to let me perform an extended test of the company's flagship route clustering product, WARP.

Cisco take note: Juniper's new EX 4200 switch not only fills a hole in a leading competitor's product line, but also represents a credible alternative for enterprise access switching.

The wide variety of so-called NAC (network access control) products on the market shows a broad range of thinking about policy-based security controls and the management of the network in general, including the end-point devices that connect to the network. Some vendors enforce policies using a client agent, some enforce them in the network, and some even use peers for enforcement. Network-based enforcement itself can take many forms, including dedicated gateway, DHCP manipulation, 802.1x authentication, and port- and VLAN-based enforcement on switches.

Small businesses have, for some time, been able to easily deploy a wide-open access point or two, or put together a couple of access points with a basic level of security. The thing that hasn't been easily available is a small, secure, managed wireless network that's easy to deploy and administer, and priced for the needs of a smaller business. Now there is such a thing, and its existence does a good job of highlighting what we've been missing. The solution is the Ruckus Wireless ZoneFlex Smart WLAN System, and it is a very good thing, indeed, for the SMB wireless market.

Network admins have spent many a late night trying to figure out how to improve application response or file replication across the WAN. Faster performance is all about bigger pipes, right?

Just this week while I was on-site, an IT services company serving a client of mine asked for my help. They needed to know where to put their efforts in securing information. Their customers are varied, with a range of systems and connectivity. For each infrastructure, they wanted to know, where are the highest risks? In one case, there are two connections to the Internet, remote access, mobile users, and a complex web of systems and networks, some with external data sharing.

Traditionally, many IT specialists have seen networks as an open channel. They allow an infinite variety of devices to communicate, and the best networks make communication simple, free, and instantaneous -- like the air we breathe. Back in the early days of the Internet, shell accounts were free for the asking. Few people used passwords. It was an easy and altruistic era.

Reflex Technologies' Command Center is itself a virtual machine that sits on VMware's ESX server and acts as an intrusion-prevention system, watching connectivity activity between other VMs and the virtual network interface provided by VMware.

Juniper Networks' ISG-1000 and Cisco's ASA5540 with its add-on SSM-20 IPS module offer no-compromise IPS products that will make the security purist happy with their configurability and control features.