Cameron Sturdevant

At a recent briefing with eWeek Labs, Ciscos Jim Turner, director of marketing, said more sites should take advantage of the equipment makers approach to network management. “We are using Web technologies, including [Extensible Markup Language] and browser-based access, to make management of Cisco infrastructure less complex and less dependent on the version of the […]

IT managers running critical Web applications on cobbled-together clusters of Windows-based servers finally have a tool, Application Center 2000 Version 1.0, that takes most of the pain out of building and maintaining these clusters. During eWeek Labs tests, we were able to accomplish all the common tasks needed to bring a number of relatively inexpensive […]

Since Seattle is paying an estimated $2 billion to recover from the earthquake that struck March 1, unaffected IT managers should heed the warning: Prepare for disaster or perish. Let me start by saying that if a similar temblor had rocked our Foster City, Calif., lab, you can be sure that we would not have […]

The institute of electrical and Electronics Engineers released the seventh edition of the “Authoritative Dictionary of IEEE Standards Terms” earlier this month. The reference work contains 35,000 definitions for words, abbreviations and IT-industry-famous acronyms. Its yours for $113 ($90 for IEEE members). Find out more about the publication at www.ieee.org. Another good source for technical […]

The Desktop Management Task Force has released another version of what it hopes will be one of the key building blocks in its slowly evolving network management scheme. Version 2.5 of the DMTFs CIM (Common Information Model) corrects several shortcomings found in the previous version and adds significant abilities to the specification, including models that […]

In Version 6.0 of its WhatsUp Gold network mapping and discovery tool, Ipswitch Inc. has refined the security features of the softwares Web-based maps and has significantly improved log message handling and complex map displays, making the utility a solid investment for managers of small to midsize networks. Although enterprise network managers are also likely […]

Although Dialog Communication Systems warns that the need to memorize a flood of passwords and PINs is overwhelming end users, the same might be said of biometric security devices and IT managers. At least Dialogs BioID Soho 1.0, available as a trial download from www. bioid.com, uses regular PC video and sound equipment to authenticate […]

AskSam 4.0 makes keeping track of useful information straightforward, and in the age of the Internet, when the amount of interesting data is often overwhelming, thats saying something. Although the latest version of this free-form database—which has been around since the days of DOS—can be used to augment a PDA by allowing users to set […]

Gensym corp.s newly minted NetSleuth network discovery and monitoring tool will tempt IT managers with its detailed port-level network mapping, expanded device-discovery skills and refined integration with Hewlett-Packard Co.s OpenView Network Node Manager. However, those who want to pinpoint the causes of network problems are still better off with such products as System Management Arts […]

BMC Software Inc. has made it significantly easier for network managers who are responsible for the growing herds of Windows 2000 servers to keep watch over their flocks. The latest version of the companys Patrol for Microsoft Windows 2000 Server supports Microsoft Corp.s enterprise-class Advanced, Datacenter, Transaction and Cluster servers, as well as Microsofts Message […]

There is little doubt that the American economy is headed for sluggish growth or more likely a recession, and this means that IT managers need to focus on fundamentals. The first thing to keep in mind is that telecommunications, data networking (voice networking intentionally left out), customer-driven supply chain integration, storage and security increase in […]

Help is here for managers who must ensure that data and signatures on handheld computers and wireless devices are authentic and secure. ECC (elliptic curve cryptography) systems provide much of the protection of schemes based on integer factorization problems or Diffie-Hellmans discrete logarithm problems, while using only a fraction of the computing power. ECC makes […]