Stories by Network World staff

Report: Router market to increase

FRAMINGHAM (02/02/2004) - The worldwide router market will increase 6 percent over the next five years, while optical transport and mobility infrastructure won't see significant growth until 2005, according to Dell'Oro Group Inc. In a set of five-year forecasts, Dell'Oro said the router market will grow from US$6.3 billion in 2003 to $8.6 billion in 2008. The second half of 2003 was the "turning point" for the market, which had experienced declining sales for several years, Dell'Oro says. Telecom service providers and businesses are planning to increase investment in their router networks this year, and Dell'Oro expects this trend to continue for the next five years. The optical transport equipment market will be flat this year, after years of decline, and will return to sales growth in 2005, Dell'Oro says. Optical transport equipment sales will reach $7.3 billion by 2008, the firm predicts, from $6.1 billion in 2003.

IBM combines divisions to improve products

FRAMINGHAM (02/02/2004) - IBM Corp.'s server and semiconductor groups are joining forces in hopes that by working together the two will help each other improve their product lines, an IBM spokesman said. The new IBM Technology and Systems Group is a combination of the Technology Group headed by John Kelly, senior vice president and group executive, and the Systems Group, headed by William Zeitler, also a senior vice president and group executive. The two men will equally share responsibility for the new division, overseeing their respective areas, said Chris Andrews, a company spokesman. Kelly's group designs, manufactures and sells processors to external clients and IBM's server group, while Zeitler's organization designs and develops IBM's range of server technology from mainframes to blade servers.

IBM veteran retires

FRAMINGHAM (02/02/2004) - Ctrl+Alt+Delete inventor David Bradley is retiring from IBM Corp. after 28 years. The engineer, one of 12 who created the IBM PC, needed a way to restart the computer without turning it off. On a panel with Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates to celebrate the birth of the IBM PC, Bradley quipped, "I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous." Gates didn't laugh.

AT&T Wireless ponders buyout bids

FRAMINGHAM (01/26/2004) - After reporting weak fourth-quarter earnings, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. late last week officially announced the company is considering purchase bids. AT&T Wireless reported a net loss of US$84 million for the quarter and customer churn rate at 3.3 percent. The previous quarter the carrier reported customer turnover at 2.7 percent. AT&T Wireless says local number portability and software problems contributed to the company's disappointing results and the board's decision to entertain offers. Reportedly bids are coming from Cingular Wireless LLC, the second-largest wireless carrier in the U.S., NTT DoCoMo Inc., Vodafone Group PLC and Nextel Communications Inc. AT&T Wireless has hired financial firms Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to help review offers.

Experts blast online voting system

FRAMINGHAM (01/26/2004) - Four computer experts are urging the government to drop plans to let U.S. civilians who reside overseas cast their votes online. The risks associated with online voting can't be eliminated because the Internet and PCs are inherently unsecure, say the researchers, who were asked by the government to analyze an online voting system called the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE). The system is vulnerable to the same cyberattacks that threaten other online services, including viruses, spoofing and denial-of-service attacks. "SERVE is called an experiment, but it is in fact not an experiment," says Barbara Simons, one author of the critique. "There are not paper ballots, there is no way to verify after the fact to see if votes were correctly received and tabulated." Regardless of the opinions, the Department of Defense is moving ahead with SERVE. The system could be used for a primary election as early as next month, and certainly will be running for the November presidential election, a department spokesman says.

Chinese gov't announces WLAN equipment security policy

FRAMINGHAM (12/15/2003) - The Chinese government has settled on a policy that wireless LAN equipment made in China and sold for use there must implement a Chinese standard called Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure. The policy requires WAPI encryption and authentication security in WLAN products in China by June 2004. Some large WLAN equipment manufacturers in the U.S., including Cisco Systems Inc., say they have not found it easy to get details about the standard. The Chinese government is allowing the encryption technology to be shared only through designated Chinese companies, some of which are direct competitors, such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. A leading U.S. encryption expert, Bruce Schneier, says he hasn't seen the Chinese standard but added that U.S.-based attempts for WLAN security standards have been "so robustly bad" that if the Chinese standard "turns out to be good, we might want to adopt it in the West." Traditionally, encryption and key-management standards have been openly published -- unless they are deemed to have military value.

Report: Linux use on the rise

FRAMINGHAM (12/15/2003) - A recent SG Cowen Securities Corp. survey of more than 500 North American IT users found that more than 80 percent of respondents use Linux and that more than half plan to increase their use of the open source operating system within the next two years. The survey, which also found a growing interest in other open source software in areas such as application servers, e-mail and database systems, concluded that Linux will change the landscape in corporate data centers as it steals workload share away from both Unix and Windows systems. But the report's authors say that hurdles remain for Linux, including the possibility that the market could fragment as the Unix market did, with commercial vendors adding middleware, services and support to differentiate their Linux offerings. Nevertheless, Linux will continue to make inroads in corporate adoption, especially in 2004. The main reasons for turning toward Linux were reliability, scalability and lower cost, the survey found.

AT&T aims VoIP services at consumers

FRAMINGHAM (12/15/2003) - AT&T Corp. last week said it is aggressively expanding its voice-over-IP services with a new focus on consumers. While the carrier has offered VoIP services to some business customers since 1997, under a new initiative AT&T said it would expand its VoIP business services worldwide and begin offering new services to U.S. consumers next year. The VoIP push is meant to target the growing number of broadband Internet users who are looking to simplify their voice and data communication by running them over one network, AT&T said. The company added that it has had a fourfold increase in business VoIP customers this year, and recent trials also have shown a growing demand in the consumer market. Meanwhile, Qwest Communications International Inc. appears to be the first regional Bell operating company to offer a residential VoIP service -- to DSL customers in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Qwest announced intentions to do so last month and turned up the service last week.

Former WorldCom CEO Sidgmore dies

FRAMINGHAM (12/15/2003) - John Sidgmore, the Internet pioneer and former WorldCom Inc. executive who steered the company as it emerged from a multi-billion-dollar accounting scandal, died of cancer last week at the age of 52. Sidgmore became chairman and CEO of WorldCom, now known as MCI, after the previous CEO Bernard Ebbers resigned in April of last year amid scrutiny of his involvement in the company's mounting financial woes. Sidgmore led the company as it filed for bankruptcy. He then aided the company in a search for his replacement, and in November of last year was succeeded as chairman and CEO by former Hewlett-Packard Co. President Michael Capellas. Before heading the telecom giant, Sidgmore was CEO of ISP UUNET Technologies Inc.

US gov't urges businesses to improve cybersecurity

FRAMINGHAM (12/08/2003) - Top officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last week warned members of the high-tech industry that unless they took concrete steps toward cybersecurity, their industry could face government regulation. "It should go without saying that the continued success of protecting our cyberspace depends on the continued investment of each of you and the businesses you represent," said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, addressing the National Cyber Security Summit. The Department's Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection Bob Liscouski was more direct on the need for industry self-regulation: "You've got to help us tell that story, because if we can't tell that story, there are a lot of people willing to legislate how you should be doing that work."

Diebold drops electronic voting lawsuits

FRAMINGHAM (12/08/2003) - In a move hailed as a victory for free speech advocates, Diebold Election Systems Inc. said last week that it wouldn't follow up on its threats to sue those who published information that indicated flaws in the company's electronic voting machines. Diebold declined to give specific reasons for dropping the legal threats. The dispute between Diebold and various voter rights activists arose after a hacker broke into a Diebold Web server in March and was able to access information concerning issues with Diebold election equipment. The documents indicated flaws in the touch-screen voting machines and irregularities with certifying the machines for actual elections were leaked to the press in August. Diebold used the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to pressure universities and ISPs to take down the copies of its internal information.

Report: IDC predicts increased IT spending in 2004

FRAMINGHAM (12/08/2003) - IDC last week announced its annual IT predictions for the coming year, and according to the research firm's worldwide analysis, spending will increase and infrastructure will evolve to better support business-driven initiatives. IDC Senior Vice President Frank Gens said IT spending would grow 6 percent to 8 percent, up from previous predictions of just less than 5 percent. Gens said enterprise adoption of business-oriented applications and the need to upgrade hardware after a three-year drought would drive the upturn in IT buying. "We could be in for a refresh of 3-year-old or older IT infrastructure in 2004," he said. "IT organizations have been sitting on their hands for years, but this optimism certainly is fragile considering the last few years." Radio frequency identification also will see slower growth than previously expected, IDC says.

IBM hopes W3C makes its EPAL standard

FRAMINGHAM (12/08/2003) - IBM Corp. has submitted a draft of its Enterprise Privacy Authorization Language to the World Wide Web Consortium to develop. IBM is turning EPAL over to the W3C in the hope that it will be turned into a standard that will help automate privacy management tasks, improve consumer trust and reduce the cost of privacy compliance, the company said. EPAL is a programming language based on XML that will let software developers build security policy enforcement features directly into enterprise software applications. Using EPAL, personal data could have policies attached to it as it moves from application to application within a company. IBM introduced EPAL in July as a way to move beyond user identity-based security. The standard builds upon existing privacy specifications such as the Platform for Privacy Preferences, which the W3C released in April 2002. The W3C said the organization was "pleased to receive the EPAL Submission" from IBM.

Security experts form patch support group

FRAMINGHAM (12/08/2003) - Patching is such a headache these days that a number of security experts have gotten together to form PatchManagement.org, a support group where network managers, systems administrators and security professionals can discuss all things patching. The discussion list will focus on operating systems, applications and network devices. The moderators will include Eric Schultze, chief security architect for Shavlik Technologies LLC and former program manager for the Microsoft Corp. Security Response Center; Tina Bird, a member of the Information Security team at Stanford University; Jason Chan, principal security architect for @stake Inc.; and Ben Laurie, director of the Apache Software Foundation. The discussion starts at www.patchmanagement.org.

Cisco issues security warning to Aironet users

FRAMINGHAM (12/08/2003) - Cisco Systems Inc. is warning customers using its Aironet wireless access points about a security vulnerability that could let attackers obtain keys used to secure communications on wireless networks. The vulnerability affects Aironet 1100, 1200 and 1400 series access points and could let Wired Equivalent Privacy keys be sent as plain text over corporate networks that use an SNMP server and have a specific option enabled on the access point, Cisco says. To be vulnerable, organizations have to be using an affected Aironet model with the IOS software, have an SNMP server deployed, be using static WEP keys for encryption and have enabled an option on the access point called "snmp-server enable traps wlan-wep." That option is disabled by default on Aironet access points, Cisco says. Cisco has issued a patch for vulnerable versions of the IOS software, 12.2(13)JA1.

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