Stories by Bryan Betts

Force10 goes multi-media to ease 10Gig adoption

10Gig isn't taking off as fast as predicted and needs a kick, according to switch developer Force10 Networks. The company added that 10GBase-T, the spec for 10Gig over twisted pair copper, is dead in the water, being too power-hungry and too late.

Hyper-V adds flexibility but brings new risks

Virtualising a datacentre can make it more flexible, but it also introduces new points of failure and it doesn't remove the need for critical servers to be duplicated for fail-over, disaster recovery (DR) specialist Neverfail has warned.

Bumper network data recorder released

Network Instruments has developed what it claims is the largest network data recorder available. The GigaStor SAS has a capacity of up to 288TB, and was originally developed for a US military customer which needed to store a month's worth of the traffic on its network, says Douglas Smith, the company's president and co-founder.

Start-up claims de-duplicaton breakthrough

De-duplication has become popular for backup data, but not for primary storage. Now, US start-up company Ocarina Networks wants to change that, with a data reduction technology which it claims can shrink live production data — even if the file formats are already compressed.

EU pumps money into open-source privacy management

The European Union is contributing €10 million (US$15 million) in sponsorship to a project called PrimeLife, which aims to develop open-source tools for personal privacy management and protection, and get the community at large to adopt them.

ConSentry plugs into directories for NAC

Secure networking developer ConSentry Networks has introduced what it calls its Intelligent Switch architecture - in essence, a firmware upgrade which adds application and role-based control within the network.

Smart buildings need smart networks: vendor

Network managers could miss out on significant energy and infrastructure savings by not planning for convergence beyond data, voice and video, a network supplier has claimed.

New WAN box can mix different providers

WAN traffic management specialist AscenVision has developed an aggregating device which it claims can take multiple broadband connections from different providers and bond them into a single logical connection which has the combined capacity of all the links.

AMD takes stake in virtual desktop app maker

Hosted desktop pioneer Nivio has taken an undisclosed investment from AMD to help it work on its ambition of making virtual Windows XP desktops and software accessible from any connected device — even a Linux PC or a smartphone.

IBM data-masking release

IBM has introduced a service to mask sensitive customer data so it can safely be used for application testing.

New D-Link switch

D-Link has released a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) product for smaller organisations. The company's latest DES-1008P 10/100 switch can supply up to 15.4W of power on four of its eight ports.

Optical nets easier to hack than copper

Optical fibre is a lot easier to tap than most people imagine. There is no need to break or splice the fibre now -- a relatively shallow bend can be enough.

WAN bottlenecks may hamper DR preparation

Two-thirds of large enterprises don’t have enough bandwidth to replicate or back up their remote sites in an emergency, according to a survey of IT managers and directors by Forrester Consulting.

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