LAN & WAN - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Cisco adds IPv6 migration features to routers

  Cisco this week rolled out products and services designed to ease the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 for enterprise customers.

• Lack of IPv6 traffic stats makes judging progress difficult

  The Internet is poised to undergo the biggest upgrade in its <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/020909-evolution-internet.html">40-year history</a>: from the current version of the Internet Protocol known as IPv4 to a new version dubbed <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/073009-ipv6-guide.html">IPv6</a>, which offers an expanded addressing scheme for supporting new users and devices.

• What if IPv6 simply fails to catch on?

  During the past six months, the Internet engineering community has undertaken an unprecedented effort to promote <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/073009-ipv6-guide.html">IPv6</a> as an urgent and necessary upgrade for network and website operators to allow for the continued, rapid growth of the Internet.

• Is OpenFlow a go?

  Interop 2011 could have been called The OpenFlow Show.

• FAQ: IPv6 for enterprise networks

  With the availability of IPv4 addresses drying up, enterprise IT managers know they need to move to IPv6, but the migration raises all sorts of questions. In this excerpt from the book IPv6 for Enterprise Networks, the authors answer many of those questions.

• How is cloud computing like an airplane?

  LAS VEGAS – A cloud computing service is like an airliner - even though it can experience devastating crashes that affect many people, like Amazon’s crash last month, it’s still safer than driving your own car… or IT infrastructure.

• Does ARIN have the right to approve all IPv4 address sales?

  A U.S. bankruptcy court in Delaware recently approved Nortel's sale of 666,624 IPv4 addresses to <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/microsoft/">Microsoft</a> for $7.5 million. Despite this precedent, a debate is raging in Internet policy circles about how sales of IPv4 addresses -- particularly the largest blocks of IPv4 address space issued before the Internet became popular -- will proceed in the future.

• Juniper: Networks inhibit 'exponential' data center

  LAS VEGAS -- Current networks inhibit large-scale data centers, which require new fabric architectures, a Juniper official said during his keynote address at the Interop conference today.

• Akamai and Riverbed team to speed hybrid cloud performance

  LAS VEGAS -- Riverbed and Akamai are teaming up to offer technology and services that promise to optimize WAN traffic more effectively when it travels between corporate data centers and cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) providers.

• IEEE investigates Ethernet bandwidth needs

  The IEEE standards body is forming a committee to assess the future bandwidth needs of large organizations and service providers, with an eye toward next steps in Ethernet standards.

• Web inventor Berners-Lee fights to keep it open

  We often consider 21 to be a coming-of-age year, and the World Wide Web's impending 21st birthday will be no different.

• Living legends: Radia Perlman, Layer 3 wizard

  As important as Spanning Tree has been to the acceptance and spread of Ethernet, making it possible to link Ethernet segments without creating loops and packet storms, its inventor, <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2006/anniversary/032706-20people.html">Radia Perlman</a>, says she always thought it was a bad idea.

• Microsoft, Juniper urged to patch dangerous IPv6 DoS hole

  Security experts are urging Microsoft and Juniper to patch a year-old IPv6 vulnerability so dangerous it can freeze any Windows machine on a LAN in a matter of minutes.

• Brocade fleshes out cloud strategy for battle with Cisco, others

  Brocade today unveiled its plan for migrating customers to distributed, virtualized, Cloud-based data centers, along with products supporting that plan.

• Avaya adds switch to VENA lineup

  <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/121809-avaya-closes-nortel-deal.html">Avaya</a> this week will extend it <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/topics/data-center.html">data center</a> networking line and architecture with a new top-of-rack switch.