What's driving WAN complexity? Part 1

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: STEVE TAYLOR AND JIM METZLER ON WIDE
AREA NETWORKING
09/20/05
Today's focus: What's driving WAN complexity? Part 1

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Activities that are expected to have the greatest impact on
the WAN
* Links related to Wide Area Networking
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by HP
FROM THE NETWORK CORE TO THE NETWORK EDGE

Traffic management becomes critical as your network
infrastructure expands to support different types of traffic and
users. Most traffic management solutions have serious
limitations: too expensive, difficult to use, and overly taxing
on bandwidth. However ProCurve Networking by HP addresses these
requirements, overcomes the limitations of other solutions, and
gives you valuable insight into LAN performance. Click here to
download HP's Traffic Management Whitepaper
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=115523
_______________________________________________________________
SPYWARE SHOOTOUT

Need to defend your network from spyware? Lots of tools and
software have hit the market recently, and network executives
are left to decide which weapon works best. Our Spyware Shootout
2005 suggests the gateway approach might be the best starting
point but is it a long-term strategy? Click here for more:
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=114690
_______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: What's driving WAN complexity? Part 1

By Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler

We recently surveyed 149 IT professionals and asked them to
indicate the type of activities that would have the greatest
impact on their IT organization over the next year. The survey
respondents
<http://www.webtorials.com/abstracts/NetScoutBriefs.htm> cited
compliance and security as the top-two activities.

Since we only recently started to discuss compliance and its
impact on the network, it was a little surprising to see
compliance at the top of the list. It was also interesting to
see how much overlap there was between the companies that rated
compliance highly and the companies that rated security highly.

After talking to many of the survey respondents, it became clear
that the overlap was driven by the fact that much of the
regulations that they are responding to are very focused on
security. An example of this is the Federal Information Security
Management Act that requires each federal agency to develop,
document and implement an agency-wide program to provide
information security.

Relative to security, the survey respondents indicated that
their organizations will be deploying additional firewalls,
making a significant deployment of intrusion detection systems,
and at least a modest deployment of intrusion protection
systems. In addition, these organizations are also planning to
make more use of security-oriented protocols such as SSL, SSH
and HTTPS. The introduction of these protocols into the WAN is a
good example of how the WAN is becoming more and more complex,
in this case driven by the overlapping factors of compliance and
security.

The next newsletter will describe some of the other activities
that are impacting IT in general, and the WAN in particular.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. McAfee, Omniquad top anti-spyware test
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlwan6977>

2. DemoFall preview <http://www.networkworld.com/nlwan7309>

3. EBay bid shows promise of VoIP
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlwan7310>

4. The rise of the IT architect
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlwan7088>

5. Volunteers rebuild Gulf Coast communications with wireless
nets <http://www.networkworld.com/nlwan7177>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates
and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. For more detailed
information on most of the topics discussed in this newsletter,
connect to Webtorials <http://www.webtorials.com/>, the premier
site for Web-based educational presentations, white papers, and
market research. Taylor can be reached at
<mailto:taylor@webtorials.com>

Jim Metzler is the Vice President of Ashton, Metzler &
Associates, a consulting organization that focuses on leveraging
technology for business success. Jim assists vendors to refine
product strategies, service providers to deploy technologies and
services, and enterprises evolve their network infrastructure.
He can be reached at <mailto:jim@ashtonmetzler.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by HP
FROM THE NETWORK CORE TO THE NETWORK EDGE

Traffic management becomes critical as your network
infrastructure expands to support different types of traffic and
users. Most traffic management solutions have serious
limitations: too expensive, difficult to use, and overly taxing
on bandwidth. However ProCurve Networking by HP addresses these
requirements, overcomes the limitations of other solutions, and
gives you valuable insight into LAN performance. Click here to
download HP's Traffic Management Whitepaper
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=115522
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the WAN newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/frame/index.html
_______________________________________________________________
FEATURED READER RESOURCE

IS IT THE NETWORK OR THE STORAGE THAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Midsize and larger businesses often find their IT topology has
become a complex mix of servers, networks and storage systems.
Many of these companies also route long-haul traffic over
fiber-based networks - metropolitan-area networks, WANs and
private optical networks. Who's responsible when a
storage-related problem occurs on a fiber network? For more,
click here:

<http://www.networkworld.com/nlwan7089>
_______________________________________________________________
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