Features

RFI: 'Team'work Pays Off for Linux By Lori MacVittie If your enterprise or organization uses multiple Linux distributions -- or just isn't happy with vendor-supplied support -- consider a third-party support service. We tested offerings from Caldera, HP, IBM and Linuxcare, and found that the personal touch makes all the difference.

Enterprise Content-Delivery Networks: Warp Speed Web Content By Sean Doherty For a cost-effective way to reduce bandwidth requirements and provide quick, reliable Webcasting, videoconferencing, e-learning and collaborative applications, look no further than eCDNs.

Online Only: Inside Network Computing Enterprise Content Distribution Bradley F. Shimmin and Sean Doherty, author of this issue's cover story on enterprise content-delivery networks, take you one step beyond what you'll read in the story. Tune in and hear more tidbits Sean discovered on this topic. (Requires RealPlayer)

Review: Volera Makes You Cache-Rich Quick By Sean Doherty ECDN Company Products Reviewed: Cacheflow; F5 Networks; Volera. We went prospecting for a top-notch eCDN and struck gold with Volera's solution. It reduced WAN bandwidth up to 99 percent in our tests, dramatically increasing cache hits and surpassing the CacheFlow and F5 offerings in hits per second.

Workshops

The ABCs of ROI By Curtis Franklin Jr. Ready for a 700 percent return on investment? It's not that simple. Vendor-sponsored studies may prove to be little more than snake oil when you run the numbers.

Online Only: Interactive Buyer's Guide: Content Switches Content-aware switches make critical decisions about your network traffic. Use our guide, which lists each product's features, so you can get just the switch you need.

Sneak Previews

Online Only: ThinStar Voyager Weighs Little but Packs Some Heft By Lori MacVittie More powerful than your PDA and almost as portable, this thin client provides network access and lots of peripheral connectivity options. Not so cool is its lack of audio support.

SOHOware's Broadband Commercial Gateway Just Misses the Mark By Dilip Advani We found SOHOware's wireless BCG offering impressive, with its four Ethernet ports for wired clients plus multiple public IP addressing with port forwarding. But we discovered a few security holes, as well.

Caw Networks' WebAvalanche 4.0 Screams and Streams By Lori MacVittie We took an exclusive look at this load tester for streaming media apps. Our lab tests proved WebAvalanche delivers mightily on its promises. For one thing, this single device does what previously required many agent-loaded machines.

Kyberpass Helps Make Microsoft Outlook an E-Mail Platform You Can Trust By Mike Fratto Microsoft Outlook users can easily send and receive digitally signed and encrypted messages with Secure E-Mail Trust Platform.

Server Limitations Keep Tripp Lite Watchdog on Too Short a Leash By Don MacVittie If you're counting on Watchdog to monitor computers that don't have Windows NT, 2000 or XP, you're barking up the wrong tree. But Microsoft shops will like this product.

Departments

Quick Takes This week, Network Computing takes a look at these new hot commodities: Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 3000mfp, 4100mfp and 9000mfp Arbor Networks Peakflow 2.1 Ektron eWebEditPro+XML Rockliffe MailSite SP-c 5

Centerfold: Deloitte's VPN Makes Speed and Security Less Remote By Kelly Jackson Higgins Deloitte Consulting's global IP VPN may not be the answer to all the company's remote connectivity problems, but it's proving to be a lot faster and more reliable than the firm's previous frame-relay network.

Letters "The press never gave Corel credit for user-friendly licensing provisions -- and played right into Microsoft's oligopolistic practices." --Nathan L. Maryn, former director, IS Division, Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce

Columns

Air Time: How Much Bandwidth Does WiFi Need? By Dave Molta Don't wait for next-generation wireless LANs solely because today's products don't offer enough bandwidth. It may stunt your organization's progress.

The Inside Story: Survey Says... By James Hutchinson "Hi, this is the ghost of Richard Dawson, former host of Family Feud. Actually, I'm not dead, but my career certainly is. Because I'm somewhat of an expert in the survey field, I'm being channeled through James Hutchinson to bring you news about Network Computing's first extensive readership survey."

BuzzCut: Is AOL Right to Shut Out Instant Messaging Rivals? Don MacVittie and Michael J. DeMaria AOL says it's trying to maintain the security of its servers by excluding 'rogue software.' Will Trillian be just another great idea that never survives if AOL succeeds in blocking traffic from competing IM clients? Two of our editors tackle the issue from opposite sides of the fence.

BuzzCut: Sun's Tepid Romance With Open Source Will Benefit Mobile Apps By Lori MacVittie The fight for the mobile platform is an important one, as is the battle for Web services domination. Java-based Web services would give you a larger knowledge base for building apps as well as a larger pool of developers to help you achieve your application goals.

BuzzCut: Lotus Sets the Price of Progress By Mike Lee Over the coming year, IBM plans to drop the NSF data store from Lotus and Domino in favor of more enterprise- and Web-friendly products, DB2 and WebSphere. We'll show you how to ready your network for the change.

Online Only: Air Time: Cisco Introduces the Aironet 1200 By Dave Molta Cisco has a knack for picking the right companies at the right time. And to the company's credit, the products it acquires in the process usually can still be purchased a year or two later. So how will its latest wireless LAN infrastructure platform, the Aironet 1200, which is based on an acquired product line, fare?

Down to Business: Beyond the Numbers By Rob Preston "Like the amateur stock-market investor who flip-flops from exuberance to panic, companies tend to swing from one extreme to another when evaluating their IT spending. So what's the lesson for IT professionals? Be prepared to show the potential value of a tech investment even if you can't line up the ROI numbers to prove it."

Security Watch: In Need of a New Deal By Greg Shipley Business executives understand financial audits. They understand the need for outside reviews, separation of duties, and checks and balances -- when they concern accounting. But they approach IT security with a different attitude, if they approach it at all.