Network Performance Daily: The Enterprise UI, Part 2 - Constraints in UI Design
"There are many iterations to a well constructed interface. The way we typically approach it is first from the idea of usability. What is the user trying to accomplish and how can we provide interactive elements that let them do that in the easiest way? Initially you work with a wireframe -- rough sketches applied to scenarios."

ZDNet Asia: Configure QoS on your Cisco router with this template
"It's important to understand the difference between bandwidth and priority. As the network devices (switches or routers) encounter the designated traffic, they give that traffic priority by sending it before other traffic; they give the traffic bandwidth by sending more of it than other traffic."

ZDNet Asia: Quit wasting bandwidth by controlling Cisco routing protocol
"Managing network bandwidth is becoming more and more critical. There's no sense in routing broadcasts going out on network interfaces on networks that have no other routers. It's an inefficient use of both network bandwidth and your router's resources. Let's examine how to better control this by taking advantage of the passive-interface command."

ZDNet: BEA to run Java sans operating system
BEA Systems has created a version of its Java application server designed for virtualization technology, using an approach that cuts the operating systems out of the picture.

Geeking with Greg: Lowered Uptime Expectations?
Google's Blogger has been taking many planned and unplanned outages over the last few weeks. Yahoo My Web just announced they're going down "for a few hours." Salesforce.com just had multiple outages, including one that lasted almost a day. Gap decided to close Gap.com, OldNavy.com, and BananaRepublic.com for over two weeks. Bloglines took an outage instead of trying to switch to a new data center without any interruption of service. Technorati did something similar a year ago, but took a longer weekend outage for the move. And there are many, many other examples.

Macehiter-Ward-Dutton: Maintenance, innovation and half-baked pies
"I'm getting just a little bit bored of a certain slide that seems to appear in every single IT vendor's enterprise pitch at the moment. It's the one with the pie chart - where about 70% of the pie is allocated to 'Maintenance' and about 30% relates to 'Innovation.' The theory is that CIO's are looking to reduce the amount they spend on the former, so they can free up resource for the latter."

InfoWorld: Man-Made Security Woes
"In enterprise IT, all sorts of suffering happens in the good name of security. As an end user, it's really hard to know what you need to do and don't need to do -- and often the processes / technology in place are merely illusory feel-goods. For example, most login systems will kick a user off after three tries. But what's the difference between getting kicked out after three tries, after four tries, or after 100 tries?"

XKCD: Map of the Internet
This chart shows the IP address space on a plan using a fractal mapping which preserves grouping -- any consecutive string of IPs will translate to a single compact, contiguous region on the map. Each of the 256 numbered blocks represents one /8 submet (containing all IPs that start with tha number.) The upper left section showt the blocks sold directly to corporations and governments in the