By Jim Sampson

Around the mid-nineties, I worked for the Network Operating Systems support group in Dell - third level support for the enterprise server division. As an employee there, I was trying to use Linux on my laptop in Dell's corporate environment. I purchased third-party provided connectors into Exchange, and ran Office-type applications as well. But it didn't work very well.

For the next ten years, I would go off and on back to this thought: I wanted to support the Open Source community, and to use Linux, but every time, the reality was that Linux just was not ready.

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Continue reading "Ten years of pushing for Linux adoption in the workplace (and why I gave up.)" »

As readers can see, we’ve changed our “daily links” to twice-a-week Tuesday and Thursday links. This way we can provide a bit more commentary on each link instead of just listing them with little to no analysis. We invite our readers to give their opinions on this new format, and we’ll be looking to incorporate changes. One important note – if you have a link that you’d like to submit, please use the “submit a story” link on the left column of this page – we’ve been inundated with comment-spam and we wouldn’t want to accidentally delete your suggestion.

ZDNET: AMD versus Intel: CPU wars roadmap

George Ou at ZDNet graphs out the next two years of projected developments in CPU design over the next two years from Intel and AMD.

According to Kanter, the big reason for AMD's problem was Intel's manufacturing lead. While Intel was producing 65 nm processors all of last year, AMD was outputting 90 nm parts and barely got their first 65 nm product out by the end of the year. The significance of this is that 90 nm manufacturing with small 200 mm wafers produces less than half the number of wafers compared to a 65 nm process on 300 mm wafers. That means that while the price wars of 2006 put a damper on Intel's profits, it tore in to AMD financials because of higher chip fabrication costs.

Obviously the processing speed of the server will have an impact on request times, and if more data can be processed on the server side from more users, there will be more demand for Web-based apps – which could impact both application development and demand on network resources. Additionally, more computer cores means that there’s more room for virtualization… which you can read more about below.

Ars Technica: Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts

Ken Fisher has information about buying OEM versions of Windows Vista – you can get Vista Home Premium for $119, vs. retail at $239, but OEM versions cannot be reused with new motherboards.

OEM software is also tied to the motherboard it is first installed on. Unlike the retail versions of Windows which can be transferred to a new computer, OEM versions are not transferable. What about upgrading hardware? Microsoft says that anything is fair game, except the motherboard. Replacing the motherboard in a computer results in a "new personal computer," which the company considers to be synonymous with a transfer. It's not permitted with an OEM edition of Windows.

VMWare: Convert Physical Machines to Virtual Machines – Free!

Okay, imagine this scenario – you want to move to virtualization, but you have no idea whether or not you can switch over from a real server to a virtual one. Secondly, you’ve spent hundreds – if not thousands – of man-hours configuring and tweaking all the server’s settings for performance optimization, and you really don’t relish doing that again, multiple times.

VMware Converter quickly converts Microsoft Windows based physical machines and third party image formats to VMware virtual machines. It also converts virtual machines between VMware platforms. Automate and simplify physical to virtual machine conversions as well as conversions between virtual machine formats with VMware Converter.

Additionally, for the home user, being able to clone their existing installation of Microsoft Windows and then use it in the free (as in beer) VMWare player in Linux is a major stepping stone towards Linux migration.

By Brian Boyko

Back in November of 2006, (which seems like such a long time ago,) Network Performance Daily published a column by Carol Schiraldi about "why enterprise developers use Java and game programmers use C++."

We published this for a number of reasons - but the main one was that typically, enterprise developers are programming for function first, reliability, second, and performance over the network, if it's even considered at all, is a tertiary thought.

What this means is that applications, developed originally for the LAN environment, often take up valuable network resources unnecessarily when placed into a WAN environment.

[Full disclosure: NetQoS sells network performance management software which diagnoses problems like "chatty apps," and we want you to buy them. Anyway…]

But one area where this isn't a significant problem is in game development, which was the thesis of the original column. Game developers, who realize their games have to perform well over the Internet, typically build with performance in mind first.

This was confirmed when we had a chance to talk to Timothee Besset, a game developer at ID Software, developers of the famous Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake series of games. Here's what he said about this issue:

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Continue reading "ID Software Developer Timothee Besset on Network Performance in Games" »

By Brian Boyko

If you spend some time poring through RFC documents (something I don’t recommend for the 99% of the population that is still sane) you’ll find tons of improvements, modifications, case-specific optimizations and alternatives to TCP, the workhorse of networking transport protocols since the 1970s.

Seth Noble, President and Founder of Data Expedition, Inc., believes that he can do one better. His company claims that their proprietary transport protocol, MTP, for “Multipurpose Transaction Protocol,” provides a scalable alternative to TCP that uses bandwidth more efficiently. According to Mr. Noble:

“TCP's 1970's data model makes dealing with this problem more difficult than it needs to be. TCP was created with the assumption that packet loss would "rarely" occur, and so it is rather fragile in our modern, congested networks. A lot of very smart people have tried for many years to patch TCP and help it cope, but it still carries its 30 year old legacy with it.”

“MTP/IP was designed from scratch to operate in congested environments where packet loss and other network problems are common. As a result, MTP/IP does an exceptionally good job of quickly AND correctly identifying whether or not data has really been lost and then recovering that data with little or no disruption.”

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Continue reading "Proprietary MTP: an alternative to TCP?" »

By Brian Boyko

If you're working in IT, I'd like to ask you:

With the increase in demands being placed on those responsible for enterprise networks, how will the Amero case open up threats to IT professionals - network engineers and IT managers? Will they now be held responsible for the "experience" of users?

There's tons of commentary on the web railing about the outcome of the Julie Amero case itself, but what I think we need to talk about is, what does it mean for IT?

This case hints at a possible "worst case scenario" for IT departments and network managers in particular: will IT ultimately be held responsible, just as Julie Amero was, for the material that gets distributed over their network?

Today, IT isn't just responsible for uptime - they're also, in many ways, responsible for the experience of end-users of the network. In the Amero case, this appears to have been taken a bit too far. In this case, there was no record of network activity during and before the event. If the computer could have been shown to access some of the offending Web sites before Ms. Amero entered the classroom that morning, for example, it would have been powerful evidence for the defense.If the pornography sites were only being loaded after Ms. Amero walked in, it would seem powerful evidence for the prosecution. Either way, this case would have been better served if there was an existing record of what packets were downloaded when.

There are products on the market, like those from NetQoS, designed specifically to create detailed records of what goes on with the network - what happens when. Having a detailed record of network activity might have been able to provide some useful and powerful incriminating or exculpatory evidence in this case. Does your organization have such detailed insight into the activity on your network – recreational or otherwise? Something to consider?

The world of IT is becoming infinitely more complex. We are all part of the network, you and me, a network vastly more powerful than any that can be counted. How will this case and others like it impact your role in managing the network and the experience of users?

Chime in with your thoughts.

Brian Boyko is the editor of Network Performance Daily.

Detective Mark Lounsbury is the crime prevention officer with the Norwich Police Department. He has served with the Norwich PD for 18 years - eight of them as a detective, and for the past seven years he has been the sole proprietor of the Norwich computer crime and cybercrime units, which deals with online sexual crimes against children.

In an effort to dispel rumor and produce a more accurate understanding of the Amero case to the public, we have invited Detective Lounsbury to talk about his position and computer crime related investigation in general, although he cannot talk about the Amero case specifically until after Ms. Amero's sentencing. This article continues our coverage of the Amero case, with previous articles offering commentary from defense witness Mr. Herb Horner.

Generally speaking, if police receive a complaint from a victim or victims who report seeing an individual who is engaged in criminal activity, the police are responsible to the victim or victims and investigate accordingly. The police take into account all the available facts and circumstances, for example: who was the individual, what was the individual doing, when were they doing it, where were they doing it, and how long was the individual engaged in the observed activity? (A minute, twenty minutes, two hours?)

Including the account of the accused individual is important but, sometimes the individual refuses to speak to the police and retains legal representation.

Physical evidence and electronic evidence is collected. In the case of crimes involving computers, the evidence is collected with tools designed to find the evidence. This evidence includes internet history, content, and registry data, including "typed URLs". It's these "typed URLs," gleaned from the registry, which are identified - not pop ups.

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Continue reading "The Strange Case of Ms. Julie Amero: Commentary by Detective Mark Lounsbury" »

• Out-law.com: Texas court bans deep linking
• PBS: The Birth of DOPA Jr.

Continue reading "Daily Links: Deep Linking ruled copyright violation in Texas, DOPA II in U.S. Senate" »

By Brian Boyko

The article by Detective Lounsbury has been delayed while we double-check some information in the article, but it will be published tomorrow. In the meantime, we did some more research on some of the misconceptions of this case.

We called up Steve DelGiorno, CEO of ComputerCOP software, which makes some of the forensic software used in this case. We looked at the whitepaper they had on ComputerCOP Professional and the software seems designed to recover hidden and deleted files from a computer, but did not mention anything about tracking the source of the files.

Mr. DelGiorno stated in a phone conversation with us that while ComputerCOP can find all sorts of files and images, including deleted images or images in unallocated disk space, by keyword or by filetype, ComputerCOP does not determine the cause of those files being on the computer (whether caused by malware, intrusion, or direct and willful use), and that it is not the function of ComputerCOP to make that determination.

On Thursday we will have a news-analysis editorial concluding our coverage of the Amero case, as well as discussing the relevance of the Amero case for professionals in IT.

Brian Boyko is editor of Network Performance Daily

• apcmag.com: Vista Service Pack 1 is coming
• ZPEnergy: Battery Breakthrough
• Yahoo Finance (Press Release): TRENDnet's USB Adapter connects regular phones to SKYPE
• Bink.nu: How much memory does Vista really need?

Continue reading "Daily Links: Vista SP1 already in progress, battery breakthrough, USB adapter for phone-to-Skype, Vista memory requirements" »

W. Herbert Horner has worked in computers since 1966. He was Systems Software Engineer for General Dynamics, Operating Systems Internalist for Sperry Univac, and he has diagnosed and corrected mainframe operating systems for the U.S. Armed Forces, NSA, IRS, and various commercial interests.

In an effort to dispel rumor and produce a more accurate understanding of the Amero case in the public, we have offered him a chance to offer his commentary. Tomorrow we hope to have commentary from Detective Mark Lounsbury, who testified for the prosecution at Ms. Amero's trial.

We obtained a copy of the PC hard drive from Officer Lounsbury who was most cooperative and at our office we created several copies, preserving the original.

During the copy process we received several "Security Alerts!" from our antivirus program. We analyzed the activity log and noted that there were spyware/adware programs installed on the hard drive. We ran two other adware/spyware detection programs and more spyware/adware tracking cookie/programs were discovered. Out of the 42, 27 were accessed or modified days if not a month before October 19, 2004. We also noted that there was no firewall and there was an outdated antivirus program on the PC. The PC was being tracked before October 19, 2004 by adware and spyware.

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Continue reading "The Strange Case of Ms. Julie Amero: Commentary by Mr. Herb Horner" »