By Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily

We were supposed to have the video of Dr. Steve Fulton we put up on Thursday night up by Wednesday afternoon. That didn't happen.

By coincidence, we also saw this opinion piece by John Dvorak, and linked to it the day before we needed the video to go up. The article, entitled "Don't trust the servers," talks about problems with Windows Genuine Advantage and how it illustrates the problems with SaaS solutions - that you're eternally dependent on a third party to continue to provide service.

In our case, we rely on Google Video to provide the bandwidth and hosting for the videos in our Whiteboard series. Now, you can say what you want about "getting what you pay for" and the like, but when we couldn't upload our video to Google, I realized how dependent I had gotten on their SaaS video hosting solution.

I couldn't log-in to upload the videos. At first I thought the problem was at my end - perhaps Symantec Anti-Virus had caused some sort of conflict or had firewalled off the ports that Google's video uploader needed. That wasn't it. Maybe it was something with our in-house network. That wasn't it either, as I found out when I took a copy of the video home and tried to upload it from both my Windows XP and my Linux partition. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Despite the fact that Google's help files had a ready - and wrong - answer to every problem I came across, the problem was entirely Google's. And there was nothing I could do about it until they finally fixed whatever the problem was the next day.

See, while there are a number of video hosting solutions out there, Google Video and Veoh were the only ones that allowed me to upload clips more than 10 minutes long - and Veoh's playback was poor. Even if I could re-code the entire video at a lower resolution to lower the filesize, that didn't matter. Ten minutes was the hard limit on YouTube (also owned by Google) and other sites. My 25 minute video needed Google Video.

Eventually I was able to get the video uploaded, and though it took a while to process, it went up last night.

This isn't the first problem we've had with SaaS. Expensable.com often goes down for a few hours and we can't log expense reports. I use Gmail for my personal e-mail and while it's generally reliable, it does have some problems.

All in all, if you're looking at it from a productivity or a network performance view, moving your apps from the local network to a third party service - well, yes, it will absolutely save bandwidth and may make the network run faster for your other apps. But having a faster network doesn't mean anything if the end-user is waiting for a third-party service as long or longer as they used to wait for their slow-loading WAN apps. Or, in other words, you're not solving the problem of slow performance from the perspective of the end-user. You're just shifting blame.

This is not to rag on SaaS. I haven't lost an e-mail since I started using Gmail in 2004. My Flickr account saved pictures of my deceased friend John when my hard drive stopped working one day. And if it wasn't for YouTube, I'd never be able to show my parents in Virginia anything about my life in Texas.

But these experiences are a bit of a wake-up call that SaaS isn't going to solve every problem. Ultimately, the end goal of enterprise network performance is not to keep the network running as fast as possible, or to free up as much bandwidth. It's about finding the solutions which make the end-users more productive and enabling the company to do more as a result.

If you missed his presentation at Cisco Networkers, we have a slightly abridged version of Dr. Steve Fulton explaining how to quantify the impact of WAN optimization on application performance, as part of our "Whiteboard Series."

(Our apologies: there is no actual whiteboard used in this video. We just didn't want to go through the trouble of creating a separate "PowerPoint Series" graphic and category.)

If you have questions about the video, please leave a comment below and we'll do our best to answer them.
--------------
More information:

About WAN Optimization:
- What’s Behind Door #2: WAN Optimization and the Transparency Problem
- WAAS Up with Cisco's WAN Optimization Initiative?

Also in our Whiteboard Series:
- The impact of Voice/Video on Data Applications
- The impact of WAN Optimization on TCP Applications
- The impact of WAN Optimization on NetFlow/IPFIX measurements

Ars Technica: Report: 802.11n good enough to chase Ethernet from the enterprise.

Are we near the point where wireless networks can replace good, old Ethernet? A new report from The Burton Group answers that question in the affirmative, saying that the increased speeds and other features of 802.11n should be enough for many companies to cut the wires on their WANs in the next two to three years.

Not knowing too much about the underlying wireless technology, I'm a bit skeptical because I've had some bad luck with wireless Internet before. Sure, my home network tops out at 802.11g, but even then I get disconnects, security problems, signal noise and interference - lower speeds, higher latency. For me, this means higher lag in my online games; for an enterprise, these things can sink a VoIP operation.

I'm sure there will be a time when wireless is good enough but I don't think I've ever seen a wireless technology - of any stripe - that has outperformed the wired equivalent.

Network World: Balancing Generation Y preferences with security

It's a concern that we've covered before when the iPhone launched, but Network World takes a more in-depth look at all the different new, pocket-sized technologies that can cause problems for corporate networks.

Many Generation Y technologies may offer an improvement over today's status quo - an instant message or text message is likely to get the recipient's attention more quickly than an e-mail that sits waiting to be checked in an in-box - but they can introduce serious security threats to corporate networks, according to some security vendors.

For example, "the newer forms of attacks take advantage of Web sites with rich content and features: AJAX-enabled applications, embedded JavaScript, etc. These aren't really new technologies, but they're more pervasive now," says Paul Ferguson, network architect at Trend Micro. "And with [components like] Google Maps, where the processing is done on the PC instead of on the Web page, criminals are exploiting that avenue of content delivery. The ability for Web 2.0 applications to deliver that content is a Catch-22, because it also can allow you to be exploited."

Network world even has a helpful list of possibly problematic technologies.

• USB storage devices:Can be used to steal corporate data; enough capacity to take large amounts of information, but small enough to go undetected.
• iPods and other MP3 players:Can be set to steal corporate data. Also, downloading music and video can clog bandwidth.
• Instant messaging:Many public networks don't offer security features; often chats aren't logged so there is no audit trail or proof of the communication; the real-time nature of chat can disrupt the workplace.
• Cell phone text messaging:No ability to send file attachments; no communication log or audit trail.
• Web 2.0 sites: Popular social-networking and related sites rely on technology with weak security that hackers are targeting as agents for downloading malware.

Wired: Point, Click… Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates

Yes, we really are living under constant surveillance, as this article from Wired shows.

It's a "comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems," says Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance expert.

DCSNet is a suite of software that collects, sifts and stores phone numbers, phone calls and text messages. The system directly connects FBI wiretapping outposts around the country to a far-reaching private communications network.

Depending on your political persuasion, you'll either be comforted knowing that the good guys are keeping an eye out for you, or terrified that the "good guys" are keeping an eye out for you.

Mark Russinovich: Vista Multimedia Playback and Network Throughput

Sure, network performance is affected by people downloading YouTube videos and streaming radio stations, but if you use Windows Vista, it can also be affected by playing media you've already downloaded, as Mark Russinovich explains:

A few weeks ago a poster with the handle dloneranger reported in the 2CPU forums that he experienced reduced network throughput on his Vista system when he played audio or video. Other posters chimed in with similar results, and in the last week attention has been drawn to the behavior by other sites, including Slashdot and Zdnet blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes….

…I caused throttling to be visible on my laptop, which has three adapters, by copying a large file to it from another system and then starting WMP and playing a song. The Task Manager screenshot below shows how the copy achieves a throughput of about 20%, but drops to around 6% on my 1Gb network after I start playing a song.

The problem is… well, the problem is complicated, and you're better off reading the whole article. But in a nutshell, Vista prioritizes CPU power towards showing multimedia - not networking.

ComputerWorld: Rural broadband drought puts hurt on retailer

Despite the fact that cable and DSL providers have promised rural broadband penetration, many homes and businesses in the more sparsely populated areas of the United States can't get broadband service - and retailers which rely on broadband are using more expensive, slower services such as frame relay to get bits to the store.

The lack of broadband access in rural areas isn't just hurting individuals and small businesses. Even large retail chains, which often have stores in rural shopping centers, find that they can't get online.

Consider the plight of Trans World Entertainment, which relies mostly on DSL services to link more than 1,000 music stores - including its Coconuts and f.y.e. chains - to its back-end systems. "Unfortunately, DSL isn't available everywhere yet, even in retail areas. Right now, about 17% [of store locations] can't get broadband," says CIO Robert Hinkle, noting that availability can be limited even in the major retail zones within rural areas.

PCMagazine's John C. Dvorak: Don't Trust The Servers

John Dvorak believes that the crash of Microsoft's WGA servers (which disabled a number of verified Windows users's OSes) shows that SaaS programs are not a replacement for desktop apps - and that they have distinct disadvantages.

One aspect of the nightmare scenario should be discussed now. What kind of system is this, anyway? There should be no way that a legitimate user of a product should be suddenly cut off from use of that product because of an authentication server error, ever….

And what happens if the system fails? The damage wouldn't be too bad if you backed everything up, but then why use the online system in the first place?

Dvorak also believes that if desktop apps were a new development and SaaS was established, then…

…you can image the advertising push. "Now control your own data!" "Faster processing power now." "Cheaper!" "Everything at your fingertips." "No need to worry about network outages." "Faster, cheaper, more reliable." On and on. I can almost hear the marketing types brag about how much better "shrink wrap" software is than the flaky online apps. The best line for the emergence of the desktop computer in a reverse timeline would be "It's about time!"

Though tech trends are clearly going in the direction of having apps online, last weekend's massive failure of an important online subsystem does prove that such reliance on the network and applications servers has the potential to be catastrophic. Microsoft is a provider of server software and is more than a little familiar with running huge installations. This 19-hour outage that the company itself said would last perhaps 72 hours happened to Microsoft, not to Alabama Joe's Server Farm and Toaster Repair. So that in itself is scary.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: India's Wipro to Open Center in Atlanta

Want to know how bad the U.S. economy has gotten? Indian companies are now outsourcing their programming jobs to America…

NEW DELHI - Wipro Technologies, the global services arm of Indian outsourcing company Wipro Ltd., plans to open a software development center in Atlanta, the company said.

Wipro will initially employ 200 people and anticipates about 500 positions within three years, mostly graduates from state universities, the company said in a statement.

By Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily

Right now there's a bit of a brouhaha about Comcast high speed service. Many Comcast customers are finding themselves cut off from the service because of excessive usage.

To be fair, I was unable to find any reference where Comcast says that their broadband package is "unlimited." However, they fail to disclose what, exactly, "excessive usage" consists of in their Acceptable Use Policy.

I don't have a problem with Comcast limiting bandwidth. There's only so much traffic that their servers can handle, so much that can go down their pipes. Theoretically, limiting the use of the heaviest users would enable better service for the vast majority of users for whom speed is more important than volume.

(Of course, the cynical assume that Comcast is dropping high-usage customers because they're the least profitable and that supporting those users would require investing more in bandwidth and infrastructure - but we'll leave that theory alone for now.)

What I'm concerned about is people suddenly being disconnected from the Internet after passing a line that they know nothing about. I'm sympathetic - my Internet access was cut off without warning back in 1998 at The College of New Jersey, and that cost me a pretty well-paying part-time job as a Web designer. (There were other reasons, but this was a significant reason that I decided to transfer to New Jersey Institute of Technology the next semester.) If my home internet access was cut off today, I'd be at a serious disadvantage with my job editing this blog!

But it also worries me because I can't imagine this happening to a corporate customer. If an IT department asked "how much bandwidth do we have," that information would never be withheld from them. You can't do any meaningful capacity planning if how much capacity you have is kept hidden from you.

Disclosure is obviously the most important step, but there are other options that Comcast could take. Instead of cutting users off, it could throttle down speeds once a customer produces a set amount of traffic - The customer still has access to the Internet, but it doesn't take up quite so much bandwidth. While downloading Linux ISOs via Torrent are going to take longer, viewing YouTube and talking on Skype shouldn't be affected by reasonable, but lower, bandwidth caps.

At any rate, if Comcast simply couldn't keep up with the demand, then perhaps they need to consider billing as a pay-as-you-go service. Sure, we did away with hourly billing around when AOL switched to flat-rate service in 1996… but certainly, paying for the service that you use is probably very appealing to the vast majority of people paying $50 a month to do nothing more than check e-mail and Web browse.

Then again, there are other solutions which are probably preferable. Namely - improving the performance of Comcast's existing infrastructure, or adding capacity to Comcast's existing infrastructure. Apparently, though, both those solutions are more expensive than suddenly dropping a few customers from the rolls and engendering ill-will.

At NetQoS, we have a number of different people blogging about their side-projects, about their personal lives, and I thought I'd take a moment this Friday to tell you about a few of them.

If you're a regular reader of the blog, feel free to leave a comment linking to your blog, and I'll be happy to write about it in a future post. (Assuming, of course, it's work-safe.)

So here are the blogs:

Ted Romer: Shoulda Gone With Cisco.

Ted Romer is one of our quality assurance network engineers, and in his spare time, his blog, "Shoulda gone with Cisco" deals with the technical aspects of selecting, using, and configuring Cisco hardware. On it, he's been helping people with questions about Cisco certifications - Ted teaches CCNA at high schools and local colleges in his spare time. He posts about once a week.

Some of his latest posts:

• Minimize Fragmentation!
• Best CCNP Lab? Part I
• Q&A: Gearing-up for the new CCNA

Russell Wilson: DexoDesign

Russell Wilson is our resident User Interface Design expert. His official title is Director of Product Design. Not surprisingly, his blog deals with visual design. DexoDesign.com talks about "information aesthetics" and goes into detail about conceptualizing and designing user interfaces.

…Consistency does not mean sacrificing usability for the sake of code reuse! Again, I am a practical designer; I understand the various business and engineering considerations (time to market, cost, etc.). I'm not advocating reinventing the wheel. But I certainly don't think that a bicycle, motorcycle, van, or high-performance sports car should all share the same wheel design either!

Here are some of his latest posts:

• Consistency and Conceptual Integrity
• The politics of design, by Paul Rand
• The problem with sketching.

Tina Vaziri: The Adventures of Tina and Mr. Bee

This is the personal blog of illustrator Tina Vaziri, one of our graphic artists. It's mostly personal reflections but there are some of her illustrations on the site, including Mr. Bee, an anthropomorphic bee.

Some of her latest posts:

• Death Signs
• Dog Jobs
• Free Textures

Carol Schiraldi: Carol's Little World

This is a photoblog from Senior Software Engineer Carol Schiraldi. Her work has even been talked about in her hometown paper, the Hill Country News. In addition to her photographs and photo illustrations, she also tends to delve into such things as her dislike of Dreamweaver and the idea of how people develop who tends to post photographs and photo illustrations pretty frequently, as well as delve into such things as her dislike of Dreamweaver.

Here are some of her latest posts:

• Unfinished
• What's Up?
• One Bad Bunny.

Jennifer Sparks Harriman: Sparks Studio Blog

While Steve Harriman, our VP of Marketing, doesn't have a blog, his wife Jennifer Harriman, does. There are tons of cute, professionally shot photos on the photoblog, and some tips on what to look for when hiring a professional photographer.

Here are some of her latest posts:

• Book Review: Baby Proofing Your Marriage
• The Photo Session
• Professional Photographs

And of course, I've got some side projects of my own. (What, you think that as a professional blogger, this would be my -only- blog?)

I write for GeeksAreSexy.net - don't be fooled by the title, it's safe for work - on general technology issues, such as when my hard drive crapped out. I also operate a "metablog" about all my blog projects (including my current big project, an indie documentary to be filmed in New Zealand).

Hope to hear from you about your projects and blogs. If you don't feel like leaving a comment, you can always e-mail me at brian.boyko@netqos.com.

Wall Street Journal: What Did U $@y? Online Language Finds Its Voice

This is another case of: "The story isn't news, the publication it's reported in, is."

In this hard hitting expose by the Wall Street Journal, arguably one of the pre-eminent business newspapers of the world, reporter Christopher Rhoads takes a hard look at a matter of vital importance to the world economy. Apparently, gamer's shorthand, or "leetspeak" is changing the way that human beings communicate.

Apparently, referring to things by slang and acronyms is a major breaking news story for an organization which is commonly referred to as "the WSJ" and competes with "the NYT," and was recently bought by News Corporation, which is commonly known as "Fox."

Lest you think I exaggerate the seriousness which the WSJ has decided to cover this story, they even included a stipple portrait of Pure Pwnage's Jarett Cale.

"I pone you, you're going down dude, lawl!" is how Johnathan Wendel says he likes to taunt opponents in person at online gaming tournaments. Pone is how he pronounces "pwn," and lawl is how "LOL" usually sounds when spoken…

"There used to be a time when people cared about how they spoke and wrote," laments Robert Hartwell Fiske, who has written or edited several books on proper English usage, including one on overused words titled "The Dimwit's Dictionary."…

"Leet: slang for 'good' or 'great,' apparently, and 'idiotic,' certainly," he wrote on the Vocabula Web site. "Leet" is in dictionaries with other meanings, including a soft-finned fish…

Gail Kern Paster, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., has reason to believe that a certain English poet and playwright would cheer the latest linguistic leap. Just as the rise of the printed word and the theater spurred many new expressions during Shakespeare's time, the computer revolution, she notes, has necessitated its own vocabulary -- like "logging in" and "Web site."

"The issue of correctness didn't bother him," says Ms. Paster. "He loved to play with language." As for leet, "He would say, 'Bring it on,' absolutely."

In order to advance this hard breaking story, I interviewed some participants in PurePwnage's IRC chat room.

<bboyko> Did you see the WSJ report on leetspeak?
<bboyko> working on a story for NetworkPerformanceDaily.com.
<PwnDaddy123> NO WAIIII!!
<Damilkman> gtfo
<PwnDaddy123> u a reporter??
<PwnDaddy123> wtf mann
<Max[Tuna`age]> [expletive deleted]
<Max[Tuna`age]> report that

TimesOnline: The Internet is dead. Long live the Internet.

Japan's Communication Minister, Yoshihide Suga pronounced that Japan wants to build a new internet that would be ready by 2020 that would create quicker and more reliable data transfer, and would be less susceptible to virus outbreaks and hacking.

For the rest of us, Mr Suga's proposal merits consideration. The current net is fine if you don't mind the occasional virus outbreak, the mounting presence of extortion-minded hackers or the bandwidth hiccups that make net video a jerky, pixelated approximation of TV. The net, while stable and functioning admirably, and capable, as many network engineers say, of surviving a catastrophic explosion, is still in a precarious state, particularly when you consider it has become the linchpin of the global economy. Telecoms and cable companies, tech firms and the like, have been building on top of 1960s era architecture for decades. The net is a mixed bag of networks - a bit of copper here, maybe some fibre there and wireless hotspots attached here and there to extend its range. This mishmash of technologies called the internet has got us this far, but will it hold up as our personal and collective bandwidth needs skyrocket?

BBC News: Troubled times for home networks

This BBC News article takes a look at the difficulty of home networking for the average consumer, a valid concern in the age of multiple computers in the household, Windows Home Server, etc.

And then there are the technologies that prove how useless they are when you actually try them. Take for instance, home networking.

The problem, [Gartner's Van Baker] said, was the sheer complexity of getting all those different devices to work together and swap data via a home network….

"Mention WPA or encryption or SSID or DHCP and you have lost the vast majority of consumers already," he said. "Most of them are not going to deal with that level of complexity and knowledge." The technical know-how required to set up a network and run music or video across cables or wi-fi, was, he said, "the elephant in the room that no-one wants to talk about."

Networking across Windows computers gives me a headache in my current setup - so much so that I'm considering switching from using Network Places to operating FTP daemons on each machine and using that. The one bright spot is that I can access my MythTV box in the living room from my bedroom computer. Of course, now that I can't get a channel guide, that's rather moot, but for the month that I had it, it was a pretty swell setup! (Anyone want to buy a formerly useful PVR?)

By Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily

Recently, World of Warcraft released a patch which enabled players to use integrated VoIP chat. Online gaming and VoIP are, in many ways, extremely well matched. VoIP can help with the immersion of the gaming experience - roleplaying characters with voice, coordinating attacks instantly and in real time, being able to more clearly articulate nuance and inflection that could change the meaning of a sentence… not to mention that you'll finally have some good idea of whether or not the attractive blood elf lady that's been chatting you up is a 45 year old guy living in his mom's basement. Of course, that's not always a good thing…

While I don't play WoW, I have found that VoIP has become a crucial part of my gaming experience - though I typically don't like first-person shooters, I greatly enjoy the Battlefield series because of its interactive voice chat. It's very immersive - with your squad leader barking out orders and relaying info to your commander, it - well, it would be tactless to say that it feels like you're a soldier in war, but it certainly feels like you're a kid playing soldier.

VoIP and gaming are particularly well suited to each other for another reason, more technical and esoteric. VoIP traffic and game traffic usually use the same protocol, UDP.

A quick rundown for the non-technical people reading this post: UDP is a lightweight protocol with no ability to check if a packet was received; TCP is more useful for ensuring that all of the data arrives completely, UDP, that most of the data arrives quickly. This is why UDP is used for online streaming media, voice, and of course, gaming, which requires split-second reflexes and precise timing.

And though we've covered converged data and voice traffic at length before, UDP and TCP on the same network at the same time can cause network and VoIP performance problems if UDP isn't limited to a certain quality of service. Imagine a TCP and UDP connection traveling together. TCP will, in order to make sure that the packets arrive accurately, will slow down its traffic when it senses that there's less room in the pipe. UDP, in order to make sure that the packet arrives quickly, will see that there's now more room in the pipe from what TCP vacated, and take up even more room… which causes TCP to slow even further. It's a vicious cycle.

But voice and data traffic both use UDP - which is one of the reasons that even before WoW's addition of VoIP, people were using Teamspeak or Ventrilo to provide their own voice capabilities with their friends, and though there was almost always a performance hit, the fact that both WoW and Teamspeak are UDP-based makes it easier for both application to co-exist.

There are a few TCP applications in most MMORPG games, but most of them are simple ones - things like transferring inventory and IRC-like chat - which typically don't take up a whole lot of bandwidth compared to the data sent through the game or data sent through the game's VoIP. One thing that IS TCP-based is the downloading of patches and game updates - there are non-technical reasons, such as game balance, that contribute to this, but just about any online game will stop play while you're downloading the patches, rather than downloading the packages in the background while you play. My best guess is that this is partially because coding simultaneous play (UDP) and data download (TCP) is much harder than coding simultaneous play (UDP) and VoIP (UDP.)

One exception to the rule that games must use UDP is Second Life - that MMORPG requires data to be downloaded constantly and accurately, with new items being built. I can't know for sure as I'm not a coder, but I believe this to be one of the reasons why play control (UDP) in Second life tends to suffer so much and objects take a very long time, it seems, to download (TCP).

We'll try to have more technical details on WoW's VoIP rollout later in the week.

ComputerWorld: How IT is rethinking the traditional budgeting process

Seemingly straightforward, the traditional IT budgeting process still manages to put many CIOs and IT controllers on the defensive. Corporate accountants and business unit leaders demand to know what departments are getting in exchange for their technology surcharges, which are often levied as a chargeback or a fee extracted from various operational divisions to fund the IT department.

To inject the new levels of transparency that senior managers now demand, and further assert the business value of IT, more CIOs are becoming proactive.

"Now we are facilitating the dialogue and helping to establish the priorities. This subtle change makes a world of difference and allows my team to get an early heads-up so that we can plan resources accordingly," says Robert Golden, director of strategic business services at Insurance House, a Marietta, Ga.-based brokerage company that works with independent retail insurance agents throughout the Southeast.

Which business unites should fund the latest technology investments, and how? What is a sustainable business model for funding a next-generation converged network design with video, audio, and applications? This article dives into methods for changing normal IT budgeting process into a proactive IT financial management - for example, billing different departments for their IT use, motivating users to use resources more wisely. Reduced demand might even trickle down into fewer network devices, servers, storage, power, cooling, and floor space, reducing IT costs, if you can make the connection between usage and value.

WorseThanFailure: The Cool Cam

Indeed, this is a particularly interesting anecdote that shows that many sins are forgivable if there is enough value to what you do.

"European Air War was doomed. It was four years in development and not even close to being ready to ship… It almost seemed as though the execs were only keeping the project alive for the sadistic pleasure they took in watching the developers squirm. And among the bugs mentioned above, there were mountains more.

Tim knew what he was getting into when he came aboard the project…. With all of the bugs he could get started on, he decided it was necessary to add a new feature instead. He developed a camera system that would focus on anything "cool" happening near the player.…

Getting a double whammy of tough questions ("How overbudget is this project?" and "Why shouldn't we cancel this right now?"), Tim made sure his plane was level and flying evenly and let go of the joystick and hit the cool cam button… Suddenly, the camera zoomed in on an explosion, following a flaming plane barreling toward the earth, then the focus moved slightly to another plane quickly evading the flaming shell. Tim took the controls again when the execs lobbed another tough question about bugs they'd made no progress in fixing. …, he didn't have to answer because everyone was fixated on the screen. ...Tim's "cool cam" saved European Air War.

The lesson is not that debugging isn't important, but that it's often a good idea, when talking about IT budgeting or new projects, to keep your focus on what the project can do and what you can do next with it, rather than point out all the good progress you've been making fixing things. As techies, we tend to think in terms of how to effectively do what we've been tasked with when what really gets rewarded (with continued projects and larger IT budgets) is figuring out what we can do to help the company more effectively do its business and make money.

Network World's Layer 8: Hear no evil, see no evil: business e-mail overtakes the telephone.

E-mail has taken over as the number one business communication tool, according to a survey by Datamonitor/Dimension data, which revealed that while only 80% use fixed-line telephones, 76% use mobiles, and 66% use IM, but fully 100% of those that responded use e-mail.

The research surveyed 390 IT managers and 524 enterprise users across 13 countries in the United States, Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa. The results may not come as a surprise to those companies that have a lot of branch office s or telecommuters. Nemertes Research says 83% of companies run virtual workplaces, and such organizations overall are experiencing an average 11% growth in the number of branch offices meaning there's a whole lot of people communicating without ever seeing or possibly hearing their branch office brethren.

Because no one will see or hear employees, e-mail is the preferred method of communication at Ninja Burger.

by Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily

I once made stew. Once.

As it turns out, I'm a horrible cook. Partially because my thought process was something along the line of: "Hmm… we don't seem to have any browning sauce. What do we have that's brown?"

As it turns out, soy sauce? Not so good in a stew.

I made enough of this stuff for three people, and inflicted it on my roommates. Let's just say that despite the heat being over 98 degrees in Texas, the atmosphere in the apartment was much cooler for a little while…

We all cook our own meals separately now.

You know what, I probably could have avoided that if I had actually tasted the food before I served it to my roommates.

Now watch as I take that almost totally unrelated anecdote and tie it into the NetQoS VoIP Monitor launch today. Abracadabra!

(continued…)

Continue reading "VoIP Monitoring: VoIP without monitoring is like cooking without tasting." »