Last Tuesday, our own Ben Erwin and Michael Leonard, Project Marketing Manager at Cisco, gave a Webinar entitled: “Building Performance-first Application Delivery Networks with Cisco and NetQoS,” where they showed attendees scenario based demonstrations based on a model of “Baseline, Optimize, Control, Quantify, and Troubleshoot,” which is one of the few models in IT that doesn’t have a catchy acronym. I mean, seriously, “BOCQT?” Isn’t that the sound a Ukranian hen makes?

Anyway, Ben Erwin and Michael Leonard have written up answers to all of the questions that they simply weren’t able to get to in the original time allotted. These answers are below:

Q: Our corporate data center has two connections into our MPLS network (for redundancy). How can WAAS be deployed in this scenario?

A: WAAS could be deployed on either or both links. WAAS is aware of asymmetric routing environments, so WAAS can deal with traffic that goes out on one link and returns on the other.

Q: If the NetQoS module or modules require NetFlow, please make a point of mentioning that. We don't have NetFlow, and don't want to buy it unless we have to.

A: The traffic analysis module does require NetFlow (or any flow export data source). If you have Cisco routers and switches in place today, then you already have NetFlow. NetFlow is included in the hardware at no additional cost.

Q: Is ACE optimization available on the ACE modules yet?

A: Yes, you can use ACE to optimize application delivery and baseline, quantify, and troubleshoot with NetQoS.

Q: How do you support new protocols for a new app?

A: NetQoS will automatically detect new protocols on the network. You can then choose to monitor application delivery and the appropriate optimization technology from Cisco.

Q: Can I view my virtual servers with this product?

A: Yes. NetQoS will allow you to monitor traffic to/from virtual servers. WAAS and ACE will also optimize application traffic to/from virtual servers.

Q: Which Cisco platforms must we be on to take advantage of the integration of Cisco and NetQoS?

A: For optimization, Cisco WAAS and ACE. In addition, any router/switch supporting NetFlow, IP SLA, CBQoS, or NBAR will also provide reporting into NetQoS.

Q: What are the instrumentation feeds to NetQoS: WAAS flow agent? NetFlow? What else?

A: SNMP, raw packets, Cisco UC (VoIP) metrics

Q: Does WAAS/ACE work with IPv6 addresses?

A: Not today, but it is under consideration for a future release.

Q: I understand there must be a pair of WAAS for each WAN link, how about ACE, does that need to be a pair also?

A: No. ACE is only deployed in the data center near the server farms.

Q: Do you support any data sources that require a network tap?

A: Nothing requires a network tap. However, a tap can be used to feed NetQoS raw packet data instead of a mirror (SPAN) port.

Q: How well does this technology work with MPLS?

A: All of the technologies mentioned in the presentation can function in MPLS environments. Cisco can optimize traffic over MPLS networks and NetQoS can monitor the delivery of applications over MPLS networks.

Q: Do I need an extra Aggregator for monitoring the WAEs or does a SuperAgent see the statistics of the WAEs ?

A: SuperAgent does require an Aggregator to view traffic from the WAE (WAAS) appliances.

Q: Does NetQoS collect/trend IP SLA data?

A: Yes. NetQoS collects and historically trends IP SLA data.

Q: Are there any detailed documents (engineer level) describing exactly how the integration works between the WAE/WAAS modules and SuperAgent. I need detail to explain exactly why I need it.

A: Yes. If you're a customer or prospect contact your NetQoS account rep. If not, contact the NetQoS sales team at sales@netqos.com and request a technical discussion on the integration.

Q: Is there an agent for the ACE?

A: No. ACE does not require agents.

Q: How does WAAS/ACE work with encryption?

A: Both WAAS and ACE interoperate with SSL encrypted traffic.

Q: We use RDP port 3389 for access to our Server farm. Can we implement NetQoS with this environment?

A: Yes. NetQoS can monitor traffic over RDP ports.

Q: Is this solution well suited for video streaming applications, specifically, real time video feeds?

A: Yes, NetQoS can monitor video traffic's impact on WAN bandwidth, network performance, and application delivery. WAAS has support for Microsoft media based video. WAAS will send only one stream over the core and split stream at the branch to conserve bandwidth.

Q: We are not using Cisco WAAS, but rather a competing product; can you touch upon interoperability with other WAN Acceleration vendors and more on the QoS specific functionality for tuning that?

A: NetQoS can provide traffic statistics if you're product exports flow records. However, these may not be very useful if the optimized traffic is tunneled. You cannot receive accurate response metrics with a non-Cisco optimization product and NetQoS (or any other performance monitoring vendor). Response time monitoring capabilities for optimized environments are only available with the combination of NetQoS and Cisco. Therefore, you would not be able to quantify the impact of any QoS tuning.

Q: Does deploying WAAS include NetQoS SuperAgent functionality, or are they separate products? I heard a rumor that deploying WAAS includes SuperAgent functionality.

A: They are separate products. However, WAAS does include NetQoS code that allows it to interoperate with NetQoS SuperAgent.

Q: How many of Cisco's IP SLA tests does NetQoS currently support? And will NetQoS add support to cover all of Cisco's IP SLA tests?

A: NetQoS supports all of the Cisco IP SLA tests today.

Q: Does WAAS differentiate between MPLS Class of service?

A: Yes, WAAS can give priority and process traffic according to DSCP marking.

Q: If it's not outside the scope of this presentation, can you talk about the performance differences between the inline and non-inline deployment models?

A: Performance is similar in both instances. WAAS implements WCCP as the primary method for non-inline and is tuned to work effectively with the device it is redirecting traffic to so as not to overload it.

Q: Strategically, assuming availability of higher WAN bandwidth at a lower cost, what becomes the core strength of WAAS?

A: WAAS allows you to use your bandwidth more effectively so that you don’t need to overprovision and WAAS overcomes the impact of latency on application performance. Even if you have enough bandwidth in theory, you might not be able to fill the pipe due to the behavior of TCP on links with high latency.

Q: Can you export NAM data to NetQoS today?

A: NetQoS can collect data from NAM’s today via SNMP.

Q: Even custom applications with custom communication formats?

A: Yes. Any custom IP application can interoperate with NetQoS and Cisco.

Q: I take it that this device would allow to see how affective your QOS policy is being. Does this take the place of the QoS Manager?

A: Yes WAAS allows you to see what applications are using your bandwidth and how much bandwidth they are using as well as how much reduction in bandwidth usage WAAS is providing per application. WAAS works with the QoS policies on your router. WAAS can make separate QoS control device unnecessary.

Q: Do I need NetFlow enabled on the remote site and the head office router to do a baseline?

A: NetFlow can be enabled in either location. Baseline calculations are independent of the NetFlow source or location.

Q: The SuperAgent can't tell anything about response times of UDP traffic, but does the SuperAgent show the amount of UDP traffic?

A: Correct, SuperAgent cannot monitor the delivery UDP applications. However, the NetQoS traffic analysis capabilities with Cisco NetFlow can show the amount of UDP traffic on the network. In addition, NetQoS can report Cisco IP SLA metrics to measure UDP latency.

Q: How many (max) ports per NetQoS appliance. Are we talking fiber? Fiber channel?

A: Depending on the capabilities needed, appliances come with 2, 4, or 8 ports with copper, fiber, or fiber channel connectivity.

Q: What hardware is required at a branch office to deploy WAAS?

A: WAAS can be deployed as an appliance or as a network module for the Cisco ISR router.

Q: How do appropriately size the model of WAAS hardware for your network?

A: Cisco provides a sizing tool and sizing guidelines. Sizing is based on throughput requirements and the number of TCP connections to be supported. WAAS was tested by an independent test facility to scale to over 50,000 TCP connections.

Q: How big is the impact on Cisco router processor load, when using NetFlow reporting?

A: 2% or less impact to CPU cycles on any Cisco router/switch model.

Q: Which segment do you use CBQoS statistics and into which metric does it get aggregated?

A: CBQoS data is collected via SNMP with the NetQoS device management capabilities.

Q: Can NetQoS read the real underlying application if another port is used?

A: Yes, NetQoS can provide full deep packet inspection capabilities to read any layer of the application.

Q: How does WAAS work with encrypted MAPI (email) from branch to datacenter?

A: Support for encrypted MAPI is under consideration for a future release. Currently WAAS will not apply full optimizations if the traffic is encrypted but will provide the default L4 optimizations that are effective for Exchange cached mode.

Q: Can WAAS encrypt its optimized traffic?

A: WAAS can encrypt data stored on the disk and WAAS can optimize SSL encrypted traffic. WAAS does not encrypt traffic in flight. WAAS interoperates with your security infrastructure.

Q: Is WAAS and ACE required to measure transactions response time?

A: No. Application delivery and response times can be measured with NetQoS without WAAS or ACE. However, WAAS and ACE are required to optimize the delivery of applications.

Now, me, personally, I don’t use Twitter. Oh, yes, I know, as “new media/blog guy” I’m supposed to be all “hep” to the latest “doo-dads” what with me being one of those crazy “internet geekerinos” but I just never really saw a value in Twitter that wasn’t available with LiveJournal years ago.

One hundred and forty characters is simply not enough room to convey anything particularly complex, informative, or artistic. I mean, even though I read “Burnt Orange Report,” published by Karl-Thomas Mussleman, I must admit that twitter posts like…

“karltm Sitting behind marc katz in traffic. His left rear tire pressure is low. 12:24 PM May 24, 2008 from txt”

…neither inform nor entertain.

Others, like this one from my friend and sometimes improv comedy partner Chris Trew of Coldtowne…

“christrew just ate body paint 19 minutes ago from web”

…are just things you don’t want to know.

For all of its flaws, however, Twitter’s service is something that many professionals – for whatever reason – rely on. Unfortunately, Twitter is not particularly reliable – the constant outages have prompted at least one person to create a Web site called “IsTwitterDown.com” which pings Twitter’s server.

Now , pinging Twitter’s server may indeed help you determine fault – but it won’t tell you anything about the dropped packets, network round trip time, or any of the other performance issues which prevent Twitter from being usable. For example, users experienced degraded service this morning because Twitter’s main database crashed due to too many connections. A quick ping wouldn’t detect “too many connections” – it would just be one of the successful connections of which there were apparently too many.

To Twitter’s credit, they’re well aware of the performance issues and just today have started a blog which details “performance and reliability.” Pagination – whatever that is – is partially restored. (I’m assuming it might have something to do with Ellen Page, the lead actress in “Juno.”)

Mark Gibbs at Network World suggested that IsTwitterDown.com should switch from merely pinging the Twitter server to using cURL and Wget to see if you can send and receive Twitter updates, which would be more accurately measuring the performance of Twitter. Then again, considering that istwitterdown.com is in the same vein as abevigoda.com, which constantly updates "is he dead?" status of Abe Vigoda, that might be taking the joke too far.

On “Ask Slashdot” a reader asks about the possibility of traffic shaping to control his roommate’s Bit-Torrent hogging.

Of course, the Slashdotters were more than helpful – recommending that instead of traffic shaping, he simply set up a QoS policy on his consumer-grade router – and if his router didn’t currently support it, that he use replace the router firmware with something like Tomato, OpenWRT, or IPCop.

Others, seeking the “Russian Pencil” solution as opposed to the “NASA Space Pen” solution recommended that the roommate get a good talking to – and be persuaded, perhaps, to run the torrents during off-peak hours.

However, there are other solutions to this problem, and I’ve spent most of the morning thinking of them. (I love my job.)

Solution 1: Defeat the Matrix.

Step 1: Drink Tequila.
Step 2: Play Crystal Method at high volume.
Step 3: Rip the router out from the wall. Congratulations, you have defeated the Matrix. Declare this fact loudly.
Step 4: Dodge in slow-motion any objects that your roommate may throw at you.

Solution 2: Drown Him in Kittens

Step 1: Bailey’s Irish Crème
Step 2: Play Loituma at high volume
Step 3: Split the network and redirect all of his HTTP traffic to “Kittenwar.com”
Step 4: Hide the ammunition to your roommate’s shotgun. Oh, wait. That really should have been Step 2…

Solution 3: A Trip to Texas

Step 1: Drink half a bottle of Crown Royal. This will help you to see the Chupacabra in Step 3.
Step 2: Take the train to a border town in Texas. Listen to ZZ Top on your iPod.
Step 3: Capture a Chupacabra, using the other half of the Crown Royal as bait, and the bag to transport the Chupacabra. (See Fig. 1)
Step 4: Tell your roommate you will release the Chupacabra into his room if he doesn’t stop the bandwidth hogging.

Solution 4: It Makes Real Cupcakes

Step 1: Get a Sasquatch blind drunk on Hennessey.
Step 2: Watch Harry and the Hendersons
Step 3: Replace roommate’s computer with EZ Bake Oven.
Step 4: Replace roommate with Sasquatch.

J.H. Woodyatt says:

"It's time to start talking about what the Internet will be like in a future where we abandon all our efforts toward the IPv6 transition.  Because the transition isn't happening.  It's not going to happen.  We're going to be living on IPv4/NAT for the rest of our lives."

Now, I’m known among my friends as the pessimistic one.  Granted, there’s a lot to be pessimistic about – gas prices, global warming, high fructose corn syrup, robot uprisings… But Woodyatt talks about a future he believes will come to pass – one in which IPv6 is never implemented fully and which leaves us with IPv4. 

And while Woodyatt talks about the many problems that will arise when the IPv4 address space is exhausted (like the decreased performance you get from using a NAT on a NAT on a NAT, or the logistics of asking major multinationals to pay for something that they previously got for free,) he doesn’t really back up his main point that we are going to be living on IPv4 – merely asserts it.  The closest he gets is saying that “there is no cost for IPv4/NAT high enough to drive adoption of IPv6,” a paragraph below he asserts that nobody knows exactly how much it’s going to cost to buy IPv4 addresses on a free market. 

“Nobody knows.  It could be pennies a year.  It could be the better part of a hundred dollars a month.  Nobody knows.  Nobody freaking knows.”

There’s no question that IPv6 adoption has been slower than many would hope – possibly because unlike the Y2K problem, the IPv6 switchover doesn’t have a firm date set.  Personally, I think ICANN should go ahead and make an announcement that all of the root nameservers will be going IPv6-only on some fixed date.  (May I suggest March 29, 2011?  IPv4 can only handle 2^32 possible unique addresses – and March 29, 2011 is my 32^nd birthday.  Then again, the IPv4 Exhaustion Counter currently estimates “exhaustion day” as Jan 17, 2011.)

And one big driver for IPv6 – phones, toasters, cars, and other electronic/mechanical thingy-doo-dads needing their own IP addresses now seems more like science fiction than anything of practical importance.

But that hasn’t stopped governmental agencies, such as the European Union, from switching over to IPv6.  Sure, it may take longer in America, where government agencies only pay lip service to IPv6, but America is neither the world, nor is it a technological world leader. 

NAT may work for now – but they’re still adding complexity to design, deployment, and maintenance of networks, add an additional possible point of failure, and break P2P apps.  It may take a while – and it’s probably not going to happen overnight.  But those companies and organizations that don’t switch will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage that will require them to switch over eventually anyhow – at an increased cost.  IPv6 adoption will happen, and the “DOOOOOOM” scenario may provide a couple uncomfortable months – but eventually things will settle back down into a new normal.

And this is coming from a guy who refuses to put money into a 401k because he believes that it’s better invested in concrete, canned goods, anti-radiation pills and shotguns.

This isn’t much of a post today because this afternoon, the entire company is going out to catch a matinee of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I think now would be an appropriate time to link to our “careers” page, don’t you?

by Brian Boyko
Editor, Network Performance Daily

Ars Technica reports that the National Institutes of Health released a study which show that wireless-phone only households are increasing – currently 15.8 percent of households. 

But that’s just part of it – other consumers are switching to VoIP services – gobbling up another 13.8 percent of U.S. households. 

There are certainly economic factors which result in this change - me, I cancelled my landline phone service when I realized I was paying less on a month-to-month basis on my cellphone than I was for a service I barely used.  Since then, I’ve moved around a lot (seven times in the past five years) and keeping the same cellphone instead of canceling and re-enabling service makes a hell of a lot of sense. 

But still – three out of ten consumers?  This is a major shift – and one that’s likely to continue as cellphone and VoIP quality gets better. 

Of course, there will be more demand for VoIP networking in the future – and with it, a need to monitor VoIP quality of experience.  But more than that is the idea that there is an entire infrastructure of phone lines – stretching from sea to shining sea and beyond – that connect the last mile to the local phone exchange. 

It seems like such a waste. 

But wait!  DSL service only uses the 25kHz and above part of the spectrum – 4kHz is reserved for voice.   If landlines are repurposed ONLY for data, with VoIP being another application on the all-data network, that could free up the 4kHz spectrum currently being used.  Maybe we can use that 0-4kHz band for broadband to rural homes – which can clearly get 4kHz data if they can get a phone call. 

This is especially important for rural broadband penetration.  The longer the distance to the exchange, the lower the quality of high bandwidth exchanges – this is why your DSL service gets slower the further you are from your local phone exchange.  But the 4kHz currently used for voice can travel much greater distances – it won’t be as fast as the DSL available in the cities but repurposing the 4kHz bandwidth from voice to data might make a huge difference to getting some minimal broadband to the most rural parts of the world.

Now, this won’t make a whole lot of difference to a person living in the city – DSL works by dividing that 25kHz-and-up portion of the spectrum into 4kHz chunks, each one connecting with a speed equivalent of a modem.  It is the multitude of these channels – hundreds in most cases – that makes DSL speed possible.  Repurposing the broadband of 0-25kHz would result in only six additional channels.  Assigning two for upload and four for download, you’d have speeds of around 14.4kBytes/s (or 115.9kbits/s) upload and 28.8kBytes/s (231.3kbits/s) download.  That’s not much of a speed boost. 

Still, if you’ve been plodding along on a “56.6k” modem, at speeds of 7.2kBytes/s, this would be like an oasis in the desert.  And what about those phone calls?  Well, if you make the same phone calls with VoIP that you were with the standard 0-4kHz landline, it would only take about 20.8kbits/s using the G.723.1 codec – that still leaves you with 80% of your broadband capacity when on the phone – and 100% of your broadband when you’re off it.  For someone whose only current Internet connectivity choice is a modem, currently getting 16% of a theoretical data capacity – and 0% when you’re on the phone – that’s a major improvement.   

What do you think?  It seems reasonable, but there might be a flaw in my math – I did only pass Calc I on my third try.  Let me know if you have something to share in our comments section.

Network World’s Sevcik and Wetzel – a brilliant name for a vaudeville comedy duo if I ever heard one – have asked NW’s readers who were using Cisco’s WAAS to optimize their WAN to chime in on their experiences with the Cisco solution.

In the prologue, Peter Sevcik and Rebecca Wetzel , the principals of the boutique analyst firm, NetForecast, make sure to mention, in between trying to figure out the names of the Yankees baseball players, that:

“…any traditional measurement and management system that relies on packet capture, traffic counters, NetFlow data, or device utilization will be foiled.  Acceleration via caching or compression reduces WAN traffic and masks the payload of anything sent.  Cisco recognized this fact early and developed an exclusive relationship with NetQoS - a leading network performance management vendor - to overcome this problem.  When coupled with NetQoS, Cisco WAAS delivers one of the few ways to operate an effective ADS solution complete with all of the network management capabilities enterprises have grown to rely upon.” 

There’s some bias here, and I’m not just talking about how you’re reading a piece that says “NetQoS is awesome” on the NetQoS company blog. People who are likely to buy Cisco’s solution are probably already Cisco’s shops, and much like Nintendo/Playstation/Xbox or Nvidia/ATI fanboys – people cling to the brand they’ve purchased because they don’t like thinking that they made the wrong choice.

Even so, the comments on Network World have been, as of this post’s publication, unanimously positive. And because this is the NetQoS blog, we’d like to take the opportunity to point out how awesome the integrated solution is. (Also, we’re universally loved by children and puppies that have complex network performance management needs).

“The Cisco WAAS solution we picked gave us additional ease-of-operations and management advantages, because of its transparent integration with our WAN QoS, Security, VoIP, and monitoring services. We can continue to use these services with the visibility we need, the saying "you can't manage if you can't see" definitely applies to us.” -- Jeff Gill and Hugh Barnett, A&I Team, Michael Baker Corporation

There’s also this quote from a District Manager of a Cisco VAR:

“A handful of customers have opted to "proof of concept" the technology on "representative" locations, and they have all shown massive reductions in traffic (lowest was 30%, highest was 84%). These PoCs led directly to large purchases.”

It’s important, to be able to prove and quantify reductions in traffic – not just in these “proof of concept” scenarios, but in justifying the IT budget for WAN optimization to the people that sign the checks.

“We started testing early in beta with the Cisco WAE…. The thing that we found that the WAE stood out from the rest was the transparency. [Other solutions] both natted the packets across the WAN where Cisco did not. This was integral in our deployment time since it did not affect our current security posture.”

Because of the way that WAN optimization breaks the TCP/IP stream, it makes network visibility more difficult and requires network monitoring devices on both sides of a connection – having integrated monitoring in the WAAS device means there isn’t an additional deployment (or cost) associated with retaining visibility.

Feel free to leave a comment below telling us how awesome (or less-than-awesome, if that’s your opinion) we are.

A conference of Web and Internet visionaries and experts, including inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim-Berners Lee, will be held at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At “Tetherless World Research Constellation,” the questions will be determined by Internet submissions and voting. The entire event, scheduled for June 11th, will be streamed over the Internet.

First, enterprise IT teams may notice a slight spike in traffic on June 11th from people interested in the future of the Web.

Second, enterprise IT teams should be some of those people interested in the future of the Web.

One of the many good things that Web 2.0 has brought with it is the idea of reusable APIs and mashups - applications which combine data from multiple sources. The result is greater flexability in presenting information to the end-user. For example, Craigslist's housing ads can be plotted and tracked on a Google Map - thus "Housingmaps.com".

Application developers are using these APIs in order to give their own products new capabilities. However, combining data from multiple sources into a single integrated tool means that you're pinging an external source for every one of those sources - each one of which might have its own delay. These services in turn might be pinging multiple data centers or other mashups.

These are the changes to the Web already affecting the network; some foreknowledge of what happens next with the Web and how it will affect enterprise networking would be very useful.

In general there isn't enough communication between application developers and network engineers - the result is "chatty apps" and bandwidth heavy applications that might work on a LAN but don't work over the WAN. Anything to increase that communication and get both sides on the same page should be encouraged.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

1. Microsoft makes an offer to buy Yahoo!.
   
2. Yahoo! turns down the offer because it’s “undervalued.”
   
3. Microsoft sweetens the pot.
   
4. Yahoo! tells Balmer to "talk to the hand."
   
5. Carl Icahn, a major shareholder, wants to replace Yahoo!’s board so as to bring Microsoft back to the table for acquisitions.
   
6. Microsoft announces that it is trying to partner with Yahoo! without acquiring them outright. Microsoft likely wants to put Microsoft ads next to Yahoo!’s search results.
   
7. Yahoo says that it’s open to negotiating with Microsoft.

When Microsoft announced it’s proposed acquisition of Yahoo, that had a profound impact on both the price of Yahoo’s stock – and the volume. There was a similar spike in volume when Microsoft announced that the acquisition deal was off the table.

Whatever happens with Yahoo, it’s clear that in the short term, Yahoo’s stockholders are in for a rollercoaster ride and both sell-side and buy-side trading firms will try to capitalize on the volatility and volume. Of course, Yahoo is just a high profile case of an everyday occurrence - everyone’s wants a competitive advantage when it comes to responding to market changes. This is where network performance becomes critical and why trading firms are on an never-ending quest for lower latency network architectures. In fact, the TABB group estimates that a 10 millisecond latency delay could result in a 10% drop in revenues for the firm.

There’s a store nearby a Wal*Mart on Route I-35 in Austin. “Goodwill Computer Works” – run by the same Goodwill company that operates the thrift stores, has old technology, donated by people who don’t need it and sold at very low prices. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of DVD-Roms, Zip Drives, SDRam, 10 Gigabyte hard drives, ATI All-in-Wonder AGP cards, and copies of Windows NT 3.5.

Oh, and old computers. Tons of them – most from the Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 era, many of them donated by large companies who have upgraded from the old to the latest-and-greatest.

A posting on Slashdot got me wondering – what would you do with a whole bunch of old, obsolete tech? Donate them? Well, that’s a good tax write-off, but what if you could actually do something with them.

Here are ten things you can do with old technology such as Pentium 2 laptops.

1) The Wired Meeting Room

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an interdepartmental meeting where everyone had access to their email accounts – and could look up information when needed at a moment’s notice? What if you put a laptop in front of each seat in a six-person meeting room?

There are a number of ways this could be accomplished – if the laptops are capable of running a Web browser, any Web-based mail would work. Still another option would be to add a Webcam, Microphone and some form of VoIP software – allowing you to communicate with others across the corporate LAN, WAN, or Internet – that is, however, assuming that your network is performing well enough to handle the extra load.

Another option is to set the laptops up as dumb terminals and have them log in to a more robust server in the meeting room – or to their office computers at their desks!

2) Laptop Anywhere.

Again, take the laptops and set them up as dumb terminals to the user’s personal office computer – but this time, add WiFi and the user can then bring his or her work anywhere in the entire office building – or at least those areas in the office building covered by the WiFi network. And heading to another person’s office to collaborate on a project means that you don’t have to leave your own computer behind.

3) Monitor Performance at-a-glance

If you want to keep appraised of network performance, SNMP polling data, utilization – even live Web traffic, you could mount an old laptop to your wall and keep abreast of what you’re looking at. If these statistics can be determined via a terminal – that’s good, but anything that can be put into a Web browser can be shown by anything that can run a Web browser.

4) The Stock Ticker Of The Future

Sure, you could also use the above trick to monitor stock Web pages – and it would be much simpler than this route – but if you’re savvy enough, you could set up a small server box with the MythTV backend, install MythTV front-end on a series of laptops, and each of them can stream CNBC live. It’d take a lot of traffic but hopefully if you keep it on the relatively high throughput environment of a LAN, it’d be okay. Just make sure that you know what the effect will be on your network before you do this – video takes a lot of bandwidth.

5) Beowulf Cluster

It had to be said.

6) Digital Picture Frame (Suggested by Dan Brzoska)

If you don’t mind potentially wrecking the computer, there are more than a few tutorials on how to turn old laptops into digital picture frames – this tutorial from Popular Science shows how to set up the computer to grab the photos from someone’s Flickr stream, meaning you can update the photos from across the world.

7) Productivity Booster (Suggested by Jason Tanner)

Want a second monitor for the office? It may be hard to justify getting a second monitor that would cost the company $200-400 – but using a laptop the IT department was going to donate anyway is a much easier sell. You can do this a number of ways – Web-based e-mail works, althoughit’s possible to set up the computer as a dumb terminal to your work computer and have full access to your standard e-mail client, like Outlook.

8) Demo Server (Suggested by Manish Chacko)

If your company sells computer products, the dumb terminal trick can be used again to serve up demos of your products to customers when they come into the office. Why not let them play with the product themselves instead of watching you do it for them? They may come up with a question about how to use the product that they may not have asked otherwise.

9) Office Space

You know the scene I’m talking about.

10) Scrabble (Suggested by Jim Duster)

If all else fails, you can take the keyboards off of old laptops and pry them off to play Scrabble. Remember, you’ll need at least 12 “E” tiles – which means 12 keyboards.