Ted Romer: Should Have Gone With Cisco.com

NetQoS's own Ted Romer has started up a new blog about networking with Cisco products. Entitled "Should Have Gone With Cisco," the current offerings include his worklog of his MPLS test.

First take a look at the BGP vrf configuration for CUSTOMER_A. We are redistributing EIGRP and any connected routes (local interfaces configured with CUSTOMER_A vrf). By bringing the EIGRP routes into this BGP vrf, it allows the EIGRP routes to be exchanged via MP-BGP to the other PE routers. If you don't do this, you won't see any of the networks learned via EIGRP show up under the "show ip bgp vpnv4 vrf CUSTOMER_A" command. Remember, our EIGRP networks get exchanged via MP-BGP in the form of VPNv4 routes.

Okay, so it's not exactly easy reading for the layman. Still, we wish Ted the best of luck with the blog and will probably link back there more often.

Network World: Weaving a Better Web

From the "We're having trouble with latency on our Sao Paulo to Sea Of Tranquility link" department:

"By the end of this decade, we'll have a two-planet Internet in place. We'll have software on orbiters that allow new protocols to make the Internet work across the solar system.

"This is a very exciting prospect," [Vint] Cerf says.

While the Internet can very well extend from the Earth to extraterrestrial bodies, I'm not sure that an interplanetary 'net will be of any more use than the current system of radio transmission. After all, TCP's triple handshake combined with the natural latency of the speed of light does not make for a "zippy" network connection. It takes over 1,200 milliseconds for light to travel from the surface of the moon to the Earth - so whatever other troubles you may have with the network, you're working from at least that much latency to start with.

Earth to Mars? At maximum distances, that's a propagation delay of 1,330,920 ms. A triple handshake alone would take a month and a half to complete, [Ed. Note: Math error] an hour to complete, and that's before sending data. Talk about high latency!

Certainly, in the far off future, when we all have rocket cars and robotic servants handing us margaritas in our fur-lined zero-G chambers, you could set up a batch transmission from one planet's network to the next. But right now we're sending individual probes. I fail to see how an interplanetary Internet would be an improvement over whatever analog radio based technology we've been using in space so far.

SmallNetBuilder: HowTo: Wake on LAN/WAN

Ever need to reboot a computer to solve a problem? Have you ever had to travel out to the site - or walk someone through it - in order to do that simple reboot? This guide might come in handy for you.

In order to take advantage of Wake On LAN/WAN technology, there are multiple steps to perform. This guide lists those steps, covering BIOS configurations, software, testing, routing, and security. The goal here isn't to cover every aspect of Wake On LAN/WAN technology, but to provide understanding and tools to make it work on your network.

RFC 2795

Many people believe that if you got an infinite number of monkeys together on an infinite number of typewriters, they would be able to reproduce all of Shakespeare's works. But what happens next? What is the protocol for "monkeyclusters" and how can one easily sort through the data to find out when Shakespeare's plays had been reproduced? To answer this question: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite.

In addition, it would be a waste of resources if such a sizable effort only focused on Shakespeare. With an infinite number of monkeys at work, it is also equally likely that a monkey could produce a document that describes how to end world poverty, cure disease, or most importantly, write a good situation comedy for television [4]. Such an environment would be ripe for innovation and, with the proper technical design, could be effectively utilized to "make the world a whole lot brighter" [5].

The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS) is an experimental set of protocols that specifies how monkey transcripts may be collected, transferred, and reviewed for either historical accuracy (in the case of Shakespearean works) or innovation (in the case of new works). It also provides a basic communications framework for performing normal monkey maintenance.

What is going on? It seems everyone is having trouble with their networks - or at least the part of the network that faces the Internet. Feel free to chime in below - we want to hear your theories on this. Even humor/news Web site Fark.com was down for quite a while.

CNNMoney: Late filers swamp TurboTax

People often assume that because I'm a "21st Century Digital Boy" and do everything from pay 99% of my bills online, meet friends online, get my news and entertainment online, and work online, that I'd be the first person to file taxes online.

I work with computers. I know how badly they can screw things up.

And apparently Intuit now knows that too.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A flood of last-minute tax filers swamped Intuit Inc.'s e-filing system early Tuesday, causing long delays for taxpayers trying to check that their electronic returns had been submitted successfully.

Intuit, which makes the popular TurboTax and ProSeries tax software, posted a message on its TurboTax web site Wednesday morning that notified filers that they could not access their returns.

As a result, filers who had waited until Tuesday's deadline to submit their federal and state income tax forms electronically did not know if their returns were processed by the midnight cutoff.

April 15th is the biggest day of the year for makers of tax prep software, and it's surprising that there wasn't enough capacity planning to handle the surge. I'm certain that Intuit prepared for a surge, but I don't know if they prepared for the surge they got. Here's one way to find out the information you need for capacity planning.

Network World: BlackBerry owes this guy a girlfriend

I can think of several bad scenarios due to poor network performance. I think this is one of the worst, however.

Just as the smoke is starting to clear from today's massive BlackBerry blackout, Rafael Paz, a loss control specialist for a car rental agency, writes to tell me that he has been "getting my e-mails about one to four hours late minimum since yesterday." And it hasn't just been loss control that has suffered, he adds: "This issue sucks. I've been getting grief about it from my now ex-girlfriend thanks to this delay. She thought I was ignoring her e-mails when I was receiving them hours late."

Ubuntu.com: Ubuntu Feisty Fawn released.

I wrote a very lengthy review of Ubuntu Edgy Eft, (Ubuntu 6.10) for HardOCP. I downloaded and installed Feisty Fawn yesterday (well, the latest release candidate, which has remained unchanged from the final version). It is as if Canonical read that article and fixed every single one of the problems I mentioned. Everything works, there is no need to go to the command line for anything (so far), and its just an amazing release.

Needless to say, their servers are getting pretty hammered. [ZDNet]

Feisty Fawn held up better than the protagonist in the animation Bambi Meets Godzilla: Canonical put up a bare-bones home page with just a single logo and a list of "mirror" sites from which the software can be downloaded. Still, the site was unavailable for more than half of the day, according to site availability monitoring company Pingdom.

"We have been absolutely swamped with hits to the Web site and the mirrors," Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth said in a conference call. "Fortunately there are 160 mirrors out there, all rapidly updating to include Feisty Fawn. We hope the logjam won't last much longer."

Here's the torrent file, if you're interested. I'm seeding from my home computer.

Network World: Users demand better net hardware mgmt.

Hardware vendors have long supplemented their gear with management applications - take CiscoWorks, for example - but industry watchers say the trend is to make gear easier to manage alongside competitive hardware and by third-party software applications such as CA Unicenter, HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli.

This should come as a shock to no one - one of the reasons we made third-party integration a priority in developing NetQoS Performance Center was because IT guys want to be able to go to one tool in order to manage their network, no matter how many companies made the hardware and software on the network. Multiple administration tools lead to stress and headaches. And with enough stress and a bad enough headache, network engineers, ever the clever sort, will find that the one tool they reach for is a hammer…

ZDNet: Cisco invests in networking start-up Avega

Between Xbox360s being used as HDTV media centers, the AppleTV, and the Windows Home Server, home networking seems to be a growth market. This may be one reason why Cisco decided to invest in Avega - to get into that "home networking" space.

Avega, with employees in the United States and Australia, specializes in technology that can wirelessly connect home entertainment gear such as media center PCs, portable media players, cell phones, stereo equipment, networked storage and set-top boxes. The company has also developed technology that controls and manages these devices and the content it wirelessly shuttles through the house.

Cisco is well known as an infrastructure equipment maker. For years, it has supplied large businesses and Internet service providers with the switches and routers that shuttle Internet traffic from one place to another. Cisco now wants a piece of the burgeoning market for home entertainment networking gear.

Personally, I'm not looking forward to explaining home networking to my parents. Try explaining "The network is the computer" to people who thought for quite some time that the monitor is the computer.

Yahoo News: Researchers Explore Scrapping Internet

The same openness that makes the Internet such a valuable communications medium, leveling the playing field between digital distributors also made it a system without safeguards from hackers and spammers. This story from Yahoo details some of the initiatives designed to "replace" the current "dumb network" Internet.

No longer constrained by slow connections and computer processors and high costs for storage, researchers say the time has come to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, a move that could mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers to better channel future traffic over the existing pipes.

Even Vinton Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers as co-developer of the key communications techniques, said the exercise was "generally healthy" because the current technology "does not satisfy all needs."

One challenge in any reconstruction, though, will be balancing the interests of various constituencies. The first time around, researchers were able to toil away in their labs quietly. Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known.

Or keep it very secret until an exposé in Wired Magazine….

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Time stands still for Hempfield teen in lockup

A quick summary of this case: Cody Webb, a sophomore at Hempfield Area High School, made a phone call at 3:12 a.m. to his school's automated line. It was March 11, the day that the new Daylight Savings Time took effect.

At 4:17 a.m., a as-yet unidentified caller phoned in a bomb threat to the school on that same phone line.

However, the school failed to update their phone systems to the new Daylight Savings Time and logged the call at 3:17 a.m.

By now you can probably tell this story doesn't have a happy ending. Cody Webb - a student who, according to his mother, didn't have even so much as a detention on his record - spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before someone finally did the math.

High school Principal Kathy Charlton confirmed that some of the district's clocks were wrong because of the changeover to daylight-saving time, which was three weeks earlier this year.

"All the time stamps were screwed up. Some did (change over), some didn't," Charlton said. "Everyone's system had to be set manually. There were a lot of clocks involved."

[Cobb family attorney Tim] Andrews said state police and school officials botched the investigation. The school received 35 calls early on the morning of March 11, and few were actively investigated, he said.

"All it would have taken was 10 more minutes to look at the information. Everybody jumped the gun and caused this kid and his family to go through this," Andrews said.

Silicon.com: Know Your Network

This collection of networking horror stories includes a quote from our CEO, Joel Trammell. They misspelled his name as “Trammel” but that’s okay because they’re British. They spell a lot of words differently in the U.K.

Joel Trammel, CEO of NetQoS, said: "Increasing bandwidth is not a panacea for solving performance problems. Make sure you understand the cause of the problem before taking corrective action like throwing bandwidth at it. Delay for example could be caused by the server, the application or even the transit path. The ability to measure the right performance metrics is key."

Your Comments on Netcosm:

I must admit, it’s a blast seeing some of the comments from places such as YouTube, Tech Crunch, and Fark Tech about Netcosm.

The best comments:

YouTube:

corydlewis: "this is some kinda matrix biznes-go little server packets fight!!!1"

["Go Little Server Packets Fight!!!" is currently the leading candidate for the name of the NetQoS Official Punk Band.]

easybeek: "If at any point in time your data is on fire or exploding, it can't be a good thing."

[Just like purple lightning is never a good sign in a horror movie...]

Fark.com/Tech:

My Liver Hurts: "I'd love to put about 4 flatpanels in my cubicle and get that program running on all of them. Then when people come by to ask me a question or ask me to do something I can just say "[SHUT UP] I'M IN THE MATRIX" really loud and not look at them."

[For real chutzpah, try saying this in a meeting with management.]

MaconL87: "Replace the fireworks in the video with beer kegs and you have an accurate model of how FARK's servers work."

[This is why we're thinking about including a skinning feature...]

dionysos: "I'm going to feel like a real ass if working in a NOC really ends up looking like the one in Hackers, because I've been making fun of that movie for a decade. [but] if the NOC plays 'Voodoo People' in the background, I'm in"

[Voodoo People, Magic People. The who-do-what-you-don't-dare-do-people.]

Techcrunch:

Techcrunch/Jimmydunes: "I won’t be happy until I can monitor my network traffic by smell. “Oh no! Is that burning hair?!"

[When everything works smoothly, the network smells like cinnabuns.]

First, an apology to the readers. Usually I try to add some entertaining, humorous commentary that make you want to read more, brightens up your day and sometimes makes the oftentimes dry world of IT news a little easier to swallow.

But today we've got some comments on IT management from Network World, an instructional video on Amazon's outsourced virtual servers from ZDNet, some talk about Verizon's EVDO network from wired, and some developments in AI from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In fact, if you have something I can work with, let me know about it in our comments section or by e-mailing brian.boyko@netqos.com.

Anyway, on with Thursday's links…

ZDNet: Time to throw away your servers? (Video)

ZDNet's executive editor, David Berlind, talks about Amazon's Elastic Computer Cloud, which is a pay-as-you-go data center outsourcing service that uses virtual servers. The advantage of those virtual servers is partially that you can turn off the servers you aren't using during less than peak hours, and that the price for using one of these virtual servers is less than the price of outsourcing a physical server.

Network World: IT Management Done Right:

Based on interviews conducted by Network World editor Bob Brown at Babson College, this article helps explain how to run an IT department while integrating newer technologies such as VoIP, Virtualization and WiFi into the existing architecture.

The QoS that I find relevant is not at the bits and bytes level, it is all about the "perceived performance" from the users' perspective. This is not to say we take all user comments of "the network/application is slow" at face value, but we do try to find patterns in these comments and investigate the causes that lead to the comments. If there is one standard measurement in computing, it is that happy users don't complain. Therefore, we take all complaints seriously. Setting arbitrary performance levels at the network layer is not useful to me, the entire experience of the user has to be taken into account. This usually means we look at the application on down when researching performance/quality of service issues.

In short, the line between the network vs. servers vs. application is so fuzzy you have to take a macro view toward QoS, no matter what your job role is. I expect everyone within my organization to look at the user experience first and then their statistics to support/refute the claim.

Wired: Verizon says Unlimited equals 5GB: Bans P2P

Wired Magazine's GadgetLab blog talks about some of the fine print in the EVDO network from Verizon, which prohibits use of P2P and streaming media, and limits transfers to 5GB. The main thrust of the article is that they're marketing this limited functionality as "unlimited" - but I'm more interested in the idea that Verizon is likely doing everything to cut down on traffic on the EVDO network.

"A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month [...] Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice."

Sounds like poor capacity planning leading to poor customer relations to me.

Uinversity of Illinois at Chicago: Virtual Reality for Virtual Eternity.

Virtual Necromancy.

Imagine having a discussion with Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein on the nature of the universe, where their 3-D, life-sized representations looked you in the eye, examined your body language, considered voice nuances and phraseology of your questions, then answered you in a way that is so real you would swear the images were alive.

It's interesting stuff. I'm curious to see if this could practically be sent over the network, however, and what the bandwidth requirements would be.

ComputerWeekly.com: VoIP network monitoring improves VoIP deployment

As a company that makes and sells network monitoring solutions, we are forced to reluctantly concur with this Computer Weekly article, which encourages the purchase and use of network monitoring solutions.

The research has revealed that companies believe that VoIP applications... change too fast for network hardware to keep up. "People are adopting VoIP before it's maturing," said Charles Thompson, manager of sales engineering for Network Instruments. "And this is why monitoring is now so important and necessary."

Even though 45% of the US organizations surveyed had already implemented VoIP, only 32% felt that they could properly monitor VoIP performance. In addition, 36% of network managers and administrators reported questioning their own personal ability to implement a VoIP system, even though they expected to begin a deployment in the near future.

An interesting reality is that a lot of the network "stuff" including VoIP, does work okay much of the time without management. Many folks can and do deploy networks and VoIP without any management. However, this leaves them flying blind. Eventually they bump into something bad and have a fit trying to fix it. Likewise, they have no good way to measure performance, especially at the user experience level. That's not a good plan.

GigaOm: Data is good, but not without voice.

As mobile phone carriers worry about the iPhone and worry about pushing out videos, games, music, and the Internet through your sellpho- I mean, cellphone, they haven't focused on the cellular mobile phone's killer app. Voice - which in the U.S., is appalling.

In 2006, voice brought in about $110 billion, and that is such a large amount of money that the U.S. wireless providers should cringe at the fact that they have to use advertising tag lines such as "fewest dropped calls" or ask people to come and try their service for 30 days or switch back for free.

No self-respecting descendant of Ma Bell should be able to sleep at night till they fix the voice network. After all Europeans have managed to lick the dropped call problem, by putting decent enough quality in place. Even the Chinese and Indian carriers with their microscopic ARPU manage to complete calls pretty much everywhere.

Weirdly, the mobile phone companies problems are the exact opposite of most of Corporate America - they're trying to get their networks, designed for voice, to handle data, while everyone else is trying to get networks designed for data to handle voice. Furthermore, you wouldn't roll out VoIP on a TCP/IP dominated network that had significant problems - why is it prudent, then, for mobile companies to roll out TCP/IP apps on a voice network that doesn't quite work right?

Heck, there's a cell tower right outside my apartment window and I still get dropped calls from time to time.

Reuters: Early U.S. Daylight Savings a bust in power savings

We've previously covered the change in DST…

But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.

"We haven't seen any measurable impact," said Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co., one of the nation's largest power companies, echoing comments from several large utilities.

The way I see it is this: What's harder for you to do - get up in the morning when it's not light out yet, or drive home after work when it's dark?

GigaOm: In VoIP, Cisco thinks small to go big.

Called the Smart Business Communication System (apparently telecom stuff doesn't get any creative naming), Cisco's package offers more than just an integrated voice system - it allows users (and resellers) to add in wireless infrastructure, small routers and integration with vertical-application packages…

Cisco's target for its SMB offering is in the just-under-99-seat range, a market segment that may be a bit higher in functionality needs than the businesses who might look at Microsoft's promised phone-in-a-box offering, or to Fonality's or Digium's no-cost open-source PBXs. While Moran said ease of installation ("Our target is to have phones working less than 5 minutes after plugging the boxes in") is still a criteria for Cisco's intended SMB base, it's probably more likely that a Cisco SMB VoIP sale will come through one of the company's thousands of reseller partners, who may want to bundle wireless, Internet access and web hosting together as part of an integrated small-business communications package.

If you have 90-98 employees, can your business still be considered "small?"

Burton Group: Don’t Wait for Windows Vista to Optimize WAN Performance; Do It Now

The Burton Group talks about Vista’s WAN performance improvements, but recommends “enterprise IT organizations currently evaluating WAN performance solutions purchase products now rather than wait a few years for the widespread installation of Microsoft Windows Vista.” Their chief reasons are because new operating systems can take a long time to fully deploy and WAN optimization devices can pay for themselves – according to the Burton Group – in only a couple of years.

Siegel reports that when wide-scale adoption of Vista arrives, the major performance changes will be in these three areas:

• TCP/IP stack: notable performance increases for high-bandwidth or noisy communications paths and for multiple-CPU or multi-core systems because of flow control, error recovery, and scalability improvements
• File services: faster access to remote files because of improvements to the Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol
• Quality of Service (QoS): enhanced ability of administrators to manage QoS because of improved control over QoS markings

There are a couple of optimization techniques that can’t be implemented at the operating system level – caching, for one. Still, anything that improves network performance isn’t a bad thing – assuming the rest of the OS is up to snuff.

I, Cringley: Just Say No: David Harrison wants to replace your Internet

Robert Cringley talks about a plan from David Harrison to operate a competing DNS server to ICANN’s “official” Internet server – something Harrison calls Inet. This would effectively block out spammers, spoofers, squatters, and other nefarious s*ers by denying them domains on the new network, but would be backwards compatible with the ICANN DNS servers. It could be as simple as pressing a button on a Web browser to switch the old network to the new one, and vice versa.

Inet would operate its own DNS system parallel to the one run by ICANN. That's not really such a big deal, you know. Certainly a different DNS with different rules would not be hard to build from a technical or even a financial standpoint, and it could exist on the current network right alongside the current DNS system. The big question is why people would use it. They wouldn't at first, because without traffic and participating servers such a DNS would be useless, and that's why David proposes an Inet DNS filter as a crossover between the old/evil system and the new/good one…

What David Harrison is proposing isn't all that different from what happens when a nation replaces its currency, eliminating overnight through the substitution of new paper the counterfeiting, theft, and improper distribution of wealth that had come to characterize the previous currency. If you do it once you'll have to do it again, of course, but even if the changes happen only every decade, wouldn't it be worth it?

With a promise to “prohibit child pornography, phishing, fraudulent commercial services, spam, denial of service attacks, and zombie networks,” we’re wondering if this idea is quite the panacea as its proponent claims – nevertheless, I can see the value in creating an own, private DNS server specifically for business communication, and if you can have your Inet cake and ICANN too, the idea is worth consideration.

GigaOM: Desktop Apps, Reborn as Hybrids

Om Malik talks about the idea of “desktop services” – hybrid web applications that use client software to work offline, then connect to the Web for data storage and retrieval.

Zimbra is not the only one that has realized that many of us want our emails while sitting in a plane, or where Wi-Fi connections are not as commonplace as the Starbucks logo might suggest. Even Salesforce.com has an offline edition of its offerings. Some independent developers are attempting to build offline versions of GMail and some of 37Signals’ web applications.

I’ve often felt that there were certain offline apps that were simply better than online apps, ever since the days that my choices for accessing my college e-mail were Eudora Light or telnetting into the server and using PINE.

More importantly, having an offline app for SAAS means that SAAS sessions will become more popular (increasing the need for bandwidth) but may not require downloading the UI every time you connect (decreasing the need for bandwidth.) In the end, I’d rather download a single e-mail than download that e-mail, the AJAX code to format that e-mail, the graphics used to make the service look good, etc.

Mil-Embedded.com: Raytheon develops world's first polymorphic computer

Raytheon developed a multi-use "polymorphic" computer whose architecture can change on the fly, reducing the number of different processors for computing systems.

"Typically, a chip is optimally designed either for front-end signal processing or back-end control and data processing," explained Nick Uros, vice president for the Advanced Concepts and Technology group of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. "The MONARCH micro-architecture is unique in its ability to reconfigure itself to optimize processing on the fly. MONARCH provides exceptional compute capacity and highly flexible data bandwidth capability with beyond state-of-the-art power efficiency, and it's fully programmable."

Of course it'll be a few years (or months) until polymorphic chips find their way into the server room but those will be interesting times until the "dual use" becomes apparent in optimizing server functions and routing. It continually seems that the only place where human beings can't find new technologies to reduce delay is the speed of light.

MONARCH's polymorphic capability and super efficiency enable the development of DoD systems that need very small size, low power, and in some cases radiation tolerance for such purposes as global positioning systems, airborne and space radar and video processing systems.

Or routers.

Slashdot Commentary on "Dungeons And Dragons and IT"

It's worth it just for the in-jokes of the D&D/IT crowd.

The problem is usually that most companies don't hire any more D&D players than it takes to just barely put fires out. You wouldn't be putting out fires all the time if your employer would hire more wizards, although wizardry doesn't come cheap.

You can get four or five wizards for the price of one, but the catch is, the wizards come with the curse that Rutger Hauer and his girlfriend Michelle Pfeiffer had in that movie Ladyhawke. He was a wolf at night and his girlfriend Michelle Pfeiffer turned into a hawk during the day. A simple email conversation would have taken them days and days!

Just like working with overseas teams. Except neither of us look like Michelle Pfeiffer OR Rutger Hauer.

And this one.

It's not a werewolf, it a guy with a "unix beard(tm)".

The way to check is that you say "say, what's your opinion on packaging systems?" If they growl and try rip your throat out, use the silver bullets. If they start to tell their grand view of how packaging should work, use regular ammo.

If ever a werewolf were to evolve that has a fur pattern that looks the same as a short sleeved shirt with pocket protector, the human race is doomed.

While we're on the topic of IT humor,

Novell "Get a Mac Spoof" #2

This is a series of Novell-backed parodies of the Mac vs. PC ads which have an attractive woman playing the part of Sus(i)e Linux. And I think Novell is hitting that target market. I personally have a PC which dual boots Windows and Linux, and just bought a Mac Mini yesterday (for an article I'm working on) and let me tell you, I'd trade them all for a girlfriend.

With quick commentary notes from NetQoS CTO, Dr. Cathy Fulton

Ars Technica: Adobe launches Apollo, its web application runtime for the desktop

Now this is seriously cool – Adobe is developing a runtime library that allows Inter-and-intranet enabled runtime apps to work offline as well as online; allowing Web developers to access, edit, and store information even when the network is down or slow.

Granted, no one likes it when the network is down, but sometimes it does happen. This way, people can still use the Web apps and just have the information be updated when the network comes back up. Additionally, you could theoretically use this to schedule SAAS apps to run at a certain time, freeing up some network bandwidth for peak periods.

Downey then pulled the network cable and showed that new auctions could be created even when offline, and the application would automatically upload them to eBay when the computer was next connected. He also demonstrated how the application could create an Excel spreadsheet based on online data and save it to the desktop.

Adobe is giving the runtime away for free, and it can be distributed with each application or downloaded separately from Adobe's web site. The openness extends to third-party applications as well—users can select "View Source" from a menu to see the underlying code behind any Apollo application.

This is especially cool for people who like to use network apps in Wi-Fi enabled coffeeshops, which often have unpredictable downtimes or crowded pipes. Soon, you’ll be able to use Apollo at Starbucks.

(I still haven’t seen all of Season 2.5 yet! Nobody tell me anything!)

Dr. Fulton: It’s certainly cool to have an app work offline and online seamlessly as the network performance degrades. I wish more developers, more companies, would get excited about ensuring their applications worked well online under different network scenarios, however.

Network World: Stanford Researchers Scheming to Rebuild Internet from Scratch.

The “Clean Slate Design for the Internet” is a Stanford University event where researchers will, essentially, explain how the Internet is good, but it could be better if we just started over.

The researchers already have projects underway to support their effort: Flow-level models for the future Internet; clean slate approach to wireless spectrum usage; fast dynamic optical light paths for the Internet core; and a clean slate approach to enterprise network security (Ethane).

Quite frankly, I’m wary of anything replacing the Internet, in this political and economic climate. The Internet developed under the radar of everyone except the geeks; a “clean slate” would invite so many special interest groups, corporations, and national governments to bring in input that the entire operation may be politically, if not technically unfeasible. However, there’s nothing wrong with hearing out the ideas.

Dr. Fulton: This is primarily a “fishing for funding” academic marketing exercise. But a few gems might be discovered that actually will be of practical future use. And that fundamentally is what research is about.

InfoWorld: The Business Case for Open Source Software

This is an editorial espousing the virtues of OSS software solutions for the “free as in speech” approach, pointing out that proprietary software sometimes has onerous licensing restrictions. It’s an interesting read if you haven’t considered it – but we particularly like this one line in the opening paragraph.

“What we really care about (or should care about) is making a sound business decision regarding software.”

We agree with him – mostly – but we also believe that sometimes the open source solution isn’t always the best solution. By all means, software needs to be able to survive the company that spawns it and licensing should be enabling, not disabling. But sometimes the cost of paying for software is worth it – the classic case is GIMP vs. Photoshop. I use both, I prefer Photoshop, and think it’s worth the money. If GIMP ever became as feature-rich as Photoshop, I’d probably use that instead.

Dr. Fulton: The hidden cost of software is in the additional personnel time required to retrieve/maintain the desired solution. I’ve found some open source solutions to be superior (for my uses) to commercial solutions – I use them even when the commercial option is freely available (meaning, the company already purchased it). For large-scale tasks, however, open source solutions usually are not viable. Their hidden cost outweighs their flexibility.

UBCD4Win.com: How to Build the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

Essentially, this allows you to create a “LiveCD” version of Windows for troubleshooting Windows systems. I often use LiveCDs – Ubuntu mainly – to troubleshoot family computers that won’t boot, but now it’s great to have an option to use Windows. I’m sure many of you already know how to do this but if you don’t, I’m sure you can come up with situations where knowing it would be useful.

ZDNet: Net phone customers brace for 'VoIP spam'

Spam is one of the most intrusive forms of advertising because, unlike telemarketing and direct-mail, spam pushes the primary cost of delivering the advertisement onto the recipient and not the sender. A sender can send out millions of e-mails, the receiver must bear the bandwidth cost in receiving them.

Image Spam has increased the bandwidth costs of spam, and VoIP spam seems to go to the next step.

Like e-mail, VoIP calls find their way by locating an IP (Internet Protocol) address, a unique set of numbers assigned to each device connected to the Web. By contrast, calls made over the traditional phone network are routed by instructions taken from a 10-digit telephone number. Using VoIP, telemarketers can send messages to thousands of addresses at a time, rather than tying up a single phone line to make one call.

The biggest likely impact of VoIP spam will be on voice mail boxes. They'll dutifully record every message they receive, while a human answering the phone will likely hang up within a few seconds. That could have a tremendous effect on VoIP providers that offer free voice mail; they would have to expand their storage capabilities to handle the additional spam messages.

Image spam - which seeks to get around spam filters by including images with text instead of just text - uses incredible amounts of bandwidth. VoIP uses even larger amounts of bandwidth and is harder to search for specific words (never mind the "wiretap" issues inherent in doing so.) Because of the nature of a VoIP conversation, which sacrifices bandwidth efficiency for eliminating latency, VoIP messages can often be deceptively large.

Microsoft TechNet: Windows Server 2003 & Windows XP x64 Service Pack 2

Microsoft finally released Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP 64-bit edition.

The enhancements to Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 include:

• Windows Deployment Services (WDS)
• Enabling 'Firewall Per Port' Authentication
• Microsoft Management Console 3.0 (MMC 3.0)
• Wireless Protected Access 2 (WPA2)
• iCACLS tool
• Expanded Windows Server 2003 Datacenter SKUs
• Release of MUI Packs to insure greater compatibility between base and MUI language
• Performance Improvements for SQL Servers
• Enhanced discoverability options in MSConfig
• Improved IPsec filter management
• Performance Improvements under Windows Virtualization
• Increased default storage for Message Queuing
• Improvements to DCDIAG Domain Name Service tests
• New Events for Cluster Service Accounts

Particularly important (for this blog, anyway) are performance improvements for SQL servers and windows virtualization; while you need to test before deployment, if these improvements work as advertised they may very well be able to improve the efficiency of the servers, decreasing load and improving overall end-to-end performance for apps that use an SQL server or run on a virtualized OS.

New York Times TechTalk Podcast for March 14, 2007 [MP3]

Okay, I'll admit it - this has relatively little to do with network performance. However, it does have everything to do with my [editor Brian Boyko's] favorite subject, which is Network Performance Daily Editor, Brian Boyko.
In short, I did a freelance article for HardOCP.com where I looked at Linux for 30 days. That story got on Slashdot and Digg, and the New York Times asked me to comment on their TechTalk podcast. This is shameless self-promotion, I know, but I'm still proud of it. They start talking about Linux about 16 minutes in and I come in at the 19 minute mark. (You'll recognize me because I sound like a 16 year old with a lisp - despite the fact that I turn 28 in two weeks.)