NTT, the Japanese telecommunications giant, yesterday announced the first commercial Internet service supporting IPv6, a comprehensive and controversial upgrade to the 30-year-old communications protocol that underpins the Net.
When John Koskinen agreed to be President Clinton's Year 2000 czar in the summer of 1997, his friends thought he was crazy.
The network that powers the Internet's Domain Name System is getting an overhaul just as the company most associated with that system is being sold to VeriSign for some $21 billion.
VeriSign Inc.'s acquisition of Network Solutions Inc. - a $21 billion stock deal announced this week - will create an Internet colossus that offers corporate network managers one-stop shopping for an array of services, including domain name management, user authentication, encryption and credit card payment.
Users looking to develop business-to-business e-commerce Web sites may be interested in two new products Bow Street Software Inc. announced this week.
After simmering on the back burner for several years, the debate over new Internet domains - such as .web and .arts - will reach full boil next week at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Cairo.
Think of it as cyber-moonlighting.
Friday, Feb. 25
Until now, companies that wanted to outsource their messaging systems have faced an all-ornothing proposition. Critical Path Inc. has introduced an alternative that it calls Allsourcing: a combination of in-house and hosted offerings that range from basic e-mail to calendaring, scheduling, fax and directory services.
Chalk it up as a year for the record books. Venture capital investments in network companies topped $11 billion in the fourth quarter of 1999, shattering all previous records and pushing the year-end total to $23.1 billion - more than quadruple the investments made in 1998.
Get your Web site out of the hands of your IT department! That's the rallying cry of Web development tool makers, which are shipping new products designed to allow end users to manage content and create dynamic applications for corporate Web sites and intranets.
WRQ Inc. this week revamped its suite of software products designed for networks requiring PC and Web browser access to data stored in mainframes, minicomputers and Unix servers.
Of particular concern is Napster.com, a controversial music file-sharing and chat site that is such a bandwidth hog it has prompted several universities to block access in recent weeks. Other problematic sites include CDNow.com Inc., an online retailer that lets users sample songs before buying music, and internetradio.com, which features links to dozens of streaming audio formats.
As the pressure mounts for e-businesses to start making money, network managers are being called on to help their companies track the financial aspects of the complex content and revenue sharing arrangements that have become commonplace on the Net. Enter TeleKnowledge Inc., a Framingham, Mass., startup that has developed a billing system for Internet content and service providers.
Ford Motor Co. wants its workers to get wired. That's why company and union leaders last week announced a groundbreaking program to provide all 300,000 Ford employees with the oppor-tunity to buy a new PC and printer, and receive Internet access for home use at a nominal monthly fee.