Stories by Phil Hochmuth

Two quick-setup Asterisk packages debut

Two companies that distribute the Asterisk VOIP platform released products last week aimed at getting small and midsize businesses up and running quickly with the open source IP PBX.

Stop wasting money on Gigabit Ethernet

Mark Fabbi, vice president distinguished analyst at Gartner, leads the firms Enterprise Network Infrastructure research, and regularly has the ears of the top CIOs and network executives in the Fortune 500. At Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo event last year in San Francisco, he laid out this argument against over-overbuilding corporate LANs with Gigabit Ethernet: installing huge pipes to the desktop is a waste, as more users are working from remote offices and from home. Fabbi expands on this idea in this Q&A with Network World Senior Editor Phil Hochmuth.

OpenVZ release advances server virtualization features

Thinking outside the box is overrated, says the OpenVZ group; its server virtualization technology lets you create mini networks of virtual machines inside a single large physical server. But what if the time comes to move to a new box?

Top five challenges for Cisco in 2007

Network professionals always need to have an eye on what Cisco is up to. Here are five key developments Cisco will be spearheading in the year ahead.

LPI preps expert-level Linux certification for January 2007

The Linux Professional Institute is preparing the latest version of its certification test for January, with some help from Novell, which of course, has a long history of its own in certification and education efforts with the venerable Certified Novell Engineer program.

What Redback acquisition means to Ericsson

With its US$2 billion (AUD$2.55 billion) acquisition of Redback Networks this week, Ericsson is now in direct competition with some of its biggest partners -- Cisco and Juniper -- in the red-hot carrier edge routing market. However, the company says the move is more of an effort to obtain IP and Ethernet technology it can use to pull its telecom and mobile infrastructure products forward into the IP-based future of telecom, says Karl Thedeen, vice president of wireline products for the Swedish vendor. But that's not to say Ericsson isn't looking to grow Redback's market share and technology itself. Thedeen expanded on the merger this week with Phil Hochmuth. [The following is an edited transcript.]

Annoy people at dinnertime with open source

Telemarketing calls: we hate them. But the business of calling people at inopportune moments is big business; the so-called outbound dialing market will reach over US$200 million by 2011, Frost & Sullivan predicts.

What did Cisco buy? A look at its '06 acquisitions

Cisco made no blockbuster buyouts in 2006. The US$256 million in announced cash and stocks it shelled out for acquisitions this year is chump change compared with 2005, when it began the year buying Airespace for US$450 million, and ended it with the US$6.7 billion Scientific-Atlanta merger.

Images of a revamped IOS become clearer

Cisco over the next five years plans to radically change how it sells and delivers router and switch software, in part by making that software more virtualized and modular.

Cisco's Chambers has his eyes on the tube

Cisco CEO John Chambers wants to make it clear that his company's top executives and technologists all have their eyes sharply focused on video screens -- from 50-inch plasmas, to cell phone and desktop PC monitors.

IEEE sets sights on 100G Ethernet

The next Ethernet speed will be 100Gbps, the IEEE voted recently. Now the standards body just has to go build something never done before.

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