Daily Network Monitor

This story is excerpted from here.

“Several large telephone and cable companies are starting to make it harder for consumers to use the Internet for phone calls or swapping video files.

Some of the companies say the users are hogging bandwidth, taking up too much space on networks and slowing down service for all customers that tap the Internet for email, video, music, phone and other services.”

“Wireless phone companies like Verizon Wireless and Vodafone Group PLC stipulate in their subscription contracts that customers can’t use the company’s high-speed Web-access networks for Internet calling — or may prohibit usage in the future. Several cable companies are using technology to cap the speed at which some of their customers can swap videos. A number of equipment companies are selling software
and other products designed to block and monitor Internet applications such as phone calls, video and photo downloads.”

“Critics [ yes, I am one of them! - Ed.] say the big operators are using their concerns about heavy network traffic to fight competition from smaller rivals that are using the phone and cable companies’ networks, like Internet calling companies Skype Technologies SA or Vonage Holdings Corp. Others [including me! - Ed.] say that telecom companies may use their control over the networks to charge users more money if they want higher quality.”

“The battle features big companies with multibillion-dollar telephone,cable and cellular networks into homes and tiny competitors who don’t own any network but whose low-cost or free services compete with those of the big operators. Consumers could get caught in the squeeze.

The crackdown is controversial: Consumers have come to expect unfettered use of the Internet. Any effort by phone or cable companies to curtail use so far has sparked an outcry.”

In a recent issue of Network World’s Network/Systems Management Newsletter, Andi Mann wrote:

Two weeks ago, Dell announced a new Unified Manageability Architecture (UMA), which it described as “a blueprint to standardize systems management.” Future versions of Dell’s OpenManage solutions will be co-developed with systems management solution provider Altiris, built on the Altiris Notification Server. Dell will leverage Altiris’ management platform to offer a single hardware and software management console.

However, even though the console is built around technology from a proprietary management vendor, it will use open standards such as CIM, SMI-S, and WS-Man. ….Then last week, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), announced a number of new standards aimed at boosting interoperability. These included a newly ratified WS-CIM specification, a Web services-based version of the DMTF’s Common Information Model (CIM), an open standard for interoperable exchange of management information; a revised version of SMBIOS, an open standard for interoperable exchange of motherboard and system information; and the public release of the complete open standard, Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH), V1.0.

The DMTF is an industry body with nearly 200 member organizations, including the who’s who of enterprise management – Altiris, Avocent, BMC, CA, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, LANDesk, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Sun, and Symantec. Yet despite a membership consisting predominantly of proprietary vendors, it is probably the leading proponent of open standards to promote interoperability in enterprise management.

…More and more vendors are going to develop and build to open standards like UMA, SMASH, and WS-Man. Those that do not are likely to be left in the scrap heap, regardless of whether they are open source or proprietary.

Yet there is still a problem – competing “open” standards. When too many standards compete, it really does not matter how open they are, it still creates complexity, and works against interoperability. Therefore, in the end, customers still need to choose a limited number of suppliers. Regardless of how interoperable these so-called “open standard” suppliers are, it is the best way to reduce IT management complexity.

Microsoft has released seven security patches for critical flaws in Internet Explorer, the Visual Studio 2005 development software and Windows Media Format.

The new patches, issued as part of its monthly security updates for December, tackle 11 bugs identified across several programs.

Four of the patches relate to a flaw in Internet Explorer that has been rated as critical and could begin to be exploited from as early as the end of this week.

Enterprise administrators, meanwhile, are expected to be interested in the release of a Simple Network Monitoring Protocol (SNMP) patch.

The patch has been deemed important rather than critical as SNMP is ordinarily blocked by firewalls and turned off by default on Windows systems.

However, it is widely used as part of the network-monitoring infrastructure in the enterprise, and is also frequently used on critical servers, Gunter Ollmann, director of IBM’s Internet Security System’s X-Force threat analysis service, said.

Read the entire story here.