The Daily Network Monitor

In an earlier entry, Back into the Fray, I listed what has changed and has not changed after I left enterprise networking and I joined Ipswitch. One of the items that changed was VoIP. VoIP seems to have fallen under what is now termed unified communications.

Both Microsoft and Cisco have staked places at the unified communications table. But what does unified communications really mean. Is it VoIP? Is it IM? Is it collaboration? Is it email? Or is it all of these things melded into one?

What ever it is, it means only one thing to network managers. How much effort is it going to take to manage?

From this one question we can deduce a number of other implications to an already saturated infrastructure and the ability to manage yet another cool technology someone just had to have.

If it is server centric, read Microsoft, this means more server focused hardware to manage. How will this server based infrastructure be managed? Not only is there additional server hardware to manage, but also license management (read CALs) to ensure EULA compliance. 4000 IP phones, means 4000 CALs, unless Microsoft is changing their licensing model.

Or networking gear centric, read Cisco, this fits nicely with most existing installed infrastructures and most of the management capabilities are already in place.

QoS management for VoIP is key to the whole effort of unified communications, QoS is network centric not server centric.

I’m not trying to take a slanted view of one company over another, just what make sense for an organization. If it was a network that I was responsible for, I would choose the network centric approach over the application centric approach every time.

I don’t know what else to say but, “wow.” The Cisco Subnet blog on Network World brings news of Cisco’s uBR10012 Universal Broadband Router and its $980k list price. That’s a lot of routing. The guy writing the review had to put it in the bed of his pickup truck. It takes up 18 rack units just for the chassis. if anybody is using WhatsUp to monitor one of these things, our PR guy wants to talk to you.

Solera Networks, Inc., has introduced a new hardware product; for managing packet recorders distributed throughout a network. Here is an excerpted version of the press release that announced the product.

Control Center software for its packet recorder appliances. This initial release of the web-based interface software allows network administrators and security analysts to:

- Select, start, and stop physical capture, virtual replay, and/or regeneration processes
- Create and apply filters to the network data stream before capture or upon replay
- View graphical and numerical status of key system metrics
- Navigate and download PCAP files or PCAP header files of stored network data
- Create custom PCAP files selected by date-time or file size from the stored data
- Issue console commands to the appliance
- Add and manage users and user rights

Based on proprietary system software and the DS infinite storage file system, Solera Networks DS appliances achieve over 2X the sustainable capture and stream to disk rates of competitive products and can directly address disk storage in excess of 240 TB.

The DS series appliances capture LAN and WAN traffic of all types including T1, E1, digital, T3, DS3, E3, VoIP, HSSI, and all other packetized transport protocols. Up to 10 capture or regeneration ports can be configured on each device with 10/100, GigE, 10GbE, or Fiber Channel adapters.”