Y IS FOR YAHOO!

Gartner's Johnson said Yahoo! was another player to watch alongside Google and Microsoft. The consumer communications platform it develops is expected to powerfully affect what happens in business networking in future. "Meanwhile, carriers are just sitting there with their big, fat, dumb pipes; their revenues are going to decline. The emerging communications providers are Google and Yahoo! And how they parlay that emergence is how things will be driven," Johnson said. "Transport localisation will become cheap and cheerful - although it's not fast enough in Australia. But we'll see what will happen."

Z IS FOR ZOMBIE

Botnets were bigger and scarier this year and it's unlikely the threat will go away any time soon. While network security is still critical, the channel will have to find new ways to deal with security attacks as perimeter protection gets less relevant. As 3Com's Tezel pointed out, endpoint security is the game to play in an arena of increasing regulatory restrictions, privacy concerns and growing cybercrime sophistication.

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10 tips for feature-rich networking

Nextgen Networks switched data products manager, James Kershaw, explains how to maximise customer investment in a world of advanced, feature-rich networking 1 Features come from applications Networks are enablers of applications, which is where the valuable features and benefits are provided. Video conferencing, VoIP, Instant Messaging (IM), shared knowledge bases, collaborative working and Web research are all network applications where service providers can add value. It pays to select a network that can meet current and future application requirements. 2 Choose higher performance As applications demand more from the network, the latter's fundamental role is to support performance. Video conferencing is a classic example of a modern application that demands more performance in terms of bandwidth, latency and jitter. Quality networks provide latency fi gures. 3 Who owns the core? Bandwidth, latency and jitter are controlled by the bandwidth dimensioning within the network core. As the - often expensive - core bandwidth is squeezed, traffi c queues, latency and jitter get worse. To avoid this negatively affecting network performance, choose the offering with the least congested core. 4 Opt for WAN feature bundles Gone are the days when enabling quality-of-service (QOS), adding a virtual LAN or increasing interstate bandwidth meant adding a line item and extra cost to an invoice. Networks are available where QoS, transparent VLANs and abundant inter-capital city bandwidth are included in the basic price. 5 Control routing Only users know which traffic is important and where it needs to go. Don't let a carrier determine these using arbitrary rules designed for the typical customer. 6 Hold onto QoS QoS is great at keeping latency down for some traffic when the network gets congested. Keep your customers' QoS profile end-to-end and tag packets. 7 Enable advanced applications and services National, fully transparent VLANs can enhance WAN security, isolate individual users and enable advanced applications. 8 Choose diverse access options Achieving the best value-for-money, last-mile access and performance requires the use of many different access technologies and suppliers. Networks should integrate the widest possible range of access options such as point-to-point microwave, direct fi bre and SHDSL. 9 Select a connection-oriented foundation Connection-oriented underlay networks may provide enhanced traffic engineering and rapid routing around failure. These translate into better performing networks with greater availability which introduces a range of obvious bottom line benefits such as higher availability, operational efficiency and rapid connection. 10 Opt for the right network type Multipoint networks such as VPLS reduce peer-to-peer latency and provide convenience and built-in disaster recovery options. Zero jitter networks require circuit-switched, point-to-point networks like the emerging Ethernet over SDH standard.

Nextgen Networks, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leighton Holdings, owns and operates Australia's third largest fibre optic network and first nationalVPLS network.

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Seven trends in network security

With the popularity of Web 2.0 and the advent of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, network security has become a prominent consideration.

Fortinet chief marketing offi cer, Richard Stiennon, has outlined his top seven trends in network security, topped by increasing the speed and capacity of computers.

"That translates into the network side, where the equipment is going to being able to handle throughput," he said. "Within three years, 10G Ethernet switching will be the standard that everyone is moving to, but one disturbing thing at the moment is the lack of security devices that can handle 10G."

Application evolution is another trend factored into the networking security fray. It won't be too long before users unknowingly download an application from a networking site such as MySpace, Salesforce.com or Facebook that has a virus attached to it, Stiennon claimed.

"We are starting to do real computing with our technology but we are repeating history because we are launching all of these great applications on the Internet, without making it secure beforehand," he said. "The way that happens is understandable in retrospect, because if you're developing a social networking site like Facebook, people are using it and it's almost too late to go back and revamp and change how it works."

For Stiennon, a third networking trend is around automated management. He said users will be able to plug in a device and it will detect the IP address, where it is and what it is supposed to be doing. It will also initiate its software license, so that maintenance and support agreements are automatic.

Security research to defeat the evolving threat was another aspect to be considered. "We are going to transition to a world where we are going to treat data like money and we're going to have to protect our data in the same way we protect cash. We're also going to monitor people's access to it," Stiennon said.

Modularity and hardware standardisation will also contribute to network security.

"Just as the PC took off and IBM created a standard for hardware components to be put together, we believe the network will have similar standards that will be developed. In fact, Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture - supported by vendors like Intel and Fortinet - is one of them," he said. "It means a carrier can have interchangeable modules that hold multiple cards from different vendors."

Stiennon said hardware acceleration was another focus. He named virtualisation seventh among his list of trends the channel should watch out for.

"The real advantage comes from traditional security segmentation: the more you can segment the more secure you are going to be," he said. "Virtualisation gives large enterprises the ability to segment their network into business units, verticals or departments. They have separate policies for each one and control and manage those separately.

"That will be one of the biggest developments in networking security in the next couple of years."

The top seven 1. Increasing speed and capacity 2. Application evolution 3. Automated management 4. Security research to defeat evolving threats 5. Modularity and standards 6. Hardware acceleration 7. Virtualisation