Networking: Reviews

ARN had the opportunity for a hands-on experience with the new E1500 wireless-N router with SpeedBoost.

Revolutionary. Cutting edge. State of the art. These are words and phrases that are bandied around so very many products in the IT field that they become useless, bland, expected. The truth is that truly revolutionary products are few and far between. That said, Cisco's Unified Computing System fits the bill.

Cisco WebEx Connect

3Com Wireless LAN MAP 3950

With the economy slowing down and IT budgets getting tighter, trying to sell your boss on some new network equipment might defy conventional wisdom. But if the equipment helps reduce time wasted when working over a WAN, or better yet, improves overall WAN usage and user productivity, it might not be as difficult a sale as you thought.

There has been a dearth of conveniently packaged servers for the midsize market. HP decided to try to change that with the introduction of the HP BladeSystem c3000. I recently tested a well-equipped unit, and overall, my impressions are positive.

Building a big data center and looking for a switch to match? How do 256 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and nearly 1.7 terabits of capacity sound?

I've had a Comcast cable Internet connection for years. Last year I got a shiny new fiber connection from Mstar. But rather than uninstall the cable connection, I asked FatPipe Networks if they'd be willing to let me perform an extended test of the company's flagship route clustering product, WARP.

Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 4548GT-PWR

For the most part, this all-in-one router is great. It has a built-in ADSL2+ modem and an 802.11 draft-n wireless access point, it's easy to set up and use, and it also looks good. But its wireless performance was a little underwhelming in our tests, as the router delivered slightly slower results than we were expecting from its 802.11n mode.

Cisco take note: Juniper's new EX 4200 switch not only fills a hole in a leading competitor's product line, but also represents a credible alternative for enterprise access switching.

If you don't need a fast, draft-n wireless network, the Linksys WRT54G2 is one of the best options on the market. This is mainly because it's so easy to set up, is a reliable performer, and comes with the convenient LELA configuration and monitoring utility. Plus, it looks good: it's black, sleek, and doesn't have any protruding antennas.

The airy box that surrounds the inner workings of Netgear's WNR854T wireless router certainly isn't the smallest we've seen. Its large size serves a purpose: it allows the unit's three antennas to hide inside. The WNR854T is an 802.11 draft-n router with a four-port Gigabit Ethernet switch, so it should provide plenty of bandwidth for users after quick wireless and wired speeds -- when the router works.

Juniper UAC IC4000

Small businesses have, for some time, been able to easily deploy a wide-open access point or two, or put together a couple of access points with a basic level of security. The thing that hasn't been easily available is a small, secure, managed wireless network that's easy to deploy and administer, and priced for the needs of a smaller business. Now there is such a thing, and its existence does a good job of highlighting what we've been missing. The solution is the Ruckus Wireless ZoneFlex Smart WLAN System, and it is a very good thing, indeed, for the SMB wireless market.

This wireless networking kit enables high-performance network gaming and simultaneous streaming of multiple high-definition videos and will connect to any existing router or gateway.

Network admins have spent many a late night trying to figure out how to improve application response or file replication across the WAN. Faster performance is all about bigger pipes, right?

Reflex Technologies' Command Center is itself a virtual machine that sits on VMware's ESX server and acts as an intrusion-prevention system, watching connectivity activity between other VMs and the virtual network interface provided by VMware.

PowerRecon is a planning and monitoring application for organizations with a high number of servers and virtual host targets. On the surface, PowerRecon looks similar to traditional network monitoring/management applications that track application inventory, connectivity and network usage.

The latest products for the week commencing May 2, 2007.