April 07, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Test Center Tracker: Packeteer sizzles at CIFS; RIA development heats up
WAN speed record: For several years running, our testing of WAN acceleration appliances has served mainly to chronicle the superiority of the Riverbed Steelhead, whose approach to byte- or segment-level caching and CIFS optimization has made it the perennial performance leader and our annual Technology of the Year Award winner. Only Silver Peak Systems, which inched closer year by year, could give Riverbed a run for its money. Last week we discovered that speedy wide area networking, or at least the branch of WAN acceleration concerned with file transfers, is a three horse race. Packeteer's iShaper may not be a better overall solution than Riverbed just yet, but it registered the best CIFS performance in our testing to date. See Keith Schultz's review.
Adobe AIR is the answer? Adobe AIR is not yet widely known or implemented, but it solves all of the major issues keeping the browser from being a common front end for applications, says Tom Yager. Read AIR's praises in Tom's "Ahead of the Curve," then weigh Martin Heller's counterpoint in "Strategic Developer."
RIA for the enterprise: Curl's longtime focus on creating rich, Web-based business applications has paid such dividends as excellent performance, smooth handling of intermittent connections, and support for large data sets. Version 6.0 of the InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award winner advances with skinnable controls, more sophisticated graphics rendering, a Macintosh runtime, and the ability to add a Curl applet to an AJAX page, and vice versa. See Martin Heller's review.
Beat the heat: "In many cases, a datacenter can generate enough heat to heat a building 10 to 30 times its size," says says Steve Sams, vice president of IBM Global Site and Facilities Services. Instead of casting that heat to the winds, some companies are using it to keep other buildings warm, and even to generate electrical power. See Ted Samson's "Sustainable IT."
It's the applications, stupid: Thanks to today's more secure operating systems, remote attacks, where the end-user is not involved at all, are becoming almost a rarity. That means educating end users is the key to client security. See Roger Grimes's "Security Advisor."
Smaller disks, lower power: Mario Apicella tackles a new twist on the old speed versus capacity question: the advantages of arrays built around larger capacity 3.5-inch drives versus those that leverage newfangled, lower-power 2.5-inch disks. See "Storage Advisor."
Posted by Doug Dineley on April 7, 2008 09:14 AM
October 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Review: Yoggie Pico Pro brings server-room protection to laptops in the field
Corporate firewalls shelter laptops connected to your network from outside access, while virus and spam security is often provided by yet more data center systems, such as your mail server. But employees working remotely must rely on less sophisticated anti-virus and firewall clients –- which also drain CPU cycles and memory. To get around these issues, what if you could pack a dedicated security appliance into a USB key form factor? It’s a fascinating concept that Yoggie Pico Pro makes a reality.
Inside the 0.6-ounce device you’ll find Linux 2.6 running on a 520MHz Intel XScale PXA270 CPU and 128MB RAM (plus 128MB of flash memory that holds a clean copy of Linux). Resident software is top-grade, including Kaspersky Lab’s anti-spyware and anti-virus scanner, secure VPN client, Mailshell anti-spam and anti-phishing, SurfControl Web filtering, plus a firewall along with HTTP, FTP, POP3, and SMTP proxies.
Before using Yoggie Pico Pro, you install a low-level driver and a management console on your laptop. You then set a few simple options, with the whole process taking just a few minutes.
The first improvement I noted on my Dell Latitude D610 was faster performance, because I was able to turn off Symantec AntiVirus and Firewall. The only time I noted some brief security-related activity was when Yoggie automatically checked for updates (which can be from your enterprise server or Yoggie’s servers).
During tests I felt well protected against threats. While visiting a vendor and using their wireless network, all Internet traffic was first filtered through the Yoggie Pico –- progressively going through firewall, intrusion protection, proxies, and finally anti-spyware and related layers. You can also block URLs based on content.
You won’t see any annoying pop-ups when Yoggie blocks a problem –- just some quick blinks of the device’s LEDs. Still, when I scanned security logs through the management interface, Yoggie did appear to catch all of the infected test files I tossed in its path. However, one improvement I’d like is more advanced settings, perhaps a way to visit a Web site that Yoggie deems problematic; right now there’s no override.
On top of creating a physical barrier to incoming threats, Yoggie Pico masks your system’s IP address (which can be hijacked), eliminating yet another possibly vulnerability. This is an especially important feature for anyone using a laptop at a public hotspot.
I didn’t have any trouble using Yoggie with the most recent firmware (1.3.0) and management console (5.1.5), but there’s always a possibility of some future attack affecting the device. Still, because the system maintains a copy of the OS and files for scanning temporarily in its RAM, infections won’t get to your laptop. A Yoggie reboot should clear up any issue.
The Yoggie Pico Pro’s impressive engineering should benefit organizations in many areas. It offers laptop users stronger protection when they’re off your network, as well as better system performance. Moreover, up to 500 Picos can be controlled from the separate Yoggie Management Server; this lets IT staff send policy updates and signatures while retrieving logs for security audits. Although cost is a factor, I think Yoggie provides very good value considering all that it provides.
Yoggie Pico Pro Personal Security Appliance
Pricing: $199; yearly subscription for security updates costs $40
Verdict: Yoggie Pico Pro puts corporate-level security on a Linux-powered, USB appliance that contains 13 top-quality applications. This approach reduces CPU load and memory use while helping ensure that employees’ laptops are strongly protected from threats when not connected to enterprise networks.
Posted by Mike Heck on October 30, 2007 04:37 PM