LANTimes summary report on Interop. [ASND as "WAN war horse"]
wcmh.com./lantimes/98/98may/interop.html
NetWorld+Interop sets
stage for VPNs, gigabit
Ethernet, and more
By Stephen Lawton, Brett Mendel, Monica Snell, Polly Sprenger and
Susan L. Thomas
thick-jowled, old-time trade show
regular sat on the plane coming
back from NetWorld+Interop,
reminiscing about the good old days.
Rooms in Vegas were 12 dollars, buffets went for a
buck-fifty. Lavish parties awaited throngs of people who
were amazed that a particular show had over 10,000
attendees. And technology? Long ago, IBM mainframe sales
were based on whether the clunkers would fit into the
elevator, he boasted in an ever-lingering New York accent.
So much for the old days.
This spring's show, some attendees complained, lacked the
intangible excitement of years past. But vendors gave it the
old college try. A few directory-related announcements and
products touting LDAP3 (Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol3) compliance appear to be showing an increasing
role for directories in the enterprise. Netscape
Communications Corp., saying it has no intentions of
competing with NDS (Novell Directory Service) and
Microsoft's upcoming Active Directory, touted more free
source code for customers who want to build applications
that can access the Netscape Directory Server. Cisco
Systems Inc. said it's coming out with its own directory
services. Novell continued to pursue its directory strategy by
announcing directory-enabled IP management in
NetWare5.0 NDS later this year.
Management mania
Network managers, however, didn't have to stay on their
feet to get management information. Several sessions were
devoted to explaining issues such as application
troubleshooting, the new SNMP v3, and bandwidth
management. In addition, managers had a chance to sit in on
a thin client face-off to find out if non-PCs would really save
them management troubles and cost. Maybe that's why the
lines were so short at the snack bar.
Those who did make it to the show floor would have found
a huge number of vendors hoping to sell their service-level
management offerings. However, (potential) buyer beware.
It seems that in many products the term printed on the box
was only the service-level management one would get out of
the app. Trotting out other buzzwords, Java and Web-based
management still held their own as hot topics among the
attendees. And even the lowly UPS can now be monitored
through the Web. Best Power, a unit of General Signal
Corp., announced its SNMP/Web LinkUPS. It's a
hardware adapter that will let managers control and
configure the UPS through a browser. Its price is expected
to be under $300.
And although it may have meant more coming from
Microsoft, Newbridge was giving away a Volkswagen Bug.
Attendees visiting the booth could try their hand at hitting a
hole in one to win the new VW. Names and numbers of
those who made the shot were taken and placed in the car.
From this elite group, a drawing will be held to choose a
winner.
VPNs now...or later
Just as Internet, Web, and search engine have become the
buzzwords du jour for techno-marketers spinning their
stories to Wall Street, so too, it seems, has any networking
flak worth his or her PowerPoint presentation latched on to
the term VPN. Skeptics would have been proven wrong
after roaming the show floor this week at N+I. The aisles
were rife with vendors--from WAN war horses such as Ascend Communications Inc. beefing up established
products to a growing crop of VPN-specific
startups--touting their new or soon-to-be wares for
accessing the corporate LAN over the Internet. The only presence more overwhelming was the ubiquitous
headset-clad booth presenters leading conventioneers
through carefully scripted product demos.
Virtual Private Networks certainly have the attention of
network managers. One vendor gushed that the seminar
series on that topic is routinely overbooked. But one gets the
feeling that most managers are merely at the curiosity stage,
much as they have been with clustering over the last year or
two. The benefits of VPNs are obvious: low-cost, easily
administered remote access. But for whatever reason--fear
of sending critical data over the public network, preserving
current remote-access investments, market immaturity--little
of the rubbernecking seems to have led to actual sales. At
the price of a booth in Vegas, some vendors may be forced
to dial in to next year's show remotely--over the Internet, of
course.
Make way for gigabit
On the LAN hardware front, gigabit Ethernet and Layer 3
switches at the show were as commonplace as modems at
the show, a far cry from just a year ago. Among the more
unusual products on the LAN hardware front was XLNT
Corp.'s 24-port FDDI blade for its Mellenium chassis
routing switch. The blade, due to ship during the summer,
uses newly developed connectors that allow for far greater
FDDI densities, the company said.
Many of the LAN switch vendors were touting policy-based
networking, including CLASS Data Systems Inc. of
Cupertino, which demonstrated its latest version of
CLASSifier, a policy-based network-management offering.
At Cabletron Systems Inc., product marketing vice
president Michael Skubisz said creating a "smart
network"--a policy-based network that automatically repairs
itself if problems occur and scales to meet user demands --
is "not a hardware issue. "Rather, he said, "network
management will make this happen." Cabletron unveiled its
SmartSwitch 9000, a routing switch designed for the
network core that was based on technology it acquired from
Yago Systems Inc.
Microsoft's Unix play
Even in the midst of a hardware show as big as N+I,
Microsoft was making waves with a software
announcement. Much to the dismay of PC to UNIX
connectivity vendors such as NetManage and Softway
Systems, Microsoft announced it would bundle a Unix
add-on package providing the same functionality that these
vendors have built their business around. The Windows NT
Services for Unix Add-On Pack will include resource
sharing, remote administration, password synchronization,
and common scripting across platforms. A beta version of
the pack is due out this summer.
Although some of the PC-to-Unix connectivity vendors are
trying to put on a happy face about the announcement,
there's considerable concern about whether this will cremate
yet another happily productive little software industry.
Sun's JavaSoft reps at N+I were also looking a little down
at the mouth. Their massive booth was only sprinkled with a
few stragglers. Attendees at N+I were more likely to go
ga-ga over storage area networks and fibre channel
connectivity, forcing Java for the first time in a while to fall
short in show-floor hype.
But fibre was the buzzword of choice at the storage booths.
All major storage vendors were discussing their investment
in Fibre Channel networks and connections, but few
customers were ready to think the technology practical. The
next Vegas N+I will likely be a different story, as new fibre
products start to roll out in the coming quarters.
--Compiled from LAN Times staff reports. |
