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Letters to the editor
Network World, 04/15/02 Product pros and cons Regarding your Buyer's Guide to network management software suites: We just finished an extensive trial of Entuity's Eye of the Storm (EOTS). The best feature of this product is how it helps manage Layer 2 - it ain't just another router tool. EOTS is one of the best switch management products around. Also, you say that users can create their own custom reports, but the reports in EOTS are pretty much canned. But having said that, it's got one of the best graphing interfaces I've seen, bar none.
Finally, it seems your reviewers are reluctant to say anything negative about these products. I've been an administrator of Aprisma Management Technologies' Spectrum for about three years. Why don't you point out the "hood welded shut" nature of Spectrum? For example, an administrator can't close alarms in the spectrum console - the only way they get closed is if the underlying problem is resolved. John Chapin Thank you for providing a midtier network management product review ("Tightly focused network management suites"). It's common to see the "big guys" written up - if only everyone could afford them and the staff to go with them! Also, your choice of scoring categories are right on target. Becky Bouwman Experience wanted I am truly delighted by your article on IT internships. I am a newly qualified Cisco Certified Network Associate and am studying to become a Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional. I am hungry for experience and struggling to find a place to gain it - offering in return to give away my energy and skills for free, if need be. You have provided soothing balm to the aching IT conundrum of the newly skilled - no job, no experience; no experience, no job. Apart from a few laudable initiatives, the concept of internship is unheard of in South Africa, and it appears we are not entirely unique in this. Thanks for promoting this idea to management in such a creative and proactive way. Vaughan Beckerling Gender shouldn't matter In the News Bits section of your March 25 issue, you announce that the Internet Engineering Task Force selected a woman as chair of the Architecture Board. You gave this action a "halo," supposedly because appointing a woman was somehow good. Why this action is good simply because a woman was chosen escapes me. I hope she was selected for some level of her personal merit, but your note only pointed out that she was a woman and omitted any reference to qualifications or accomplishments. I hope that the IT industry will not follow the error of other groups by politicizing opportunities to suit a misconceived social engineering agenda. J. Tyler Balance Editor's note: While the briefs section only allowed for us to give a short take on Daigle's appointment, a more complete review of her accomplishments is available here. Old news "Revisiting Jumbo Frames" is an excellent article. This is old news. Making the argument that legacy equipment cannot support it as the reason not to adopt it seems strange. How many standards can be implemented without an equipment change? TCP Header overhead is a serious issue, especially at speeds in the Gigabit range. Jumbo Frames are inevitable because who can process all of those headers? This was a lesson learned when Windows 2000 first came out. One wonders if Intel's new onboard chip for Gigabit Ethernet can offload this processing demand. No one is going to work on the issue until it's a standard. Jeff Morgan Domino theory Regarding "Users irked by Domino moves": This has been the intention of the IBM database people ever since IBM bought Lotus, and was the one thing that kept many large corporations true to Lotus. The fundamental flaw with Notes Storage Facility structure is its performance and lack of scalability, and also originally the inability to transaction events. Domino needs a different database technology underpinning it. Howard Almond Hold them accountable Regarding "Accounting inquisition takes center stage in IT": To get to the bottom the accounting/financial slight-of-hand tricks that are going on, you need to look at the personal philosophies of the company leadership. I've been to several corporate seminars in the past several years where the concept of "greed is not bad" has been preached with evangelical fervor. But greed is always bad. It is self-centered. It abhors rules and regulations. It believes winning at any cost is the only thing that matters. It kills any sense of moral right and wrong and totally obliterates any sense of business or personal ethics. It leads to corporate executives selling stock to make millions, even when they know doing so will destroy the economic future of their employees. Herein lies the real problem in corporate boardrooms all over the country. Corporate leadership that believes that its first priority is to take care of itself will always be doomed to ultimate disaster. Steve Coller Apply for your free subscription to Network World. Click here. Send this article to a colleague
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