'Green infrastructure' solution for SMEs

2008-11-19 | Category: Networking hardware
A new service for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may allow firms to save money while helping the environment.ThinkGrid, an IT company, is to provide thin client devices to replace businesses' PCs, which will provide basic functionality like internet access.The IT infrastructure will then be held at a remote data centre, which has been designed with energy efficiency in mind.According to co-founder Rob Lovell, the service will allow SMEs the opportunity to reap benefits which larger organisations have had available for some time, reports BusinessGreen.com."Smaller companies operating between five to 100 PCs have a lot of IT headaches, but they often don't have an IT department and simply don't relate to terminology such as 'virtualisation' and 'thin clients'," he said."As thin clients have no moving parts, using them to replace PCs allows you to move from using up to 300W per machine to using 10W to 30W per machine."The SMEs will also require less air conditioning in their offices due to the lack of heat given off by PCs, allowing further energy bill savings, he added.

Companies 'improve' in-flight broadband

2008-11-19 | Category: Broadband
Passengers using Aircell's in-flight mobilebroadband offering, Gogo, will now have an improved service, it has been announced.ZTE USA and Qualcomm collaborated with Aircell to improve Gogo, which was first used on a number of American Airlines flights in August.The system now uses ZTE's base stations and Qualcomm's aeroplane-mounted modems and is now better able to take the high speeds and altitudes of aircraft into account, resulting in a faster, cheaper and less complex service, the companies claimed.Passengers using Gogo now have their Wi-Fi traffic sent via Qualcomm's aeroplane-mounted modems to ZTE's base stations dotted across the USA."By working closely with Aircell and Qualcomm, we were able to tap into the brightest [research and development] minds available to create the most cutting-edge and flexible networking platform," said Dr George Sun, ZTE USA chief executive."We look forward to working with Aircell and Qualcomm to scale the platform to support increasing demand and future expansion of the service."Earlier this year, Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, hinted in an interview with Engadget that broadband and VoIP phones might appear on Virgin flights in the future.

Analyser tool adapted for VoIP phones

2008-11-19 | Category: General VoIP
Users of the MetroScope Ethernet analyser will now be able to use the tool for testing VoIP phones, its developer has announced.Fluke Networks claimed that Ethernet network managers will be able to perform real-time analysis of their VoIP phones, which allows problems to be identified more quickly and efficiently.Testers can use the software's internal VoIP phone to make calls over the network to test factors like quality, with "quantifiable diagnostics" instantly provided.Fluke's carrier Ethernet marketing manager, Mark Mullins, said that VoIP is becoming an "integral part" of the business world.He continued: "We understand how critical a crisp and clear call is to users."We have designed the new VoIP functionality of the MetroScope analyser to provide faster, more accurate testing and easier to understand results of those VoIP calls."Testing of a VoIP solution should be carried out before going live, Robert Merrill, a creative writer for Telchemy, revealed on TMCnet.com last month.This should be done over a "sufficient period of time" to assess the readiness of the network over a variety of conditions.

Security tool for VoIP solutions released

2008-11-18 | Category: General VoIP
A new tool which allows administrators to assess if their VoIP solutions are vulnerable has been released.UCSniff, from Sipera Systems' VIPER Lab, is a free application which is designed to allow network managers find out whether their VoIP solutions can be eavesdropped on.It allows them to find out how easy it is to imitate an enterprise VoIP phone, download a directory and then listen in on confidential calls."UCSniff is an assessment tool that helps demonstrate vulnerabilities in VoIP design and implementation," said VIPER Lab director Jason Ostrom."It was born from the concept of combining targeted attacks against VoIP users along with the corporate directory, intelligent VLAN support, and man-in-the-middle features."The results of a survey released last month revealed that security was one of the top-five concerns for respondents when investing in VoIP solutions.Performance, hardware reliability, cost and technical support completed the top five in the fifth annual Enterprise VoIP Survey, by IDC and InfoWorld magazine.