Kevin Tolly

Recent studies show that when the weather gets stormy on the Internet - and packets get lost - the impact on ASP client performance can be significant.

Digital rights management is on peoples' minds these days.

Pick a market - LAN switches, VPN access servers, Web switches. As soon...

Ubiquitous Internet access has made "always-on" applications much more common. It's not just...

Back when I was in school, parents always were bemoaning the difficulties of the

LANs were supposed to be easy by now. The near-universal convergence on unshielded twisted-pair (UTP) wiring of Ethernet LANs, TCP/IP stacks and Web browsers was supposed to end the turf wars and headaches of dealing with networks of mixed cabling, mixed topologies and mixed protocols.

Not since the early 1980s when Novell Inc. began empowering PC users - and scaring SNA network managers - have we confronted such a fundamental change in corporate networks. The convergence of voice and data - finally a reality after several false starts - marks another critical turning point in the evolution of corporate IT. IP telephony is in your future. Deny that and you might not have a future.

The wags who said the impact of Year 2000 would not be felt until some time after Jan. 1, 2000 may have been right. For network managers, the most significant event of this year may be 2000-related after all. Plumbing the depths of Windows 2000, to be formally introduced next week, will likely keep net managers busy for most of the year.