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Wireless management and security vendor AirMagnet has unleashed the latest incarnation of their AirMagnet Enterprise product.  Along with software enhancements, the product line now features 802.11n hardware sensors to scan the airwaves for security, configuration and interference issues on enterprise WLAN deployments.The software upgrade is free for existing customers with support agreements. Upgrade pricing is available on the new hardware.
On the hardware front, AirMagnet offers two 802.11n wireless sensors, those with or without RF spectrum analyzers. Essentially a purpose-built access point, the sensors are designed to be deployed as an overlay to the WLAN, scanning for potential performance problems and security threats.  
Along with the new hardware, a significant number of enhancements have been rolled into the AirMagnet software. Along with forty new security and performance alarms, AirMagnet Enterprise now eases 802.11n deployments, with a slew of optimization and wireless visibility tools to ensure that actual network performance matches expectations. The latest version also features a policy sandbox. While building or updating the security policies, administrators can test and review the impact of these policies before applying them.  
AirMagnet, now under new parent Fluke Networks, remains one of the few third party WLAN security and performance solutions, but faces a WIPS market that has consolidated and is finding new attention from the WLAN infrastructure vendors themselves. AirDefense, for example, is now part of Motorola's enterprise WLAN solution. Cisco and Meru have joined the fray, with Cisco's Mobility Services Engine offering an advanced WIPS product, and Meru delivering a WLAN "neighborhood watch" through their Service Assurance Manager solution.

While none of these competitive offerings have the depth or track record of AirMagnet Enterprise, the first party solutions have the advantage of tighter integration with the WLAN itself. Enterprises seeking to push their wireless networks beyond convenient access and into mission critical components of their architecture will have to wade through the feature sets of their vendor and third party solutions to determine the best fit for their management and compliance needs.

Tilera on Monday introduced a series of general purpose processors ranging from 16 to 100 cores for use in servers. The processors would replace multiple processors and lower system costs. While it is too soon to tell whether Tilera's TILE-Gx family will one day challenge Xeon and Opteron server chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, respectively, the announcement points to the ongoing industry trend of adding cores to boost performance.

Tilera, however, has leapt ahead of the x86 architectures of the two larger companies. Intel plans to begin production of an eight-core Xeon chip, codenamed Nehalem-EX, by the end of the year, with systems using the technology expected early in 2010. AMD, which has a six-core processor, plans to release a 12-core chip in the first half of next year.

Intel and AMD's, x86 architecture, however, is the industry standard in commodity servers found in most data centers today. It is unlikely that enterprises would immediately find it worth the cost to port business applications to a new architecture. Tilera, however, is hoping to make inroads in data centers over time, targeting specific applications.

Tilera plans to release its 100-core processor, the TILE-Gx100, in the first half of 2011. The chip will be targeted at systems performing Internet-related functions, such as Web indexing and search. The TILE-Gx family will include 16-, 36- and 64-core processors. Samples of the TILE-Gx36 chip are expected to start shipping to system builders in the fourth quarter of 2010, rolling out the other processors in the same timeframe as the TILE-Gx100.

Tilera's new products are manufactured by TSMC using a 40-nanometer manufacturing process. The processors have a clock speed of up to 1.5 GHz and power consumption ranging from 10 to 55 watts, which is the maximum power use of the 100-core product.

Tilera has developed what it calls an iMesh architecture capable of scaling to hundreds of RISC-based cores on a single chip that includes integrated memory controllers and a rich set of I/O. The company offers a multicore development environment for programming in C/C++ for the 64-bit platform. How difficult it will be to port Windows and Linux, the two dominant server operating systems, and business applications to TILE-Gx chips remains to be seen.

Development tools are still evolving for building software that can take full advantage of the parallel processing power of multicore chips. While chip makers are moving quickly to best each other in the number of cores on a chip, software makers are behind in producing products that leverage the full performance capabilities of the processors.


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In a deal that underscores the shift toward cloud computing, Cisco on Tuesday said that it had reached an agreement to acquire ScanSafe, a privately-held provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) Web security for businesses. Cisco said the acquisition will cost $183 million in cash and retention-based incentives.

Tom Gillis, VP and general manager of Cisco's security technology business unit, who arrived at Cisco via its 2007 acquisition of IronPort, described the purchase as part of Cisco's effort "to build a borderless network security architecture that combines network and cloud-based services for advanced security enforcement."

The Web security market, which Cisco expects to grow to $2.3 billion by 2012, appears to be in the midst of consolidation. Earlier this month, Barracuda Networks, a maker of security hardware, acquired SaaS Web security provider Purewire for an undisclosed sum. In an e-mail, Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler, another SaaS Web security company, characterized the acquisition as validation of the SaaS model for Web security.

Cisco said it intends to combine its IronPort Web security appliance with ScanSafe's Web security service to offer on-premises, hosted, and hybrid-hosted Web security. The company also expects to integrate ScanSafe's service with Cisco's AnyConnect VPN Client to enhance security for mobile workers. The acquisition is Cisco's sixth this year and its first security-related purchase since 2007. That year, in addition to IronPort, Cisco purchased two other security-related companies: BroadWare Technologies and Securent. Cisco's last security buying binge occurred in 2004 and 2005, when it acquired seven security-related companies. Cisco said that it expects the deal to close in the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2010, which ends in January.

InformationWeek and Dr. Dobb's have published an in-depth report on how Web application development is moving to online platforms. Download the report here (registration required).

Intel's new quad-core i5 and i7 CPUs for LGA 1156 deliver plenty of performance and impressive efficiency. But how far can they be overclocked? We take the entry-level model Core i5-750 as far as it'll go with a modest air cooler and benchmark it.

When AMD launched its 785G chipset, we were impressed by the mainstream value enabled from such an affordable platform. In this roundup, we're covering seven different 785G-based board covering ATX, microATX, DDR2 memory, DDR3, and two different sockets.

The new firmware provides very impressive numbers and takes SSDs to a higher level of performance well beyond HDDs as system drives in desktop computers.

The Federal Communication Commission's five commissioners all agreed they favor an "open" Internet in supporting a net neutrality rule-making process Thursday, but hints emerged immediately that they will soon be agreeing to disagree on how and to what degree the Internet should be free and open or regulated.

While the five commissioners all voted in favor of the rule-making process with the three Democrats led by Chairman Julius Genachowski taking a more open approach to the Internet, the two Republican commissioners also supported the rule process, but questioned some "facts". The rule-making process opens up a vehicle for comments on net neutrality that will close on January 14. Reply comments will be accepted until March 14.

"The Internet is and has been an open platform and it is that openness -- and the extraordinary benefits it has brought for our country -- that we seek to preserve through the proceeding we launch today," said Genachowski. In a sign that the next stage of the net neutrality saga is likely to be a complex and lengthy affair, he noted that the FCC in 10 different proceedings on safeguarding the Internet has accumulated 100,000 pages of comments.

While all sides in the issue have issued statements supporting the future of the Internet that seem to equate their claims with declarations of support for Motherhood and apple pie, the reality is that there is a great deal of polarization already underway between some companies including carriers and ISPs on one side, and public interest groups and some companies such as Facebook andGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG) on the other side. Google and Verizon (NYSE: VZ), however, happened to find some rare common ground on a few core net neutrality principles Thursday.

"Today we do disagree on substance," said commissioner Robert McDowell, the ranking Republican on the commission. "I do not share the majority's view that the Internet is showing breaks and cracks, nor do I believe that the government is the best tool to fix it. I also disagree with the premise that the Commission has the legal authority to regulate Internet network management as proposed." McDowell said the Internet may be the "greatest deregulatory success story of all time."

Flash back to 2004, when we warned you that PDA and PIM functions crammed into phone form would make your corporate policy banning unsanctioned mobile devices not worth the paper it was written on.

We have a bit of history repeating now as employees pick up sub-$400 netbooks. According to the latest statistics from DisplaySearch, netbook shipments surged to $3 billion in the second quarter from $845 million in Q2 2008. In no way is 264% year-over-year growth a fluke. Research firm VDC predicts that 2010 sales will surpass $33 billion.

If we've learned anything from the rise of smartphones, it's that resistance to popular new end user devices is futile. In our latest InformationWeek Analytics report, at netbooks.informationweek.com (registration required), we lay out a plan for smoothly bringing netbooks into the fold, but here are five good reasons you should develop a policy now:

1. Netbooks can fly under the CFO's radar. Your capital budget for new PCs, and maybe even smartphones with data plans, is probably frozen. But the low price of netbooks means you can equip users who have minimal needs for processing power and not worry about depreciation.
2. Netbooks lack multimedia capabilities. No DVD players, for instance, and Intel reports that a netbook encodes iTunes six times slower than a laptop. As if that were a bad thing.
3. Netbooks can be managed just like laptops. Netbooks running Windows can be managed with the standard tools from Altiris, Microsoft and others. They support most encryption software and can be joined to Active Directory.
4. Netbooks sip power. Sleeker CPU design and smaller overall footprint ensure you'll get 10% to 15% less power consumption from a netbook vs. a laptop.
5. Netbooks can help get desktop Linux in the door. Some come with preloads of Novell SUSE or Ubuntu Remix. Intel has released its own Moblin (Mobile Linux) for the netbook, and the ever-hyped, if rarely seen, Google Chrome OS reportedly has a netbook focus.

Often hailed as the solution to Windows Vista performance problems, we wanted to know just how much better Windows 7 really is. We put one of our most recent test platforms through its paces to find out, benchmarking raw performance and responsiveness.

Intel’s LGA 1156 processors serve up terrific new levels of performance to the mainstream. Now it’s time to look at how efficiency changed from Core 2 Quad to Core i5/i7. We found Turbo Boost technology to be a potential issue, despite its clear value.

As I run out the door for Europe, a couple of interesting products appeared at the same time from different sources. We have a first look at Seagate's 6 Gb/s SATA hard drive and Marvell's 6 Gb/s SATA SSD controller on Asus' P7P55D Premium motherboard.

After recently running out of room on my Thecus N5200, I again turned to the company for something larger. What I found won't work for most folks (unless you have a rack in your garage, that is). But it's reasonably-priced and plenty fast for most SMBs.

Although DirectX 11 will be released with Windows 7, Microsoft wants to delay deployment for Vista until Service Pack 3 and is artificially preventing the installation. Tom’s Hardware shows you how to upgrade to DirectX 11 today using a simple workaround.

A little while back, we discussed some of the benefits and disadvantages of ray tracing. Today, we're going to be talking about another potential successor to triangle rasterization: voxel ray casting, the subject of much research by id's John Carmack.

Today AMD introduces what might turn out to be the ideal budget CPU, with three cores for multi-threading, a relatively high 2.9 GHz clock speed, and an impressive sub-$90 price tag. How does it stand up to the rest of the company's Athlon and Phenom IIs?

This is the second part of our Linux Software Roundup. Part one covered Internet Apps. Today we'll be looking at Communications Apps. This includes personal information managers, email clients, instant messengers, VoIP software, and IRC clients.