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It's actually quite big compared to a normal AP but looks like nothing more than an oversized smoke detector when setup.

The term wireless switch may be misleading, more than one laptop can connect to each IAP and the wireless link is still a shared medium.

Where this product differs is it's ability to use all of the unlicensed spectrum within a given area. This translates into 3 channels on 802.11b/g and 12 channels on 802.11a. The range for 802.11b/g was about average but for 802.11a it was great. This is because each IAP has it's own antenna pointing in a specific direction (70 degrees wide) which allows the signal to be amplified by 7dbi rather than the normal 2.2dbi for an omnidirectional. This translates in the transmitted power being roughly doubled.

Some people say they could "emulate" the devices result using a bunch of WRT54Gs but since those operate in 2.4GHz they would all overlap and cause massive interference problems. The only effective way to get massive amounts of wireless bandwidth within a given area is using 5GHz because there are more non-overlapping channels (12 vs 3).

Another cool feature with the product is the lights on the front of the array. There is one for each IAP and they light up when someone associates to that IAP.

With vulnerability scanning there are a few different aspects to consider. the most important feature of a scanner (aside from speed and accuracy) is the level of updates. An out of date scanner is only mildly better then no scanner at all. In this regard commercial software has some advantage for the consumers (IT organizations). It's not that they can blame anyone (as was mentioned in several posts) but there is someone to yell "hey! where the hell is my signature for Vuln XYZ?" With open source there isn't a guarentee that the signature will be made quickly enough. Even nessus (as I pointed out in another post here somewhere) has moved to a pay model for plugins because of the cost of keeping those signatures up to date.
Now one can also take the Open Source approach here and write their OWN signatures but many companies just don't have the staff for that type of thing. The vulnerabilty details are so sparse these days (not so open disclosure rules) that recreating the actual exploit never mind finding a way to detect it remotely is beyond the skill of most teams in the limited timeframe that it's of vital importance. A team will have around 24-48 hours after a patch is released until some evil doer[s] have reverse engineered the patch and created an exploit out of it, slipped in a pre packaged payload and owned 3 out of your 7 class B segments. Sometimes less. I think the ISS worm last year was the record, something like > 20 hours from patch to worm [witty worm i think].
Some intersting article on scanning here and here

Just one other side note about the articles, Foundstone was purchased by McAfee last year so disregard those.

The only question is, who is still using sendmail? Major distros have moved on to postfix and qmail is always an option.

Well, according to this January 2001 article by Moshe Bar, Sendmail handles around 76% of all Internet e-mail.

(Not all Internet MXes use Linux, fortunately ;-) - Mine runs Sendmail under FreeBSD...)

So Snyder takes a page from Network Computing's testing methodology almost verbatim and calls it the biggest, ugliest, and most comprehensive look at this market that's ever been done. Sheesh.

Why not combine both jobs? ;)

"For someone familiar with one, it would take at least 20 seconds to disable."

It takes as little as 4 seconds. http://www.nwc.com/1320/1320f45.htmlDunk test! Just plop the device in a 20oz paper cup full of liquid. You can't hear the alarm.

You can get an overview at networkcomputing.com or at the common citeria web site.

Urchin is fast and awesome.

But it doesn't have as much detail as other vendors like Webtrends. You can't really do campaign analysis.

Review of these two

You can read more about the security they implemented in Security Still Up in the Air.

They basically used iptables to allow the wireless MAC address onto the wired LAN after the client had been authenticated off a Kerbros server.

Art Wittmann of Network Computing had a similar epiphany back in September. In a nutshell, he speculates that sometime next year Novell will either be acquired by a heavyweight (IBM and Oracle are mentioned) or go under completely.

According to the article, Cat 6 is not even at the draft stage as a standard. Where do you think that puts Cat 7? Cat 6 is the last spec to use RJ-45 for cripes sake! Cat 5E was only ratified a few months ago. It's good enough to do Gigbit Ethernet as long as you follow the installation guidelines (it's more than just cable length). As for fibre to the desktop, I'd spend the money on conduit instead. It's unlikely that you'll have a use for fibre in the next 5 years for anything other than interconnecting network equipment. You're more likely to use Firewire first. Seriously.

• Easy to understand help on all the intrusions it detects. example1 example2
• Extremely high performance. The test here compares the "Sentry" version against other network-based IDSs. The "Defender" version is higher performance than other personal firewalls, but it does both IDS and firewalling.
• You can buy/download online and install it immediately without even having to reboot your machine.
• It does some simple scans against the intruders (DNS, NetBIOS) and sometimes finds out who they are.

The cool thing is that the only product that could do both (BlackICE Sentry) is also available as a $40 personal version (BlackICE Defender) that you can install on your own (Windoze) machine. It includes a personal firewall to boot and is really easy to use. It also has extensive anti-evasion technique to solve problem number 3 that you mention. Go to networkice.com and download a copy of it if you don't believe me.

In case you're wading through the wailing and moaning of the "I like a nice society, but I don't want to pay for it" crybabies, and you feel like a change of venue, you might want to check out this editorial in Network Computing. It's pretty reasonable. (Hence, it was not posted on slashdot when I submitted it.)

If your looking for the exact link its: http://www.nwc.com/1010/1010f144.html#5 .
Also, there is the video of the whole thing so you can see it announced. (thats the whole awards ceremony...)

If your looking for the exact link its: http://www.nwc.com/1010/1010f144.html#5 .
Also, there is the video of the whole thing so you can see it announced. (thats the whole awards ceremony...)

The VAXbar needs to get together with the VAXTap 2000 Pro. It would be the perfect companion!