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Cisco to Acquire Perfigo

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the buy-this dept.

MisterFuRR writes "Looks like Cisco is going to acquire Perfigo. Perfigo is a developer of packaged network access control solutions that provide endpoint policy analysis, compliance, and access enforcement capabilities. I can just see it now: Linksys routers with stickers that say 'Perfigo Ready.'"

6 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More monopolization by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are. The Sherman Antitrust Act, for one. The problem is enforcement.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  2. Re:More monopolization by CestusGW · · Score: 3, Informative

    The situation you're thinking of is the one where competition produces overlap, redundancies and inefficiencies. In Canada, for example, Rogers has a monopoly on the installation, maintenance and management of cable TV lines. They can also sell cable access over these lines, but so can everyone else. Bell has a similar monopoly over telephone infrastructure, but other companies can sell services over this infrastructure. This is because having two companies put down phone lines down the same street is inefficient - you only need one phone line, not two. Having only one phone line benefits the consumer. Having only one company sell services over the phone line does NOT benefit the consumer.

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    Too much repetition my too much repetition!
  3. Re:Well... by _Hellfire_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah absolutely!

    Cisco hasn't really done anything for networking in their entire history. Oh except for Standby Router Protocol, and IGRP (Interior Gateway Routing Protocol). They also innovated on their own design with EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) Oh they also did Spanning Tree Protocol, VLAN Trunking Protocol, Skinny (a VoIP standard) and Hot Standby Routing Protocol.

    Not to mention Multiple Spanning Tree (MST), a new IEEE standard that grew from Cisco's proprietary
    Multiple Instances Spanning Tree Protocol (MISTP) implementation.

    They also invented NetFlow and WCCP (Web Cache Control Protocol).

    So yeah! No innovation at all from this company that has become the baseline in security and reliability for networking.

    Show some respect, because that Internet connection you're on at the moment is probably brought to you courtesy of Cisco innovation.

    --
    "And then I visited Wikipedia ...and the next 8 hours are a blur..."
  4. Re:Well... by pyite · · Score: 2, Informative

    You seem to have left out a couple. Let me enlighten you!

    SRP (Spatial Reuse Protocol)
    DPT (Dynamic Packet Transport)

    which of course have gone on to inspire the IEEE 802.17 standard RPR (Resilient Packet Ring).

    --

    "Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman

  5. Re: I see... by ShinmaWa · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am not familiar with Perfigo, but it seems as though they make equipment which will not allow a device to obtain non-trivial network access unless/until it has been shown to be up to snuff according to various configurable criteria

    Got it in one! Right on.

    That's exactly what Perfigo does. Its becoming rather popular on college campuses to protect their networks from morons coming back from summer vacation with their laptops and desktops loaded with worms, virii, trojans, major security holes, etc.

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    The /. Effect: Thousands of users simultaneously accessing a site to not read its content.
  6. Perfigo SmartEnforcer by ComputerSherpa · · Score: 2, Informative
    Yep, my university now uses Perfigo. Last year we had a flood of worms, viruses etc. that nearly shut down our network. This year we implemented Perfigo SmartEnforcer on all student computers to keep that from happening again. SmartEnforcer basically scans the computer it's on and determines whether Windows Update and Norton Antivirus are up-to-date; only if they are will it allow network access. Only problem is that most of our student's aren't up-to-date, and can't follow our simple directions for updating their machines. Result: Lots of time spent in front of student computers watching progress bars, clicking "Next" a half dozen times, and trying to fix the scuzzy thing when it inevitably breaks.

    I haven't decided which is worse: the problem or the solution.

    --
    Information wants to be anthropomorphized!