Archive for September, 2007

ANN: OWL fibre cable testers now available


September 12th, 2007

We are pleased to announce the availability of the OWL single mode fibre optic cable testers. The shop now has a dedicated Fibre cable testers section.
The OWL products provide great features for an unbeatable price, starting at just £230. Features include:

Germanium photodetector
2.5mm Universal Adaptor Port
Multimode and Singlemode ready
NIST Traceable at all wavelengths
Separate zero reference for [...]

Popularity: 25% [?]

Work to the beat of WorkRave


September 11th, 2007

I doubt there are too many IT pros who haven’t had Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) at some point. My outbreak was induced by a long death march on a piece of network management software combined with bad posture and no breaks whatsoever. Whilst the immediate symptoms are gone, they return real fast after extended keyboard [...]

Popularity: 5% [?]

Server room equipment environment specs…more info required


September 10th, 2007

Manufacturers of IT equipment usually specify recommended operating temperatures for their equipment. The temperature range is usually quite wide. For instance, the temperature range specified for our Dell servers is 10° to 35°C (50° to 95°F).
Given the wide operating temperature range, why can’t we run our servers at a sizzling 34.9°C?
It is odd that Dell [...]

Popularity: 16% [?]

ANN: Intellipool INM 3.3 beta


September 7th, 2007

Intellipool have announced the immediate availability of Intellipool Network Monitor 3.3 beta. Registered customers can download the software from the Intellipool customer portal.
The following improvements have been made:

Reports: rewritten from scratch to give a better user experience;
Performance: further enhancements to make better use of your current hardware;
Layout: better use of modern higher resolution screens;
WMI: addition [...]

Popularity: 25% [?]

Copper vs Fibre cabling costs


September 6th, 2007

You might assume that because the technology involved in manufacturing optical fibre cable is more complex than copper, installation of fibre networks would inevitably be more expensive than using copper. However, with the advent of CAT6 cabling means that copper is getting faster — but at a cost.
There are environments where copper is at a [...]

Popularity: 21% [?]

WinPCap packet sniffer for commercial development


September 5th, 2007

WinPCap is a great Windows based, open source driver for packet sniffing wire-based networks using a bog standard network interface card. WinPCap is licensed under the General Public License (GPL).
From a commercial software developers perspective, the GPL can be quite intimidating. Consequently, a lot of commercial developers won’t touch GPL’ed code with a very long [...]

Popularity: 25% [?]

Affordable wireless packet capture solution


September 4th, 2007

Tools like the Test-Um Wi-Net are great for trouble shooting wireless networks. But, Wi-Net falls a long way short of giving you real technical insight into your wireless network. What do you do if you need more? Say, you need to capture packets and the like.
One solution is to use the WireShark + AirPcap combination.
WireShark [...]

Popularity: 34% [?]