Coherent Light

Aggregation continues – Brocade and Foundry

John Dixon — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:59:52 +0000

In another sign of the current state of the industry market place, we’ve just seen the announcement of the aquistion of network switch supplier Foundry by SAN switch supplier Brocade. Whilst some of the blogs around seem to want to portray this is an opportinity for heartburn, I’m not sure that this will be the [...]

New Juniper WXC appliances

John Dixon — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:36:46 +0000

On Monday Juniper launched some new bits of kit in the WXC line, the WXC-1800, WXC-2600, and WXC-3400 devices. This publication segment continues from here. The new appliances are partial replacements and extensions over the existing WXC platforms, and they’ve taken the additional capabilities of the platforms to reposition devices a little more cleverly than [...]

Purple and Blue – Updated Packeteer and BlueCoat merger information

John Dixon — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:30:07 +0000

So Packeteer and BlueCoat have done the deed, and Packeteer is now “A BlueCoat Company”. This publication segment continues from here. Quick take-aways so far indicate the planned killing off of a significant portion of the Packeteer product line, and the maintenance of the current Packetshaper product line (Packetshaper, Intelligence Centre and PolicyCentre). Blue Coat ProxySG [...]

The advantage of simple APIs

John Dixon — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:06:35 +0000

I still can’t believe how simple it is to set up new features within a blog utilising WordPress. This publication segment continues from here. Take the recent launch of the LinkedIn Company Insider widget, which is now integrated here on a few pages It was simply a case of adding a script line into the header [...]

a constant c?

John Dixon — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:50:46 +0000

It all started with a discussion around the tea-table a few days ago, about the fact that a lightyear is a measurement of distance and not of time, because a light year is the distance travelled by a photon over the period of a year. (d=s*t for those who like the maths, or the area [...]

The value in taking both paths at once.

John Dixon — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:00:08 +0000

Over time the use of multiple paths within the modern corporate network has increased. We’ve gone through a whole series of phases, and now are emerging into the 4th generation of the technology. I’ve had the (good?) fortune to experience all of these at various points, and to design networks around the deployment of these, [...]

Purple and Blue – Packeteer and BlueCoat

John Dixon — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:00:47 +0000

So there’s loads of stuff on the net about the upcoming merger between BlueCoat and Packeteer. I’m going to add my own 2p to the thoughts, as I think that this is a potentially large issue for users of Packetshaper, iShared and SkyX devices. This publication segment continues from here. Some of the other comment [...]

State of the Network – a response

John Dixon — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:08:23 +0000

So Network Instruments new LinkedIn.CompanyInsiderPopup("NI","Network Instruments"); have published their latest State of the Network report, and it makes for some worrying reading for network managers. The report is gathered from questionnaires answered by 592 network professionals, covering geographically diverse locations, with differing numbers of users. This time Network Instruments have concentrated on three elements, Time [...]

Posted from the mobile

John Dixon — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:53:02 +0000

So as part of the new job I needed to get a new phone. Since I’m not a big fan of Microsoft Windows Mobile, I wanted something different as a platform. Since the only real extensible platform left is Symbian (especially since Palm has now a choice of platform, both Windows Mobile and PalmOS), I [...]

Thinking around mobile access to data

John Dixon — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:34:38 +0000

I did a presentation on the Ipanema solution to members of the CMA (Communications Management Association) yesterday. The focus was on ensuring the voice and data quality on the network, but it got me thinking about a few other things related to the issue. This publication segment continues from here.