IP communications

What Happened to IPv5?

You are probably familiar with the fact that IPv4 is more or less the standard that the Internet and networks of the world rely on. IPv6 is the emerging standard developed to expand the available pool of addresses as well as addressing a variety of performance and security issues in IPv4. So, why did we never hear of any IPv5 equipment? Do they just count by 2’s when they are creating IP standards? Apparently not. Network expert Silvia Hagen addresses the issue of the missing IP standard in answering the question “Why wasn’t there an IPv5?”

Cisco Confirms VoIP Security Hole

VoIP is the new wireless (unfortunately, wireless is still the new wireless as well). By that, I mean it is the hot new technology that everyone is implementing even though they don’t really know how to properly deploy it and they have even less knowledge of how to secure it. Vendors are guilty too. They rush products to market to take advantage of the popularity, but the products are not designed securely and they are not adequately tested. The result is a bunch of flawed and vulnerable VoIP networks out there, built on essentially beta-version hardware, just waiting to be exploited. At HACK.LU 2007 in Luxembourg this past October, security researcher Joffrey Czarny described a technique to eavesdrop on remote conversations using Cisco VoIP phones. Check out Cisco confirms ability to spy on remote calls with VoIP to learn more about this, and other, VoIP exploits that may affect your cutting edge phone network.

Projected Network Infrastructure Spending For 2008

What are your plans for your network infrastructure for 2008? Do you have a holiday wish list or some New Year’s resolutions regarding the technologies you want to implement or the changes you plan to make? TechTarget’s SearchNetworking site conducted a survey of over 1,200 respondents and they have published the results. Some of the key results are:

• 21.28% project an increase in their budget of more than 10%
• 7.26% of respondents said their networking budgets will decrease
• 8.34% claim that VoIP/data convergence is driving their budget increase

Check out Applications, convergence to boost network spending for the complete results. You can read it just out of curiosity, or maybe you can use the survey results to help prove your case to management and get your budget requests approved.

Cisco Jockeying To Lead IP Video

You may have heard of this quaint site that lets users create and share videos with one another. I think it is called “YouTube”. OK, if you haven’t heard of YouTube, you are new to the planet or something. YouTube is just one example of the recent explosion of IP video on the Internet though. Movie studios and television networks are expanding their online presence and the result is an ever-growing library of movies and TV shows available to be watched as IP video as well. Combine that with initiatives such as IP video surveillance, and you have the makings of a hot new trend. Cisco has made some recent acquisitions in the area of IP video that appear to be a maneuver to get ahead of the competition and try to corner the IP video market. Check out Is Cisco Becoming the IP Video Giant? for more about this story.

XSS Vulnerability Plagues VoIP

Voice over IP, or VoIP, communication is still relatively new. Being a bleeding edge technology has its pros and cons when it comes to security. On the down side, developers are in such a hurry to be the first to market, and they want to maximize performance, so security is not a priority. On the up side, attackers are often slower to jump on the bandwagon and adopt bleeding edge technologies. But, as the technology catches on and gains critical mass, it becomes a target Continued »

The Promise of UCC

UCC. Get used to it. You will see the term a lot. It stands for Unified Communication and Collaboration. In a nutshell, it represents combining and merging virtually all forms of communication to enable real-time communication and collaboration. Currently, a manager who has a question while reviewing an employee’s expense report most likely has to leave the expense report tool to look up the employee’s contact information, then dial the number on a phone to call the employee. With UCC, this functionality is streamlined and simplified. With a simple click from within the expense report tool, the employee is automatically dialed, perhaps using VoIP from the manager’s computer so that no additional device is necessary. This is just one simple example. A recent blog post at Cisco discusses the concept in greater detail: The Promise of Collaboration.

Unified Threat Management

It seems that the world of information technology and information security is pursuing a path to harmony and cooperation. The current buzz word is “unity”. We have unified communications- converging IP networking, email, voicemail, voice communications, and instant messaging to provide an integrated communications framework. Another area of unity is in threat management. Traditionally, organizations have a variety of separate security devices and applications. They may have a firewall appliance at the perimeter, with some sort of IDS or IPS appliance between the firewall and the network. They may have an antimalware appliance, or have some antimalware software installed on email gateway servers. Perhaps, they even have an antispam appliance or application. Continued »

EMC Introduces Technology to Manage IPv6

IPv6, the next generation IP protocol which is replacing the current IPv4 (not sure what happened to IPv5) has not taken off quite the way it had been anticipated. Still, the standard is being rolled out more and more, if by nothing more than attrition, and organizations need next generation tools to handle the next generation protocol. Storage vendor EMC has rolled out just such a tool. Their Smart IPv6 Availability Manager provides discovery, mapping, monitoring and root-cause analysis of problems for IPv6 networks, and is also backward compatible with IPv4 networks or networks that mix both IPv4 and IPv6. For more details about this IPv6 tool, check out this Computerworld.com article.

IP Addressing Crash Course

Do you understand the difference between classless and classful IP addressing? Can you explain what is different in IPv6 from IPv4 and why businesses or individuals should care? How about calculating a subnet mask- or determining the total possible IP addresses based on the subnet mask?

I had a mental block for years on the subnet mask thing. I just could not seem to understand how to do the math either way- either to determine the subnet mask based on the address space I wanted, or to determine the number of available addresses from the subnet mask. Then one day I had an epiphany and what was confusing suddenly made sense. You don’t have to wait for an epiphany though. TechTarget’s SearchNetworking site has a free crash course in IP addressing that will have you understanding that CIDR is different than the cider you drink and otherwise fluent in all things IP. Check it out here- Crash Course: IP addressing and subnetting fundamentals.

Microsoft To Launch Unified Communications in October

Microsoft has set an October 16 launch date for their Unified Communications initiative. Unified Communications are products and services that- as the name implies- are designed to bring various forms of communication together and allow them to work in conjunction with each other. The live webcast on October 16, co-hosted by Bill Gates, will roll out Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007, and Office LiveMeeting. You can get more information about the Unified Communications initiative and the October 16 rollout from this Computerworld.com article.