Ellen Messmer has picked out 10 IT security-related start-ups doing some groundbreaking work. Check out her list.

Perhaps it's unfair to lump these two CEO changes together, but they happened around the same time - Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang announced he was stepping down, and Symantec CEO John Thompson announced he is retiring as well.

Read more

You may not even have realized that Cisco is the top vendor when it comes to network security. That's because so much of its security gear is integrated into switches and routers.

But there is a tremendous performance tax to doing security that way, according to some recent tests. Ellen Messmer has the scoop.

More repercussions in the tech sector as Sun announces it is letting go of 15% to 18% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan. The layoffs are intended to save $700 million to $800 million per year and will affect as many as 6,000 employees.

Despite all the gloom that has been gathering, observers remain optimistic about tech.

Nortel has been second-guessed and criticized and analyzed all week, ever since announcing that it would lay off 1,300 employees and four executives and reorganize into autonomous business units.

Read more

Cisco's ASR 9000, introduced this week, is believed to be the successor to the high-end 7600 series router. But while Cisco is giving out some stats about the new device, there is a certain lack of detail in the portrait being painted that has the industry abuzz.

Jim Duffy explains.

The article says it all:

Read more

EMC unveiled a set of cloud storage hardware and software that could help large businesses manage software across hundreds of sites.

EMC calls the software portion "Atmos" - get it? And analysts say it's much more than just storage virtualization writ large.

Nortel had a bad third quarter and announced plans to lay off 1,300 of its workers. Among those leaving are CTO John Roese, Chief Marketing Officer Lauren Flaherty, Global Services President Dietmar Wendt and Executive Vice President Global Sales Bill Nelson.

Read more

It used to be that all you had to know about Wi-Fi security was to avoid Wired Equivalent Privacy, or WEP. Now, it's replacement, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), has also been compromised, all in the name of "research."

Google says that the reason it backed out of its proposed deal with Yahoo was that the U.S. Department of Justice was going to block it anyway.

Market research firm Point Topic is reporting that the costs of cable, DSL and fiber access are falling rapidly all over the world, while speeds are going up.

DSL users are the big winners, with prices dropping 20% so far this year, but on average, broadband users paid $53 for a subscription in the third quarter, vs. $66 in the first.

Read the full results of the report here.

Network World has already featured a couple of showdowns among smartphones, such as the iPhone vs. the G1, or the BlackBerry Storm vs. the iPhone.

But this week we have a more comprehensive smartphone battle, involving six of the hottest phones out there and a preview of a few more. Check it out.

In an open letter published in his blog, Richard Stiennon today offered his advice to Sen. Barack Obama on how best to address national cyber-security issues, should he be elected president of the United States in Tuesday's election:

Anyone in the private sector who has tried to implement change in security practices has encountered the resistance that is now in evidence within your government. Only through executive dictate can real change happen.

Read more

Network and systems management has always been a difficult task. It's one of those areas that has been plagued by "shelfware" - software that you buy but never use.

Network World's Denise Dubie has found 10 companies that are trying to crack the management nut with innovative products. Check out her list here.

This Sunday, the Morris worm turns 20. It is considered the first major attack on the Internet, though at the time the full implications were not appreciated.

Launched around 6 p.m. on Nov. 2, 1988, the Morris worm disabled approximately 10% of all Internet-connected systems, which were estimated at more than 60,000 machines.

Read the full story here.

Richard Stiennon today blogs about how valuable Twitter IDs have become - and that means squatting, just like with Web domains, becomes an issue:

Is there evidence of Twitter squatting (squitting?) Let's check. Yup, every single-letter TwitID is taken. Some are legitimate (Check out "S" for instance, that is a cool personal email assistant service) but X, Y, and Z are place holders. How about common words? Garage, wow, war, warcraft, Crisco, Coke, Pepsi,Nike, and Chevrolet are all taken.

Read more

The IEEE 802.11n standard promises much higher data rates than we're used to with our wireless LANs, but does it deliver? Network World decided to find out.

So we set up the largest public 802.11n test ever, and invited all enterprise wireless LAN vendors to participate. Find out who won, who lost and who didn't even show up.

Here's an interesting crystal ball to gaze in - at least, if you're a techie who also follows politics.

Network managers are used to looking at network traffic to look for patterns that might give them some insight as to what's happening on their networks. Well, what if you applied that approach to current events - particularly, the biggest current event of all, the U.S. presidential election?

Here's what you get.

Here's another indication that data centers are the epicenter of network innovation these days. Jayshree Ullal, a longtime executive at Cisco, has been named president and CEO of Arista Networks.

The start-up was founded by Sun's Andy Bechtolsheim and develops data center switches.