From ultra-mobile PCs to high-end systems built for the road warrior, here's a look at what's sleek, light and fast in the notebook PC space.
The phishers and spammers are at it again. And what better vehicle to distribute malware than a highly trafficked, international sporting event like the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games? From the convincing to the inane, here are a few scams to watch for in the next few weeks. Let the games begin.
The Chinese capital of Beijing is humming with excitement over the Games Of The 29th Olympiad. ChannelWeb offers glimpses of how tech giants are showcasing their latest technology advancements on the world's stage.
Review: Management With A Bite
12:00 AM EDT Mon. Sep. 10, 2007
From the September 10, 2007 issue of CRN Tech
Page 1 of 2
Keeping track of what's happening in the network is essential, but it's not always easy or affordable, creating a large opportunity for solution providers to step in with proactive network management services.
A management system from U.K.-based HoundDog Technologies offers solution providers a simple and powerful tool to manage several customers' networks at once. The server monitoring system, dubbed HoundDog, is specifically designed for IT support companies and MSPs. HoundDog monitors all "live" IT, detecting and alerting a wide variety of issues, including those relating to disk space, TCP ports, failed disks and Web site outages. HoundDog can track hardware and software assets, generate inventory reports and track software licenses. HoundDog provides server monitoring and client reporting using a small software agent called Advanced Monitoring Agent to collect network data.
The system is deceptively simple. Software agents installed on servers in each location are configured to run various monitoring tests, or checks, on the network. The agent communicates the results back to the central servers located at HoundDog Technologies via an encrypted SSL connection. Data collected by the agent is presented in a dashboard that is accessed by a Web browser. There are no appliances to configure or software packages to tweak. The company promises to be up and running monitoring a new customer's network within 10 minutes. CRN Test Center engineers set up test networks in two different locations. In the first location, there were three laptops, three Linux servers and two desktops running Microsoft Windows XP, while the second location had three Windows desktops. The agent software was installed on one computer in each location, and between the two computers, 19 checks were configured. The checks included a ping test, which pinged every computer on the network every 15 minutes and sent an alert if the computer was down; physical disk health; disk space monitor, which sent an alert as soon as available space dropped below 100 Mbytes; TCP/IP services, to ensure the ports that should be open (80 for HTTP) were open and ports that shouldn't be (21 for FTP) weren't; Windows services, which sent an alert if a service's run-status changes; antivirus updates, which sent an alert if the virus definitions were out of date; and Web site scan, which sent an alert if a particular test string appeared or disappeared from the site.
The dialog boxes make it easy to configure the checks. Some tests require an IP address and a failure threshold—a numeric value that determines when the alert will be sent. Other tests, such as the ones that check on status, can send an alert either on failure or on success. The alerts can appear on the dashboard and can be sent to an e-mail address.
The monitoring agent can be installed on Windows NT 4.0 or higher server operating systems, including Windows 2003, and on desktops running Windows 2000, Windows XP and Vista. While HoundDog can monitor networks with Linux and Apple Macintosh servers, the software cannot be installed on those machines at this time.
Next: The Bottom Line
