the Pipeline

Wireless rules

Wireless products continue to dominate the new announcement pipeline. We think it's because eliminating the wires on a device lowers the production costs significantly. That makes sense, doesn't it?

Maybe not.

Whatever the reason, SMC Networks Inc. has released EZ-Connect, a wireless traveler's kit that provides everything people on the road need to convert wired hotel Internet connections to wireless.

The kit's networking device connects to a wired high-speed connection in a hotel room or an office, just as your wireless router at home plugs into your modem.

Packed into a carrying case, the kit also includes a USB cable, an Ethernet cable and a power cord. The networking device itself can operate in any of five different modes: as an access point, an Ethernet bridge, a repeater, a point-to-point bridge or a point-to-multipoint bridge.

When the wireless connection is used in your hotel room, someone using the Wi-Fi Analyzer from Comarco Wireless Technologies Inc. can analyze your use. The new product, to be the first in a family of handheld Wi-Fi analyzers, scans the radio signal from an access point and reports useful information, including the packet error rate, the received signal strength, sources of potential interference, the presence of unauthorized access points, and throughput and security.

For Comarco, the new product marks the company's expansion beyond its traditional line of testing products for wireless infrastructure and into the realm of tools for designing and optimizing networks, said Greg Maton, the company's senior vice president.

AEP Systems Inc. has rolled out AEP SureWare A-Gate AG-1200, a scalable virtual private network solution that includes Secure Sockets Layer protection, along with installation and one year of support.

The product offers browser and client-based remote access to company e-mail and software applications.

Tangoe Inc. may help control costs with its new Communications Management Platform software.

Called CMP, the new release is Version 2.7 of the software product, which offers the ability to manage, track, audit and plan communications across an enterprise, including cost control.

The product includes modules to cover contracts administration, employee-level expense management, a management dashboard view, inventory management, and reporting and analysis tools.

Who are you?

Officials from Silicon Graphics Inc. and SRD, a Las Vegas company specializing in identity recognition software, are teaming to make three SRD products available on SGI's Altix platform. The products allow organizations' officials to identify and better understand users of their systems, especially for systems used by the public.

ERIK recognizes users, NORA identifies nonobvious relationships between users and ANNA allows anonymous information sharing. When used in combination, the products can help an organization customize the Web experience for users, spot potential fraud or criminal associations and maintain secrecy when exchanging information. For government users, the software could have law enforcement or counterterrorism applications, said Anthony Robbins, president of SGI Federal Inc.

"SGI Altix running SRD's suite of software allows government agencies to not only view information about an individual or some population of interest, but more importantly, to begin to find and articulate needle-in-a-haystack relationships," he said. "This instant analysis can help these agencies to quickly identify potential threats and to avoid targeting individuals who do not pose a threat."

We still don't like spam

More new products have arrived to keep your inbox from overflowing with unwanted commercial messages, also known as spam or the greatest scourge of the 21st century to date.

CipherTrust Inc. has released IronMail 4.5, which adds increased end-user and administrator access and control, streamlined white listing, support for a predefined set of regular expression patterns, and expanded integration with various network tools and resources, including the commonly used Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and Microsoft Corp. Active Directory.

The white listing feature allows users to add legitimate senders to a list of addresses not to block. New management enhancements allow administrators to create, save and apply white lists to a given set of users, domains and groups.

Predefined regular expression patterns identify e-mail content such as credit card numbers, phone numbers or Social Security numbers, which helps organization managers enforce policies for what information can be sent or received in an e-mail message.

GFI Software Ltd. also is in the spam-fighting game with the release of GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP, Version 10. The release is a new version of the company's server-based antispam system, allowing users to either blacklist or white list senders using public folders.

Version 10 also includes mail archiving to Microsoft's SQL Server, which allows compliance with regulations for records retention.

In addition, "we've made the Bayesian filter easier to train," said Nick Galea, chief executive officer at GFI. A Bayesian filter is the software algorithm that analyzes message content to determine whether or not the message should be considered legit.