When you're looking for something it BETTER be in the last place you look! Continuing the search after finding it is just silly Seriously, I have had similar issues with rules being obtuse, and I have experience with about a dozen firewalls. Like other IT tech, 'intuitive'…

Hmm, the most surprising issue (not for me, but management) has been power outages. I worked at a local heath department until recently, and of course we were emergency responders, required to be operational even during earthquakes, storms and volcanic eruptions. Management…

Interesting use of video David. Normally I like to have text rather than video, but showing the interface more than makes up for that I'm glad to see that Cisco is finally modernizing their firewall technology. It would be useful to have a comparison with other next-gen…

There is a difference between the policies that govern a firewall and the technical rules that implement those policies. Good policy doesn't change much from a tiny network - even a single system - to the largest multinational Policy comes from management. You, the SME…

So, what's a 'mid market solution', anyway? The answers are all over the place; it could mean the classic 200-1000 seat network on one end, all the way to medium size Enterprises. But, having worked at (and consulted for) organizations both bigger and smaller I'll take a…

Great answers here. The only thing I'll add is that probes or robots allow testing before deployment, something that shops of your size frequently ignore as being too difficult/costly/technical for the existing staff. They also step outside the 'self-diagnosis' problem…

Hard to compare fairly; not only do we need comparative experience with the leading platforms it's important to know what YOUR needs and environment are. Barring that, we can provide our experience No experience with either Oracle or Catchpoint, I do have a bit of…

'Best' is a slippery concept. I'm not familiar with LSP work (which is critical), and without knowing your size, scope and needs any definitive statement is going to be a guess. Best I can do is note that anytime you use an 'all in one' product there are more compromises…

I don't have a chart as such - as I've said before, matrices are highly subjective and the common error is to ignore the inherent biases built in. Building your own does not take much time or effort, and the exercise gives good insight into the biases YOU build in. More, as…

Interesting approach Bill, I'll have to think about it Rusty, I don't have an evaluation matrix either - frankly I've never needed to build a matrix to make a decision, but they are useful to explain or defend a choice. I'm more used to testing, reading and finding…

First, I hope you've updated - the current release (10.6) of NPM has some really neat features, like instant access to server error logs and process monitors. Second, if you're just using the Network Performance Module (NPM) you're missing a lot. Application monitoring gives…

Tina, Wireshark is NOT network monitoring, but rather packet analysis. Think broad overview of the network vs. in-depth analysis of transactions on one part of your network. Both have value, and both are necessary As I said, Wireshark is packet analysis. It allows capture…