The Cheapest CCNA Home Lab Ever
Cioara: $20 - $30 to build a home lab where you can perform most everything tested on the CCNA. I’m not kidding!

Phishers scamming IRS rebates
Scammers want your IRS refund checks and have devised at least one phishing scheme to get it, according to the FBI.

Network World Community

Brad Reese posts an alarm about Cisco "stuffing the channel." Mitchell Ashley speculates as well, wonders if Cisco's really attempting to shore up quarterly results or if the numbers reflect a slowing economy and customers taking longer to pay for gear.

Users discuss the researcher who claims he's hidden a zero-day exploit on his blog; consider whether virtualized desktops are more secure; and debate tech CEO salaries.

Glenn Weadock explores Windows Server 2008 backup and restore. Brian Egler wonders about SQL Server licensing. Patrick Regan looks at domain controllers and site replication. Scot Hillier details three underutilized SharePoint utilities. Ron Barrett sings the praises of Sysinternals utilities. Kerrie Meyler reports on the flying pigs now that Microsoft has announced an open-source extension for its management platform.

Mark Lewis explains why you should care about the Media Gateway Control Protocol. Michael Morris shares his list of Cisco bookmarks. Jeremy D. Cioara shows how to build the cheapest home CCNA lab ever - if you pay more than $30, you're paying too much. Ken Presti looks at Cisco PowerCare.

Noah Schiffman lists the top consumer complaints to the FCC.

Richard Stiennon ponders if it's OK to hack if you're a good guy.

Robert Williams compares braindumps and study guides. Mary Finlay discusses why panel discussions on the trials of women CIOs always seem to be packed.

Peter Sevcik and Rebecca Wetzel compare centralized and distributed performance optimization.

Jeff Doyle looks at IPv6 at the Olympics. Matthew Nickasch discusses the importance of hands-on experience. Jason Meserve wonders if he should worry about Comcast's bandwidth caps.

In depth

Wireless computing power saving measures may not be worth the effort
Optimizing the power conservation settings of a mobile computer or communicator, including dimming the display when on battery, turning off the display and hard drive after a pre-set period of time, suspending (keeping memory alive but the computer otherwise powered down) and hibernating (writing the image of main memory to disk for later resumption) help in getting the most out of any given charge.

5 ways insiders exploit your network
A number of recently publicized incidents serve as a harsh reminder that insiders represent a common and often misunderstood security threat. Data theft and sabotage can result in hard costs, compliance-related problems, legal fees, productivity loss and, possibly most costly, loss of reputation.

How to

Ron Nutter helps a user decide if it's ethical - or safe - to use an open Wi-Fi connection. Faizel Lakhani discusses security threats, such as a black-hat firm that seeded a pharmaceutical company's parking lot with USB drives, hoping employees would use them - triggering software to transfer insider data.

More news

Tech company CEO compensation raises ire
Executive compensation has been a hot-button issue for several years, and the final crop of fiscal year 2007 proxy statements filed throughout March and April did little to quell the cry for reform from industry watchdogs, activist shareholders and the general public.

Deep packet inspection protects financial group
Western & Southern Financial Group had what it considered defense in depth for its IP network but recognized that there were still ways that sensitive data might leave the network undetected, so it looked for more protection. The company, which manages $47 billion in assets, chose to add Palo Alto Network's next-generation firewall to its existing traditional firewall, intrusion prevention system, URL filtering and data-loss prevention gear.

Five things to consider before committing to SAP
Before you buy SAP apps, consider these five things about the company and its products.

Water-cooled servers gaining steam
Water cooling is the answer to server heat problems, some vendors and data center operators believe.

HP brings storage, servers into one rack
To help IT departments prepare for the coming onslaught of data, HP on Tuesday introduced a platform that combines storage and computing in one rack with a single file system and management console.