Cisco Systems Inc. has issued a recall for the fan tray units of its new Catalyst 4500 LAN switches after internal testing determined that they can short circuit and render the switch inoperable. The recall was issued Dec. 10 and affects roughly 3,000 switches shipped to date, a Cisco spokesman said. The spokesman added that no customers have been impacted by the short circuiting situation. “As part of the manufacturing process, the switches go through testing. We discovered that there were a handful of units that did fail,” the spokesman said. “We were fortunate to catch [this] internally before it began to affect customers.” The short circuiting causes a fan freeze failure, potentially causing damage to the switch’s backplane, according to the spokesman.
StorageTek, Brocade enter into partnership
Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and StorageTek announced this month that they will be working together to deliver professional services, break-fix service and storage area network (SAN) education for their mutual SAN customers worldwide. Through the expansion of the relationship between the two companies, Brocade and StorageTek customers will gain a single point of contact for services, support and education for their storage and networking infrastructure. StorageTek will offer maintenance support on all Brocade products and provide SAN and other professional services to Brocade SAN customers. In addition, StorageTek will sell Brocade education and training to current and prospective customers.
Microsoft announces additions to ISA server
Microsoft Corp. earlier this month released the Feature Pack 1 for its Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) server 2000, the company’s enterprise firewall product. Originally released as a proxy server back in 2001, some of the announced software upgrades to the ISA server include Remote Procedure Call (RPC) filtering for incoming Microsoft Exchange RPC connections, a version of URLScan for other inbound and outbound RPC connections and support for RSA Security Inc.’s SecureID authentication tokens.
NAI buys Deersoft
Network Associates Inc. this month announced the acquisition of Deersoft Inc., a maker of antispam software, for an undisclosed sum. Deersoft, of San Mateo, Calif., makes the SpamAssassin Pro and SpamAssassin Enterprise products. The company’s software uses content rules and heuristic scans to analyze incoming e-mail messages and identify spam. Once identified, messages can be either rejected outright or saved for review. NAI said it intends to fold the SpamAssassin technology into its McAfee line of products, wooing enterprises by providing antispam technology at the network gateway and on e-mail servers, as well as on the desktop.
