The only way to eliminate the costs associated with spam is to eliminate the spam itself, which is usually achieved by implementing one or more email filtering systems. There are numerous options for filtering email, and although not all of these mechanisms are viable for every organization or every user, eliminating the majority of spam from your network will return vast rewards in terms of saved bandwidth, storage and processing costs.

A bombardment of spam, increasing viral attacks and other forms of forged messages have made email a bigger job to operate and manage. One bright ray of hope in this mess is a new series of sender-authorization technologies. Three proposals in particular have captured the industry's attention: Microsoft's Caller-ID, the community-driven Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Yahoo's DomainKeys.

This data comes from a simple perl script, which read through all 32,000+ newsgroups on my ISP's server and counted up each of the unique "charset=" tags that it found in the message headers. 4,024,487 messages were processed over a period which spanned 73 hours and 23 minutes (over my 1.5Mb DSL line).

Mailing lists are everywhere! Here are some of the best sources for news, analysis, opinion and general-fun that I've found.

Every so often, a product comes along that has the potential to change the way we work. Although Novatel Wireless' Minstrel Wireless IP Modem isn't earthshaking on its own, when used in conjunction with a 3Com PalmPilot Professional or IBM WorkPad handheld computer and some Internet-based applications, it's a dazzler. It allows truly mobile, wireless, pen-based access to standards-driven applications.

It's embarrassing when your customers argue among themselves. But it's a hanging offence when customers tell prospects what a miserable product you have, on your own service. These are avoidable scenarios, once you understand how the different aspects of communications theory represent and dictate the underlying communication patterns.

Continuing their push into corporate networks, Netscape Communications recently released SuiteSpot 3.5, a compilation of Netscape's Web, mail, groupware, and directory-server offerings. The key feature in SuiteSpot 3.5 is an increased focus on directory integration, with the various servers using Netscape's Directory Server as a common authentication and access-control repository.

This newsletter is a useful tool for expressing thoughts and discoveries that wouldn't fit cleanly into another forum. Think of it as an effective way for me to send the same journal entry to hundreds of people all at once, and you'll be on the right track.

The first round of products from Novonyx -- the joint effort between Netscape and Novell to port Netscape's SuiteSpot line to the NetWare platform -- debuts today, and for the most part the products work well. However, minor inconsistencies, different management tools, and the normal spate of early-release bugs keep them from being 'must-have' products.

By all measures, 1997 was a very good year for the computer networking industry. New and exciting technologies gave birth to strong products, which in turn helped many a bottom line. There were also a fair number of loser technologies, products, and companies, as well as the as-yet-to-be-decided contenders who offer strong possibilities, but who have failed to execute in one form or another.

As the undisputed 'killer application' of networking, e-mail is so important to the future of your company's technology landscape that picking a messaging solution that you can live and grow with is critical.