Internet Network Security Blog

Brocade’s Network Subscription, new switches, and Network Advisor enhancements are all aimed at establishing Brocade as a data and storage player in cloud infrastructure. Network Subscription brings flexible, on-demand costs to networking—as flexible as installing hardware can be—where enterprises only pay for the ports they need when they need them. The new VDX switches offer more options for Brocades Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS), while Network Advisor catches up with competitor’s offerings by enhancing integration with VMware’s vSphere. Network Subscription is the big news.

Brocade’s Network Subscription is a lease style model for acquiring networking equipment. The problem, in Brocade’s point of view, is that the traditional IT purchasing pattern, whether via capital expenditure or leasing, is a stair-step approach of over-buying capacity to handle growth until demand overruns reduce productivity and IT purchases more capacity. More accurately, IT acquires equipment before they need it, but in fixed increments. With Brocade’s Network Subscription, the capacity can be acquired earlier, but organizations only pay for what they use when they use it.

“Network subscription is a relatively new networking trend—percolating in a few other areas like WAN opt-- that is enabling vendors to align their business model with their customer’s IT shops,” said Forrester Research Senior Analyst Andre Kindness. “Because Brocade’s subscription lets business' infrastructure dynamically scale or contract with their customer’s business cycles. The program is not about technology but the realities of what the business expects from their partners. This is a common trend outside of IT where products and services are billed by pay as you go.”

The program involves Brocade working with the customer to design and ship a network that will meet current and future needs. Then, as the customer's demand grows, they can turn on or off more ports. Overall, Brocade estimates a 15 to 20% premium when using Network Subscription compared to purchasing similar equipment. In an example using Brocade MLXe and VDX switches for a total of 832 10Gb Ethernet ports and three years of Brocade’s Essential Support with next day delivery, the purchase cost would be $1.4 million dollars or $46.74 per port. Brocade’s Network Subscription for the same number of ports and Essential Support would be $1,687,495 or $56.34 per port.Network Subscription costs roughly 17% more over three years. Considering that the percentage cost of network equipment compared to the overall IT budget is typically somewhere in the single digits, the difference is a rounding error. However, for companies that want to couple IT spend with revenue—organizations that have a large difference between low demand and high demand, start-ups, government agencies, or cloud service providers for example, Network Subscription looks like a viable alternative.

Brocade is also enhancing its VCS fabric by doubling the number of VDX switches from 12 to 24, and is announcing two new products. The VDX 6710, which is a 48 1Gb switch port with 6 10Gb uplinks packed into a 1U switch. The 6710, which is priced at $9,500, is an Ethernet only switch—no FCoE support is planned since the downlinks are all 1Gb. The sole purpose is to help customers who are transitioning from multiple 1Gb server ports to 10Gb server ports but want the 1Gb servers to still participate in the VCS fabric. The VDX 6730 is a 10Gb Ethernet and FCoE fixed configuration switch that also has 8Gb FC ports. The 1U fixed configuration switch, priced at $10,720, includes 24 1/10Gb SFP+ Ethernet ports and eight 8Gbps FC ports. The 2U model, which is priced at $26,800, includes 60 1/10Gbps Ethernet ports and 16 8Gbps FC ports. An additional FCoE license is needed to enable the FC ports and includes the optics. The VDX 6730 helps companies transition from FC to FCoE by splitting out FC and Ethernet at the top of the rack, which fits in some data center designs better. Unfortunately, VCS is an add-on license for both the VDX 6710 and VDX 6730. The VCS license should be included as part of the VCS product family.

Brocade has also enhanced their Network Advisor management software, primarily with better VMware integration and monitoring. In previous versions of Network Advisor, someone had to manually associate a port profile—a set of port specific configurations like QoS marking/enforcement and VLAN assignment—with a VM from vSphere and Network Advisor. The new version discovers VM’s and their associated port profiles automatically, so that once a port profile is assigned to a VM within vSphere, Network Advisor learns it automatically. Port profile discovery is a catch up feature found in most network equipment integration. Brocade also enhances monitoring with Layer 2 multi-path sFlow support so that administrators can monitor and can correlate all network traffic between two hosts.

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports The Data Mastery Imperative (subscription required).

Brocade’s Network Subscription, new switches and Network Advisor enhancements are all aimed at establishing Brocade as a data and storage player in cloud infrastructure. Network Subscription brings flexible, on-demand costs to networking—as flexible as installing hardware can be--where enterprises only pay for the ports they need when they need them. The new VDX switches offer more options for Brocades Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS), while Network Advisor catches up with competitor’s offerings by enhancing integration with VMware’s vSphere. Network Subscription is the big news.

Brocade’s Network Subscription is a lease-style model for acquiring networking equipment. The problem, in Brocade’s point of view, is that the traditional IT purchasing pattern, whether via capital expenditure or leasing, is a stair-step approach of over-buying capacity to handle growth until demand overruns reduce productivity and IT purchases more capacity. More accurately, IT acquires equipment before it's needed, but in fixed increments. With Brocade’s Network Subscription, the capacity can be acquired earlier, but organizations only pay for what they use when they use it.

"Network subscription is a relatively new networking trend—percolating in a few other areas like WAN opt-- that is enabling vendors to align their business model with their customers' IT shops," said Forrester Research Senior Analyst Andre Kindness. "Because Brocade’s subscription lets businesses' infrastructure dynamically scale or contract with their customers' business cycles. The program is not about technology but the realities of what the business expects from their partners. This is a common trend outside of IT where products and services are billed by pay as you go."

The program involves Brocade working with the customer to design and ship a network that will meet current and future needs. Then, as the customer's demand grows, it can can turn on or off more ports. Overall, Brocade estimates a 15% to 20% premium when using Network Subscription compared with purchasing similar equipment. In an example using Brocade MLXe and VDX switches for a total of 832 10 Gbyte Ethernet ports and three years of Brocade’s Essential Support with next-day delivery, the purchase cost would be $1.4 million dollars, or $46.74 per port. Brocade’s Network Subscription for the same number of ports and Essential Support would be $1,687,495, or $56.34 per port.Network Subscription costs roughly 17% more over three years. Considering that the percentage cost of network equipment compared with the overall IT budget is typically somewhere in the single digits, the difference is a rounding error. However, for companies that want to couple IT spend with revenue—organizations that have a large difference between low demand and high demand, start-ups, government agencies or cloud service providers, for example--Network Subscription looks like a viable alternative.

Brocade is also enhancing its VCS fabric by doubling the number of VDX switches from 12 to 24, and is announcing two new products: the VDX 6710, which is a 48 1Gbit switch port with six 10 Gbit uplinks packed into a 1U switch, and the 6710, which is priced at $9,500 and is an Ethernet-only switch—no Fibre Channel over Ethernet support is planned because the downlinks are all 1 Gbit. The sole purpose is to help customers that are transitioning from multiple 1 Gbit server ports to 10 Gbit server ports, but that want the 1 Gbit servers to still participate in the VCS fabric. The VDX 6730 is a 10 Gbit Ethernet and Fiber Channel over Ethernet fixed configuration switch that also has 8 Gbit Fibre Channel ports. The 1U fixed configuration switch, priced at $10,720, includes 24 1/10 Gbit SFP+ Ethernet ports and eight 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports. The 2U model, which is priced at $26,800, includes 60 1/10 Gbps Ethernet ports and 16 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports. An additional Fiber Channel over Ethernet license is needed to enable the Fibre Channel ports and includes the optics.

The VDX 6730 helps companies transition from Fibre Channel to Fibre Channel over Ethernet by splitting out Fibre Channel and Ethernet at the top of the rack, which fits in some data center designs better. Unfortunately, VCS is an add-on license for both the VDX 6710 and VDX 6730. The VCS license should be included as part of the VCS product family.

Brocade has also enhanced its Network Advisor management software, primarily with better VMware integration and monitoring. In previous versions of Network Advisor, someone had to manually associate a port profile—a set of port specific configurations like QoS marking/enforcement and VLAN assignment—with a VM from vSphere and Network Advisor. The new version discovers VMs and their associated port profiles automatically, so that once a port profile is assigned to a VM within vSphere, Network Advisor learns it automatically. Port profile discovery is a catch-up feature found in most network equipment integration. Brocade also enhances monitoring with Layer 2 multipath sFlow support so that administrators can monitor and correlate all network traffic between two hosts.

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports The Data Mastery Imperative (subscription required).

Enterprises can now directly monitor the status of their network devices, servers and applications in the cloud with the latest release of Network Instruments’ Observer Infrastructure product. OI 3.0 also provides enhanced monitoring of virtual environments utilizing vBlocks, the pre-integrated, preconfigured virtual cloud environment packages from the partnership of EMC, Cisco, VMware and Intel, and FlexPod, a similar capability delivered by NetApp on Cisco network infrastructure.

Network Instruments provides direct OI monitoring of cloud-based infrastructure through APIs to Cloudkick, the SaaS-based cloud infrastructure management service acquired by hosting provider Rackspace late in 2010, and proprietary monitoring services, such as Amazon’s CloudWatch for Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as EC2.

“If I’m an IT person, I need to understand things like CPU utilization, how are my VMs running,” says Brad Reinboldt, Network Instruments senior product manager. “But you’re depending on someone else’s infrastructure, say AWS, to deliver that functionality.” OI 3.0, he says, provides the same comprehensive monitoring for both internal and cloud infrastructure, through either native or Cloudkick APIs, without requiring agents.

Observer Infrastructure actively polls network devices, servers and applications to deliver performance metrics for real-time or near real-time reporting and alerts, as well trend information on anomalous activity. Enterprises can access this information through OI or through feeds into its Observer Reporting Server. Network Instruments’ portfolio also includes Observer Standard and Expert network monitoring and analysis products, and GigaStor network recorder for long-term analysis.

The latest release also provides improved insight into private cloud infrastructure, polling virtual infrastructure in vBlock and FlexPod deployments. OI performs auto-discovery of all virtual and physical components and allows them to be managed from a single interface. Admins can drill down for information on individual components or look at summary reports for all elements. In addition, OI 3.0 improves application management through OLEDB- and ODBC-supported scripts to monitor response time and behavior for remote SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and MySQL databases.

Network Instruments has added support for a number of applications, database servers, Web servers, and network and storage devices, including WebSphere Application Server and Microsoft Lync Server. OI 3.0 provides an improved UI for viewing health metrics and status, pinpointing the source of trouble and drilling down to identify specific issues.

Performance enhancements include faster polling, use of SNMP 2.0 for quicker data acquisition, improved batch polling so multiple devices can be polled at once, and streamlined data acquisition from Java components. With this release, OI adds basic configuration management capabilities for enterprises that lack third-party CM tools. This capability includes inventory and comparison reports to locate devices; monitoring for new devices and configuration changes, and tracking changing devices in dynamic virtual environments.

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports Strategy: SaaS-Based IT Management (subscription required).

Enterprises can now directly monitor the status of their network devices, servers and applications in the cloud with the latest release of Network Instruments' Observer Infrastructure (OI) product. OI 3.0 also provides enhanced monitoring of virtual environments utilizing vBlocks, the pre-integrated, pre-configured virtual cloud environment packages from the partnership of EMC, Cisco, VMware and Intel, and FlexPod, a similar capability delivered by NetApp on Cisco network infrastructure.

Network Instruments provides direct OI monitoring of cloud-based infrastructure through APIs to Cloudkick, the SaaS-based cloud infrastructure management service acquired by hosting provider Rackspace in late 2010, and proprietary monitoring services, including Amazon’s CloudWatch for Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as EC2.

"If I’m an IT person, I need to understand things like CPU utilization, how are my VMs running," says Brad Reinboldt, Network Instruments senior product manager. "But you’re depending on someone else's infrastructure--say, AWS--to deliver that functionality." OI 3.0, he says, provides the same comprehensive monitoring for both internal and cloud infrastructure, through either native or Cloudkick APIs, without requiring agents.

OI actively polls network devices, servers and applications to deliver performance metrics for real-time or near real-time reporting and alerts, as well trend information on anomalous activity. Enterprises can access this information through OI or through feeds into its Observer Reporting Server. Network Instruments' portfolio also includes Observer Standard and Expert network monitoring and analysis products, and GigaStor network recorder for long-term analysis.

The latest release also provides improved insight into private cloud infrastructure, polling virtual infrastructure in vBlock and FlexPod deployments. OI performs auto-discovery of all virtual and physical components, and allows them to be managed from a single interface. Admins can drill down for information on individual components or look at summary reports for all elements. In addition, OI 3.0 improves application management through OLEDB- and ODBC-supported scripts to monitor response time and behavior for remote SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and MySQL databases.

Network Instruments has added support for a number of applications, database servers, Web servers, and network and storage devices, including WebSphere Application Server and Microsoft Lync Server. OI 3.0 provides an improved UI for viewing health metrics and status, pinpointing the source of trouble and drilling down to identify specific issues.

Performance enhancements include faster polling, use of SNMP 2.0 for quicker data acquisition, improved batch polling so multiple devices can be polled at once, and streamlined data acquisition from Java components. With this release, OI adds basic configuration management capabilities for enterprises that lack third-party CM tools. This capability includes inventory and comparison reports to locate devices; monitoring for new devices and configuration changes, and tracking changing devices in dynamic virtual environments.

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports Strategy: SaaS-Based IT Management (subscription required).

IPv6 is coming. Sooner or later, you will be deploying IPv6 on your network, data center, or co-lo servers. It may be a few years off--longer if your ISP has a well thought out transition strategy in place--but IPv6 is different enough that you can learn the ins and outs on a smaller network before you have to deploy it widely. The question is where to start. Being IT nerds ourselves, we have put together an IPv6 resource page that contains articles and resources that we find useful in learning and experimenting with IPv6. If you are looking for resources, start there. If you have a good resource you want to share, send me an email and I will check it out.

Truth be told? If you understand IPv4, you will understand IPv6. The basics are similar enough that you will have a good foundation. Addresses have network and host components and routes are distributed much like IPv4 routes are distributed. The address space is bigger, but once you understand the addressing, it's pretty simple to read an address and know it's scope and purpose. Basic functionality works today but if you have never designed or managed an IPv6 network, you will have some studying to do. Get yourself a tunnel broker account for home. Get a router that forwards tunneled IPv6, and get busy.

The biggest changes are understanding the differences IPv6 addressing from IPv4 is how addresses are used and configured. IPv6 has the concept address types such as global addresses that can be routed, link-local addresses which are confined to a single broadcast domain, and site-local addresses which are confined to a single site. The latter two will be routed beyond their confines and they do have their uses. Using site local addresses means you can address hosts that should never be accessible beyond your borders--things like printers, VoIP phones, infrastructure, etc. Link and site local addresses give you a new tool to separate traffic other than VLAN's and firewalls.

How hosts are addressed is another area where IPv6 differs greatly from IPv4. Yes, you can allocate addresses using DHCPv6 like you do with IPv4 and some IT administrators plan on doing exactly that so they can more effectively manage their IP address space. Others will use StateLess Address Auto Config (SLAAC) which combines a host's MAC address and the site's network address to forma globally unique address. SLAAC is great for ease of use but hampers host discovery and IP address management (IPAM) since you never know when a new host hits the network and scanning an IPv6 subnet will take years.

Of course there are going to be transition technologies that you will require from your ISP or co-lo vendors to get your services and your users to and from both IPv4 and IPv6 networks, but also transition technologies you will have to deploy inside your network to support legacy IPv4 gear that won't support IPv6. If you are an old and crusty IT admin like Howard Marks or you know an old and crusty IT admin, ask them how long they ran dual-stack IP/IPX (an alternative layer 3 protocol to IP) gateways, servers, and hosts.

The sooner you start, the better off you will be when your IT manager asks you to turn on IPv6.

IPv6 is coming. Sooner or later, you will be deploying IPv6 on your network, data center, or co-lo servers. It may be a few years off--longer if your ISP has a well thought out transition strategy in place--but IPv6 is different enough that you can learn the ins and outs on a smaller network before you have to deploy it widely. The question is where to start. Being IT nerds ourselves, we have put together an IPv6 resource page that contains articles and resources that we find useful in learning and experimenting with IPv6. If you are looking for resources, start there. If you have a good resource you want to share, send me an email and I will check it out.

Truth be told? If you understand IPv4, you will understand IPv6. The basics are similar enough that you will have a good foundation. Addresses have network and host components and routes are distributed much like IPv4 routes are distributed. The address space is bigger, but once you understand the addressing, it's pretty simple to read an address and know it's scope and purpose. Basic functionality works today but if you have never designed or managed an IPv6 network, you will have some studying to do. Get yourself a tunnel broker account for home. Get a router that forwards tunneled IPv6, and get busy.

The biggest changes are understanding the differences IPv6 addressing from IPv4 is how addresses are used and configured. IPv6 has the concept address types such as global addresses that can be routed, link-local addresses which are confined to a single broadcast domain, and site-local addresses which are confined to a single site. The latter two will be routed beyond their confines and they do have their uses. Using site local addresses means you can address hosts that should never be accessible beyond your borders--things like printers, VoIP phones, infrastructure, etc. Link and site local addresses give you a new tool to separate traffic other than VLAN's and firewalls.

How hosts are addressed is another area where IPv6 differs greatly from IPv4. Yes, you can allocate addresses using DHCPv6 like you do with IPv4 and some IT administrators plan on doing exactly that so they can more effectively manage their IP address space. Others will use StateLess Address Auto Config (SLAAC) which combines a host's MAC address and the site's network address to forma globally unique address. SLAAC is great for ease of use but hampers host discovery and IP address management (IPAM) since you never know when a new host hits the network and scanning an IPv6 subnet will take years.

Of course there are going to be transition technologies that you will require from your ISP or co-lo vendors to get your services and your users to and from both IPv4 and IPv6 networks, but also transition technologies you will have to deploy inside your network to support legacy IPv4 gear that won't support IPv6. If you are an old and crusty IT admin like Howard Marks or you know an old and crusty IT admin, ask them how long they ran dual-stack IP/IPX (an alternative layer 3 protocol to IP) gateways, servers, and hosts.

The sooner you start, the better off you will be when your IT manager asks you to turn on IPv6.

IPv6 is coming. Sooner or later, you will be deploying IPv6 on your network, data center, or co-lo servers. It may be a few years off--longer if your ISP has a well thought out transition strategy in place--but IPv6 is different enough that you can learn the ins and outs on a smaller network before you have to deploy it widely. The question is where to start. Being IT nerds ourselves, we have put together an IPv6 resource page that contains articles and resources that we find useful in learning and experimenting with IPv6. If you are looking for resources, start there. If you have a good resource you want to share, send me an email and I will check it out.

Truth be told? If you understand IPv4, you will understand IPv6. The basics are similar enough that you will have a good foundation. Addresses have network and host components and routes are distributed much like IPv4 routes are distributed. The address space is bigger, but once you understand the addressing, it's pretty simple to read an address and know it's scope and purpose. Basic functionality works today but if you have never designed or managed an IPv6 network, you will have some studying to do. Get yourself a tunnel broker account for home. Get a router that forwards tunneled IPv6, and get busy.

The biggest changes are understanding the differences IPv6 addressing from IPv4 is how addresses are used and configured. IPv6 has the concept address types such as global addresses that can be routed, link-local addresses which are confined to a single broadcast domain, and site-local addresses which are confined to a single site. The latter two will be routed beyond their confines and they do have their uses. Using site local addresses means you can address hosts that should never be accessible beyond your borders--things like printers, VoIP phones, infrastructure, etc. Link and site local addresses give you a new tool to separate traffic other than VLAN's and firewalls.

How hosts are addressed is another area where IPv6 differs greatly from IPv4. Yes, you can allocate addresses using DHCPv6 like you do with IPv4 and some IT administrators plan on doing exactly that so they can more effectively manage their IP address space. Others will use StateLess Address Auto Config (SLAAC) which combines a host's MAC address and the site's network address to forma globally unique address. SLAAC is great for ease of use but hampers host discovery and IP address management (IPAM) since you never know when a new host hits the network and scanning an IPv6 subnet will take years.

Of course there are going to be transition technologies that you will require from your ISP or co-lo vendors to get your services and your users to and from both IPv4 and IPv6 networks, but also transition technologies you will have to deploy inside your network to support legacy IPv4 gear that won't support IPv6. If you are an old and crusty IT admin like Howard Marks or you know an old and crusty IT admin, ask them how long they ran dual-stack IP/IPX (an alternative layer 3 protocol to IP) gateways, servers, and hosts.

The sooner you start, the better off you will be when your IT manager asks you to turn on IPv6.

The machine-to-machine connectivity market, AKA the “Internet of Things”, may be more wishful thinking than a reality, but analysts predict that there will be 25 billion connected IP devices by 2015, with machine to machine (M2M) traffic expected to grow by 258 percent, and the managed mobile M2M services market to be worth $20 billion by 2014. That's good enough reason for Cisco to release a new router that will extend corporate networks to billions of non-traditional IP devices such as ATMs, service vehicles, digital billboards and vending machines.

The Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) 819 Machine-to-Machine Gateway, available now in hardened ($2,300) and standard ($1,600) versions,extends 3G/4G wireless WAN network services to small devices in challenging environments. It also supports standalone a Global Positioning System for retrieving real-time GPS data via location-based applications.

This is Cisco's initial foray into the M2M market, says Borderless Networks exec Prashanth Shenoy, and addresses the three key challenges: footprint and environment fit; remote management and monitoring; and operating cost. And while he details a number of emerging applications in retail/point-of-sale, financial services/ATMs, transportation, utilities, industrial automation and telehealth, he admits that this is new territory. “It will be interesting to see how this will be used. We will know better in a year.”

For the time being, Cisco offers a number of potential ISR 819 applications, including: enable portable medical services with remote monitoring of patients; track vehicles and offer text updates; speed up replenishing of vending machines; and increase security such as video surveillance from ATM machines.

This is more a strategic than tactical announcement, says IDC's Rohit Mehra, director, enterprise communications infrastructure. “We've seen some glimpses of the M2M opportunity, but it's still a vision in terms of growth. At the end of the day, it's still a forecast and a forecast is a forecast!”

He can't say when, but he expects that, eventually, a broad range of verticals will find value and will deploy M2M. “Strategically, I think it makes sense what Cisco has done.” Rohit says operators have been mulling over M2M for the last couple of years, but they've been buried by the data deluge from smartphones and overloading their networks. “As they get past that... and the pent up demand for users wanting to jump on the smartphone phenomenon and it starts to flatten out, I expect operators to take a much longer-term view to this.”

He agrees with Cisco about a number of the M2M opportunities and finds it significant that the company is making this move. “Normally you see some of the start ups or smaller companies trying to differentiate themselves. From that aspect... it is actually in some ways refreshing to see a market leader like Cisco do this.”

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports IT Pro Ranking: Smartphone and Tablet OSes (subscription required).

The machine-to-machine connectivity market, a.k.a. the "Internet of Things," may be more wishful thinking than a reality, but analysts predict that there will be 25 billion connected IP devices by 2015, with machine-to-machine (M2M) traffic expected to grow by 258% and the managed mobile M2M services market to be worth $20 billion by 2014. That's good enough reason for Cisco to release a new router that will extend corporate networks to billions of non-traditional IP devices such as ATMs, service vehicles, digital billboards and vending machines.

The Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) 819 Machine-to-Machine Gateway, available now in hardened ($2,300) and standard ($1,600) versions, extends 3G/4G wireless WAN network services to small devices in challenging environments. It also supports standalone a Global Positioning System for retrieving real-time GPS data via location-based applications.

This is Cisco's initial foray into the M2M market, says Borderless Networks executive Prashanth Shenoy, and addresses three key challenges: footprint and environment fit; remote management and monitoring; and operating cost. And while he details a number of emerging applications in retail/point-of-sale, financial services/ATMs, transportation, utilities, industrial automation and telehealth, he admits that this is new territory. "It will be interesting to see how this will be used. We will know better in a year."

For the time being, Cisco will offer a number of potential ISR 819 applications: The system will enable portable medical services with remote monitoring of patients; track vehicles and offer text updates; speed up replenishing of vending machines; and increase security such as video surveillance from ATM machines.

This is more a strategic than tactical announcement, says IDC's Rohit Mehra, director, enterprise communications infrastructure. "We've seen some glimpses of the M2M opportunity, but it's still a vision in terms of growth. At the end of the day, it's still a forecast, and a forecast is a forecast."

He can't say when, but he expects that, eventually, a broad range of verticals will find value and will deploy M2M. "Strategically, I think it makes sense what Cisco has done." Rohit says operators have been mulling over M2M for the last couple of years, but they've been buried by the data deluge from smartphones overloading their networks. "As they get past that ... and the pent-up demand for users wanting to jump on the smartphone phenomenon and it starts to flatten out, I expect operators to take a much longer-term view to this."

He agrees with Cisco about a number of the M2M opportunities and finds it significant that the company is making this move. "Normally, you see some of the startups or smaller companies trying to differentiate themselves. From that aspect, ... it is actually in some ways refreshing to see a market leader like Cisco do this."

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports IT Pro Ranking: Smartphone and Tablet OSes (subscription required).

Ruckus may not be one of the biggest companies in the WLAN market, but they are certainly among the most innovative. The Ruckus antenna story makes those of us who care about things like coverage patterns and beam forming get all tingly, and their latest client-facing feature set aims to balance extremely high performance with minimal client pain for getting securely connected in interesting new ways. There’s a lot to talk about here.

The big story with Ruckus at the wireless network edge is a technology dubbed BeamFlex. Nowadays, every WLAN player that has a prayer of claiming market share has a feature called “beam forming”. Simply put, beam forming varies the energy at the transmit antennas in ways that are meant to optimize and shape output signals for the benefit of each wireless client. There’s a lot of engineering-speak behind beam forming, but for our purposes, some methodology controls the manipulation of phasing out multiple antennas, and if it’s done properly, clients will benefit from better quality signal and higher data rates. Despite marketing hype, there are lab studies that WLAN makers don’t always get it quite right.

In reality, there are different ways to achieve beam forming. Some are simple to understand and have debatable results when a wireless environment is populated with mobile devices that are used at every angle (and antenna orientation) imaginable. Then there’s Ruckus’ BeamFlex. BeamFlex uses adaptive antenna technology to take the notion of beam forming to a whole other place aimed at putting the competition to shame. Ruckus’ antenna magic is like no one else’s on the market, of that there is no doubt. Whether you buy in to the Ruckus product line or not, the company does a wonderful job of telling their own story through a number of videos and white papers that are refreshingly devoid of the typical marketing noise that pervades the enterprise wireless world. I recommend the Ruckus web site at www.ruckuswireless.com, if just for the tutorials on beam forming and other highly technical wireless topics distilled down to very understandable form.

Moving downstream from the antenna, Ruckus has just announced the new FlexConnect feature set that simplifies provisioning secure access for the growing multitude of mobile devices likely to hit any corporate wireless network. Though WPA2 and 802.1x have become staples of the laptop-centric WLAN, getting a variety of device types configured at the supplicant level can be onerous and time-consuming. FlexConnect answers the challenge for Ruckus environments in a couple of different ways.

One of the FlexConnect tools called Zero IT is a framework for getting clients configured with proper supplicant settings (think Cloudpth’s XPressConnect functionality for loose analogy). This is where EAP type, credentials, servers and certificates, and certain Active Directory parameters are set in what otherwise can take several steps to accomplish manually.

Also part of FlexConnect, Dynamic PSK creates per-user encryption keys that provide an alternative to RADIUS-based WPA encryption methodologies (we’re seeing this offered by more Wi-Fi vendors as a convenient answer to clunky traditional client security methods). There are numerous options to using per-user pre-shares, and when done properly are great for self-service while meeting enterprise security requirements.

A tool called SpeedFlex also makes troubleshooting smart devices easier by running a battery of tests from each client when trouble is afoot. All in all, current Ruckus customers that have ZoneDirector controller-based networks will do well by adding the functionality of FlexConnect. For those unfamiliar with Ruckus, the company is starting to make noise in several customer spaces, and is one to watch as a frequent innovator.

At the time of publication, Ruckus is not a client of and has no business relationship with Lee Badman.