As data rates increase in the Enterprise LAN 10/100 or Fast Ethernet is quickly being moved out and replaced with Gigbit switching. Some manufacturers and lines do not even offer a 10/100 product. Below is a quick overview of the Gigabit offerings available today from manufacturers Catalyst distributes.
QoS is in higher demand as networks grow and complexity of traffic patterns increase. Large file transfers can clog networks. High Internet usage can bog down connections with useless traffic from social network sites or sites like YouTube. Properly configured QoS or Quality of Service, can help to remove the negative effect of traffic patterns. Extreme Networks is well known for excellent QoS. Deep queue buffers and robust algorithms can allow for 100 percent utilization of your data switches. Keep reading for a quick QoS configuration for Avaya (and other vendors) VoIP.
DEFCON 16 and Black Hat are security centric conferences recently held in Las Vegas where Aruba Networks provided the wireless infrastructure. In a self descriptive FAQ of the environment to be expected (quoting from the FAQ site)
Q: Is there a free network at DEFCON?
A: Yes. It would be fair to describe the network as ‘hostile’. It has been described as ‘the worlds most hostile network’, but such descriptions are just attempts at flattery. It is recommended that if you want to connect to the DEFCON network pretend that you are sharing out your entire hard drive to 5,000 hackers. You may want to bring a ‘clean’ computer that you don’t mind being infected/hacked/etc…
In light of the environment Aruba reported some statistics:
Soft Console can make the life of an operator position much more intuitive. The Avaya IP Office application allows a user to see the status of hundreds of users and groups in an organized and useful application. Soft Console is not a softphone, it still requires a phone, and works best with a headset tied to the phone. In this mode the user can manage the entire process from a PC. Combine this experience with a Touch-Screen or Tablet PC and the receptionist position just went into the next century.
The baby firewall from the Juniper NetScreen line has finally reached it End Of Life announcement. The small but robust firewall was the low end of the extensive NetScreen line of firewalls. The firewall worked great for fixed Ethernet installations ranging from a few users to around 30 users. One of the best points of this firewall, was that all the features of the bigger firewalls were included in it’s feature set. Now the NS-5GT has been replaced by an even better offering.
The Aruba Remote Access Point solution has gotten the attention of the kudos club. The idea is simple, take a single device and plug it in to any Ethernet connection with access to the public Internet. The Remote Access Point or RAP will find it’s way back to it’s controller, and create a secure VPN tunnel between the main site and the RAP. The policies from the controller can also be pushed to the RAP. This extends the corporate wireless to a very mobile, yet secure solution.
Juniper recently released it’s Ethernet switching line. Fortunately they did not approach the market in a Me-too manner. Engineers actually thought about Ethernet switch implementation and designed some truly insightful features into the switch. Here are some advantages of this great new switch by Juniper.