Internet of Things – MEC Networks Corporation

A Peek Inside Aruba’s Smart Digital Workplace Ecosystem

MEC Digital — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 06:38:26 +0000

The Workplace of the Future is Here Today

Aruba is collectively tackling the distinctive intersection of physical design and workplace technology to continually evolve our ‘future of work’ vision.

The latest santa clara headquarters design combines Aruba’s networking and location technologies to deal with key use cases. This provides advantages for workers and facilities groups. The workplace includes partner innovations like connected furniture, wireless charging, phone pods, and soundscaping.

Watch this new 4-minute video of their headquarters tour:

Download Free Aruba Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post A Peek Inside Aruba’s Smart Digital Workplace Ecosystem appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Aruba Named As the Sole Leader in the Forrester New Wave

MEC Digital — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 05:44:51 +0000

“Aruba Leads the Pack” is how Forrester puts it in their recent report, The Forrester New Wave: Wireless Solutions, Q3 2019 – The Eight Solutions That Matter Most and How They Stack Up. The objective of the report is to assist infrastructure and operations professionals to choose the proper partner for their requirements for both Wi-Fi and the burgeoning need to connect a large range of IoT devices and protocols as a part of their digital transformation.

Aruba is the only vendor within the “Leaders” class, delivering, in our opinion, a commanding performance that features a differentiated rating, the highest possible in 6 out of the 10 evaluation criteria provided by Forrester:

Wireless connectivity
Wireless hardware
Spectrum/device visibility
Security
Solution positioning
Road map

Forrester’s view that the new wave of wireless solutions embodies wayfinding, location services, and IoT connectivity aligns closely with the capabilities in Aruba’s wireless portfolio. As Aruba’s CTO, Partha Narasimham says, “the network has become the central nervous system” for IT – enabling services that offer location data and real-time directions, visibility into assets and other people to boost operations and connecting Internet-of-things (IoT) devices to the business to support digital transformation.

Wi-Fi As An IoT Platform is More Than Connectivity

The world of IoT comprises various device types but conjointly a wide variety of protocols. Wi-Fi 6, Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 enable “things” from door locks to electronic shelf labels to insulin monitors to act with the network in order to deliver exceptional user experiences and value to the business.

Traditionally, it’s needed to stand up overlay networks to accommodate these protocols, but now, as highlighted within the Forrester report, wireless connectivity solutions should expand beyond Wi-Fi. For this reason, Aruba has integrated support for IoT protocols in our latest Wi-Fi 6 access points and can be allowing new IoT growth radios to assist existing customers to maximize investment protection – for additional data, look into our IoT session at mobility Field Day 4. But you don’t become the leader of the pack by stopping at easy connectivity. Aruba starts at the start of the IoT value chain to deliver a holistic solution—from setup to application integration to a business result. Beyond the networking infrastructure, the main focus of our IoT solution is to simply enable third-party integrations with our ArubaEdge partners, which include:

Siemens – for converged, plant-wide networks that bridge OT and IT.
EnOcean – for connected lighting, sensors, and different systems
SES-Imagotag – for electronic shelf labels
Solu-M – for electronic shelf labels
Zebra Technologies – for tablets, imagers, scanners, and printers
ZF Openmatics – for industrial-grade asset tracking solutions
And additional partners listed on our IoT ecosystem

The Aruba wireless LAN is front-and-center, providing Dynamic Segmentation to deliver intelligent deep packet review that isolates mission-critical applications, separates them from the remainder of the network and forwards their traffic to the suitable destination. This level of insight is essential to make sure that the network is optimized for the convergence of IoT systems while minimizing the impact on mobile users.

Based on Forrester’s evaluation, Aruba is the best fit for corporations needing advanced wireless services – and this is why we believe they named Aruba as the Leader in this business-critical spectrum.

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Aruba Named As the Sole Leader in the Forrester New Wave appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Facing the Cybersecurity Talent Shortage

MEC Digital — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 05:07:49 +0000

In the Philippines, the Cybersecurity Awareness Month is held every September, while in the U.S, it’s celebrated in October. In both occasions, it is a collaborative effort between the government and the industry to raise awareness on how crucial and important Cybersecurity is. However, the real question is, “Is awareness enough?”

Studies revealed that there’s a shortage of talent to fill cybersecurity positions all over the world. Unfilled cybersecurity jobs due to a severe scarcity of available individuals with the right skills are currently estimated to be close to 3 million globally. That’s quite a number, considering the changing threat landscape and the increasing frequency of cyber-attacks organizations must face.

This talent pool problem is not new. The issue has been highlighted by the industry for the last 5 to 10 years. The cybersecurity skill gap continues to accelerate and is now considered one of the top cybersecurity risks faced by many organizations.

A Systematic Issue

In this age of data breach, the real challenge goes beyond the lack of professionals. There is not enough interest generated in schools. This leads to fewer graduates with technical skills and discipline. Even today’s technology users suffer from a lack of knowledge on basic threats, putting the organization they work for at risk. All these branches out from the failure to understand that cybersecurity is everyone’s job.

How can Tech Providers Help?

Closing the talent gap will require support from both the public and private sectors through education, training, and mentoring for both professional and everyday tech users. Since the threat landscape is evolving, proper and regular cybersecurity updates become an imperative for individuals and organizations.

MEC Networks has a proven track record of providing trainings and enabling customers through regular knowledge transfer initiatives. Through this, we guarantee that our clients receive quality support and information in every stage of their ICT development. If you would like to arrange an in-depth workshop for you and your organization, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

The post Facing the Cybersecurity Talent Shortage appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Aruba Named As A Leader in 2019 Magic Quadrant For Wired And Wireless Access Infrastructure By Gartner

MEC Digital — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 08:23:57 +0000

We excited to share that for fourteen years running, Gartner has once again positioned HPE (Aruba), a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, as a leader within the Magic Quadrant for the Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure. We believe you don’t get to be a leader without the backing and support of the customers who implement the technology. Our Leader placement is a validation of Aruba’s mobile-first, cloud-native, AI-driven vision and our ability to deliver extremely valued wired and wireless capabilities to the market.

Dynamic Segmentation utilizes user role, device, application, and location insights from Aruba’s Policy enforcement Firewall (PEF) to section and isolate wired and wireless traffic based on centralized policies managed by ClearPass Policy Manager.

Commitment to improving customer outcomes

Our core strategy is to provide solutions that deliver world-class experiences for IT operators and their users. the following capabilities are a testament to that strategy:

Security and Compliance – Security is at the heart of the Aruba solution and is used in a range of key use cases to provide IT with advanced visibility and management. employing a distinctive, software-defined approach to policy, Aruba’s Dynamic Segmentation capability dramatically simplifies network operations by abstracting segmentation from the underlying infrastructure. A complement to Dynamic Segmentation, Aruba’s new ClearPass Device Insight (CDI) is purpose-built to handle the challenges related to securing IoT devices that can’t authenticate. It leverages machine learning and crowdsourcing to automate the discovery and fingerprinting of all IoT devices on any wired or Wi-Fi network – regardless of the vendor. ClearPass Device Insight’s cloud delivery platform leverages shared community learnings to spot newly-introduced devices and automates authentication and policy enforcement down to the device and user level. If any device exhibits abnormal behavior, ClearPass will automatically quarantine or remove it from the network mitigating the safety risk. Learn more regarding CDI here.
Automation – From provisioning to troubleshooting to remediation, Aruba has worked closely with customers to spot common challenges in an attempt to simplify the lives of IT operators. By introducing automation into the network life cycle, IT can take advantage of closed-loop monitoring, troubleshooting, and remediation to optimize the network experience and accelerate problem-solving. AOS-CX is a marquee example of how this can be delivered to enterprise networks. Learn more during this blog by Tom Black, and dive deeper into switching innovations like NetEdit and the Network Analytics Engine (NAE).
Artificial Intelligence – to retort quickly to dynamic business desires, IT should unendingly optimize the allocation of its resources to target strategic company priorities. Aruba’s comprehensive and various information sample size, combined with decades of domain and information science experience, is manufacturing helpful security and network configuration outcomes that free IT operators to target strategic priorities that grow the business. each device and connection is treated as a network sensor, proactively gathering and analyzing information to detect potential network problems and suggest corrective actions before they impact end-users. Learn more from HPE Discover 2019.

Aruba’s Edge Architecture

As our customers commence a journey through today’s mobile, IoT, and cloud era, Aruba’s edge architecture provides the intelligence, automation, and flexibility needed to achieve higher security, assurance, and agility. Extending across campus and branch environments, Aruba designed our solutions to be cloud-native, and ensure a uniform IT experience and seamless connectivity for end-users and IoT.

About the Magic Quadrant

Gartner doesn’t endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its analysis publications, and doesn’t advise technology users to select solely those vendors with the best ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of truth. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, concerning this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for the Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure, Bill Menezes, Tim Zimmerman, Christian Canales, Mike Toussaint, 24 September 2019 Aruba’s 14 years of placement includes HPE (Aruba) within the Magic Quadrant for the Wired & Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure from 2015-2019 (5 years), Aruba Networks in the same Magic Quadrant from 2012-2014 (3 years) and in the Magic Quadrant for Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure from 2006-2011 (6 years).

Download Free Aruba Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Aruba Named As A Leader in 2019 Magic Quadrant For Wired And Wireless Access Infrastructure By Gartner appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

National Teacher’s Month: Embracing Digital Learning

MEC Digital — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 06:44:59 +0000

Education is of the highest importance in Filipino culture. It is ingrained in our belief system that the best thing for us and our children is to secure a better future through education.

As we all are aware of now, the only thing constant in this era of digital transformation is change. This holds true in the Education Sector as well. While it is no secret that the Philippines is still lagging in the e-learning industry, more and more schools have adopted technologies over the past years to help students develop 21st-century skills.

Gone are the days when students sit in the classroom and rely solely on listening to lectures to learn. Today’s education must be collaborative and interactive but the question is, “how can schools achieve an engaged learning environment for their students?” That’s where the right technology solutions come in.

In this article, we’ll talk about the benefits of an E-Learning environment and how principals, school administrators, and educators can help make a holistic learning environment using smart solutions.

Benefits of E-Learning:

1.) Scalability – Create and communicate new policies, trainings, ideas, and concepts easily with Online learning to as many educators and students as possible.

2.) Personalization – Each student has a unique way of learning. Digital Learning makes it easier to cater to each student’s individual needs. It allows students to choose what and when to learn at their own pace.

3.) Better learning retention – The modern student prefers interactive learning materials. They would rather choose to watch a video or listen to a podcast than read through tons of pages of a book. With the right tools, educators can design their curriculum to be more interactive. The more engaging the learning material is, the higher the retention of knowledge. Refreshing and updating the learning materials can be done easily too.

4.) Saves time and money – With e-learning, students can access learning materials anywhere and anytime. It also reduces time away from the workplace/classroom and eliminates the need for travel.

How to achieve a holistic learning environment:

1.) Connectivity – Securing a fast and consistent network connectivity coverage throughout the classroom and campuses can be a challenge for school administrators. That’s where a reliable backbone and a future-proof network comes to play. A reliable cabling infrastructure ensures a faster and more efficient connectivity operation while a network paired with advanced wireless capability can facilitate day-to-day functions while being ready for the future.

2.) Cybersecurity – With your students going online, cybersecurity becomes a huge priority. Parents may not be at ease about their child’s online learning environment knowing that the online world is filled with a wild mess of content. An integrated, preventive, and responsive cybersecurity solution can provide the highest level of protection in an ever-changing threat landscape, protecting your most valuable asset, your students.

3.) Physical Security – Every campus should be a learning environment that is safe for both the learners and educators. Employing robust end-to-end security that contains most vulnerabilities in the infrastructure is vital.

Benefits of E-Learning:

While there are tons of benefits that Digital Learning can give, there are also drawbacks like students and educators become so technologically dependent and of course, the start-up cost it entails to go digital. Despite these, Digital Learning continues to grow in popularity and is considered as an effective learning delivery method. We are not saying that traditional teaching methods should be obsolete, academic institutions just have to be more open to new educational opportunities. To ensure balance, the blended approach is the optimal way as there are certain types of curriculum where traditional methods work better.

With everything said, we are one with the government, advocacy groups, and the academe sector in building a nation where no learner is left behind. After all, continuous learning and education are still the greatest investments we could give to ourselves and the future generation.

The post National Teacher’s Month: Embracing Digital Learning appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Aruba Networks: Your Small Business Deserves A Wi-Fi That’s “Always-On”

MEC Digital — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 01:01:59 +0000

The best Wi-Fi experiences ar the hassle-free ones. Those where you connect instantly and stay on the network with no issues.

When college students sit down at a table to work on a project, they want to login with ease and spend the afternoon sipping coffee and searching the net. Patients at a doctor’s workplace need an equivalent convenience as they stream videos while expecting their appointment. For employees, Wi-Fi is crucial to supporting everything from point-of-sale systems to workers clocking in and out.

Whether you run salons, cafes, law offices or doctor practices, you simply need the Wi-Fi to work for you, the owner, and for anyone connecting to the network. Many Wi-Fi choices are out there, however, small businesses want more than basic home Wi-Fi and less than enterprise-grade Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi has to be quick, reliable and secure—but additionally simple and affordable. now all these hard-to-find items are together in one solution.

Designed for the Small and Mighty

With Aruba Instant On, a premium quality network is stress-free and small-business ready.

Created for small businesses with no or limited IT workers and about one hundred users, Aruba Instant On provides high-speed Wi-Fi that’s easy to set up and affordable to have. Business owners can concentrate on growing the business, not on getting the Wi-Fi to work.

Aruba Instant On offers the very latest Wi-Fi technology so your business will have a screaming quick experience even in a very busy workplace or store. At the same time, Aruba Instant On hits all the correct security points. Guests and staff will safely log in to the network and understand that payments are secure which sensitive information is protected.

Security and speed are what workers and guests see, however management and configuration hit small business owners in all the soft places, particularly around time and ease of use. an Aruba Instant On network is started in minutes. An intuitive mobile app guides you thru all the steps to set up the network to best suit your desires. If you’re not the do-it-yourself type, your IT adviser will get you up and running too. Either way, the network is straightforward to manage through a mobile app or a cloud-based browser.

Most businesses will need to separate users and network traffic to boost performance and tack on another layer of security. One portion of the network may well be confined to administrative work, like accounting or payroll, another for guest access, and a 3rd for point-of-sale traffic. This setup ensures that guest traffic stays become independent of business-critical traffic or payments. You also will limit how much bandwidth to use for guest Wi-Fi so that a client watching Netflix or enjoying a game won’t interfere with restocking inventory or closing the monthly books.

Built and supported by a trusted brand

Aruba Instant On is a set-it-and-forget-it experience that delivers premium Wi-Fi with built-in smarts. If you’re trying to find peace of mind, rest assured that you’ll have the trusty brand of Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company supporting you if one thing goes wrong. Wi-Fi specialists from a tech leader are available for queries, and an extended list of consultants can offer any aid you will need. Phone support is free for the primary ninety days and chat-only support is accessible for a complete year.

Download Free Aruba Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Aruba Networks: Your Small Business Deserves A Wi-Fi That’s “Always-On” appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Ruckus: Moving Forward With Digital Learning

MEC Digital — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 06:09:28 +0000

For numerous students and their parents, back to school means buying new garments, school supplies, and backpacks. For a few lucky ones, it means new EdTech also – laptop, tablet, phone, headset, etc. Of course, when convincing mom and dad “It’s for a school assignment, honest!”

But for faculty directors, assistant superintendents, Chief academic Officers, and school boards, it’s also about the way to transition to digital learning to impart 21st century skills, or ‘4 C’s’ of creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration in addition to the ‘3 R’s’ of reading, writing and arithmetic!

Migrating to a more digital syllabus creates many challenges to be navigated. Among them, how much network will our school need to connect everything, since our lecturers will now rely on the network to finish their lessons? How can we address digital equity ESP? For our more deprived students who lack reliable net access at home? Or defend our students from cybersecurity risks, as the online activity could lead them to inappropriate content, or inadvertent behavior as digital natives who can follow them to school or work?

Is there a method to do all this, or at least some of it, while making our students safer at school? From campus-wide threats like storms, fires, to easily wellness threats like smoking and vaping. Vaping is spreading to high schools like an endemic.

The benefits of Digital Learning

At Ruckus, we’ve monitored, researched and spoken out regarding the challenges of the ‘5 Phases of Digital Learning Transition’ – with digital tools enabling pedagogy to evolve from Lab-centric, to Teacher-centric, to Student-centric, to Community-centric to Global-centric. Every phase has its infrastructure requirements to get a correct foundation – like multigigabit networks, Wi-Fi 6, Cat 6A cabling, cloud-managed networks and ultimately IoT and LTE to drive efficiency and improve equity.

In a recent survey conducted by CDE, analysis shows faculties have transitioned from phase 2 to phase 3 these past few years and want to transition to phase 4 over the next number of years. which phase is your faculty at, and where would you prefer to be? look at this colorful infographic to find out more!

Meanwhile, some faculties are implementing eSports programs, powered by networks with high bandwidth and low latency, to teach cooperation, competitive spirit, coding, and STEM. Best of all, most any student can play, therefore making a more comprehensive environment than traditional athletic programs.

So, faculties, these days are far from the grid-arrayed desks and overhead projectors of their parent’s day. And who knows what the long run holds in store? Stay tuned… class is in session!

The post Ruckus: Moving Forward With Digital Learning appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Ruckus: Top 5 Advantages of Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi

MEC Digital — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 21:49:37 +0000

Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi allows IT departments to provision, monitor, optimize and troubleshoot an enterprise-grade Wi-Fi network with intuitive simplicity via one internet dashboard or mobile app. In this blog post, we’ll list the top five reasons to adopt ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi, together with our five favorite reports generated by Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi.

The Advantages of Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi

Cost savings: ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi is based on a ‘pay as you grow model. In real-world terms, this suggests capacity is added as required – and customers aren’t forced to buy and maintain a physical or virtual appliance.
Security: Contrary to widespread belief, the cloud is a secure alternative. Data in transit and at-rest is encrypted with state-of-the-art security. All security patches are applied to the hardware employed in cloud and systems – and are carefully monitored around the clock.
Speed: Projects can be completed at an accelerated rate within the cloud. Wi-Fi is activated and quickly deployed as there aren’t any hardware appliances to configure.
Up-to-date software and no manual upgrades: New features are automatically delivered to the client account. This implies client IT teams don’t need to plan or expend time and resources performing advanced upgrade procedures.
High availability (HA), Disaster Recovery (DR) and 24/7 support: Customers don’t need to plan or purchase further equipment and licensing for HA and DR.

Our five favorite Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi reports

Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi additionally offers built-in reports backed by an enormous data engine, that stores up to six months of elaborate reporting information. Let’s take a better look at our top five favorite Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi reports.

Top Clients: this is often a favorite for debugging, particularly for IT groups tracing and analyzing bandwidth use.
Application Visibility: Viewing the top 10 applications on the network is of immense importance to its administrators. this is often because faculty IT departments are concerned regarding their network capabilities. Indeed, curriculums are going digital, whereas video streaming is predicted to comprise 80th of all internet traffic by 2021.
Session Inventory: basically, this is often a workhorse report. Public libraries habitually leverage the Session Inventory to report the Wi-Fi usage of their systems to their cities and counties.
Client Reports: These are primarily used to audit the operating systems and devices joining the network.
Unique Clients: This report lists the number of distinctive clients on a network. However, it should be noted that there’s more to this report than meets the eye. More specifically, the black line represents 5 GHz clients, whereas the blue line represents 2.4 GHz clients. A blue line on top of the black line is cause for concern, as this means the network is carrying additional clients on 2.4 GHz than 5.0 GHz. In a pinch, this report can also give a rough glimpse of the RF health of the network.

Download Free Ruckus Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading wired and wireless solutions experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Ruckus: Top 5 Advantages of Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Quantum: The “Chill Factor” in a Secured Backup and Archive Solution

MEC Digital — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 08:55:41 +0000

The topic of data growth and security continues to be a challenge for several organizations. The question to “air-gap” or not to “air-gap” is systematically being posed across all industries as they think about a solid backup and archive strategy. Once it involves how and where to invest, air-gapping becomes the last item on the checklist, and understandably so. Data keeps growing and whereas budgets might increase slightly, IT resources are forecasted to remain flat, according to IDC. With such a big amount of avant-garde technologies out there, it appears tape is shrinking in its usage. However, tape’s distinctive ability (despite its advanced age) to morph into a sustainably green, secure, and extremely cost-efficient alternative to different backup and archive solutions permits it to remain relevant – even over cloud alternatives. I’d say a rebound may be on the horizon…

So what’s the chill factor?

As in weather, the wind chill will verify how cold it feels on your skin once the wind is factored in. Likewise, organizations nowadays should perceive their data to see how hot or cold it’s to leverage the acceptable storage solution that’s efficient yet price effective. Much of the data in additional expensive primary storage is cold. Cold data is just sometimes used data. IDC estimates that about 400th of the 7.5 ZB of data are commercially connected and of that, about 60 minutes are cold data or data with expected retrieval of larger than thirty days. This data may be a good candidate for tape storage in your data center or within the cloud. And hey, cold storage doesn’t need a great deal of power and cooling.

Security

Tape continues to be the de facto to secure your cold storage/long-term data. Fact is, the physical air-gap between tapes and the network merely doesn’t allow malware/ransomware or hackers to break through to reach offline data. The goal of these evil agents is to destabilize and destroy the ability to self-recover and then demand a ransom. We’ve heard several stories and firms withdrawing from business because of the vulnerability of keeping all data online. Whereas any online data is destroyed by an eventual hacker, the data stored firmly on tape is untouched with its integrity intact.

Considering each cost and damage created by these attacks, and the astronomical hit on your resources and valuable time that would be spent on managing important data, there are quite enough reasons to make the best protection of your crucial data on tape. Sure, you’ll keep cold data on hot disk, however, the simplest approach is to tier it off to the foremost cost-efficient alternative – tape. That’s why we extremely suggest the 3-2-1-1 approach to protection. At the end of the day, what matters is “are you able to recover?”. If your data is chilled, there’s no reason to tremble.

Economics

Determining the worth of your data can assist you to perceive the ultimate storage solution needed. Never underestimate the worth of your historical data. We live in a world where our “always online” approach to life opens the door to a barrage of threats. The great news is, economics is on your facet. Tape remains the cheapest price for storage on the market nowadays, and the predictable future. At less than $50/TB, as long as data is preserved on tape, it’ll provide you with a very cheap total cost of ownership (TCO).

Taking these factors into consideration can bring a tiering approach to your backup and archive strategy and enable the right protection approach for the kind of data in need of saving, cooling, and securing.

Download Free Quantum Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Quantum: The “Chill Factor” in a Secured Backup and Archive Solution appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.

Aruba Networks: Developing an IP Address Plan for Wi-Fi

MEC Digital — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 02:49:16 +0000

Architecture overview

Your address plan ought to be created in conjunction with your wireless design. Wireless APs among your four-building campus, managed by controllers in your off-campus data center, can have address allocation significantly different from a worldwide environment with controllers in every workplace. Additionally, forcing all wireless traffic through a tagged VLAN on your centrally placed controllers instead of dumping traffic local to the end-user LAN changes the plan and troubleshooting strategies.

As I run through an address plan for wireless, I approach it in IP address-to-User ratios based on SSID function and region. Sound odd? Follow me on this.

Corporate-user SSID: Most company users have a laptop, company-issued mobile phone and perhaps a tablet. Expect {that each|that every} of these devices can connect with the wireless network at the same time each consuming an IP address. If there are four hundred staff within the campus connecting to that SSID, you’ll want a minimum of a 4:1 ratio for coverage. During this example, that’s 1,600 addresses, therefore, you should reserve a /21.
Vendor SSID: For your vendor guests giving presentations, you’ll be able to expect every user can have a laptop and a mobile phone (2:1 ratio). how frequently these guests show up to your workplace are some things for you to analyze but plan for an average of one-hour conferences. Add an extra 30 minutes to that time, shorten the DHCP lease to avoid address exhaustion and you’ll be able to avoid DHCP exhaustion. If you carved out a /24 you’d probably have enough addresses. it’d be laborious to imagine a region hosting 255 simultaneous devices.
Guest SSID: Guest access gets a bit difficult. For the company environment, I plan a similar ratio as I do vendor access. For the service industry—bars, restaurants, and retail—I’ll consider only mobile devices, and perhaps add a “point” for the occasional man that’s “working from home.” The good thing concerning the service industry is you recognize the absolute most quantity of bodies you want to support. Look on top of the doorway and you’ll see the fire marshals required, “maximum occupancy” sign. If it’s a hundred individuals, use a 1.5:1 ratio. meaning a /24 would work for your operation.

The CIDR mask might change depending on how wireless traffic is offloaded to the local area network. When I mentioned the off-site controllers handling all the campus access points, you’d probably want a complete /21 for four hundred users with four devices. The situation changes if you offload that traffic locally to the building, tho’ the address block might stay the same.

In that case, you’ll only want a /24 per building to service those DHCP needs and you’re taking that from your supernet. It’s necessary to understand the function, estimated device count and where wireless is offloaded on a per SSID basis when considering your address allocations.

Carving Out Space

When I begin planning an addressing scheme in a brownfield environment, I prefer to start with the present IP address usage. Let’s use the medium-sized campus example. There’s an off-site data center, however, Wi-Fi traffic is offloaded to the wire nearest to the client. Let’s additionally assume that there are 5 branch offices connected via a wide area network.

In the figure, I show IP address blocks in use for this instance. For Wi-Fi, I’d open a brand new block within the RFC 1918 area for wireless clients. Keep in mind to keep your subnets within the natural CIDR boundaries so that your route lookups and summarization is optimal.

Within the campus, you may expect a hundred users per building and at a 4:1 ratio, that’s four hundred IP addresses per building for your company wireless SSID. I’d reserve a /23 for every building. Your WAN connected offices are a bit smaller and a /24 would meet their needs, even at the device ratio, we’re considering. With a remote data center, you wouldn’t expect loads of wireless devices at once. planning a /25 with 126-usable addresses, or a /26 with 62-useable addresses would be enough for engineers needing to work in the data center.

I recommend utilizing address space outside the “normal” corporate wired network blocks. within the figure, I showed usage within 10.0.0.0/8. If this were my network, I’d assign wireless to 192.168.0.0/16 or 172.16.0.0/12. After I log into a router to examine routes, seeing the 172’s or 192’s within the routing table instantly informs me of these are wireless networks. It’s just one of those “hints” that facilitate me with troubleshooting and I’ll take all the hints I will get at 3 am!

This exercise applies to IPv4. If you wish to induce bold, reserve and assign IPv6 address space for your Wi-Fi clients…then you merely think about subnets instead of host IPs. However, that’s another discussion.

Parting Thoughts

Some of these ratios won’t apply to your organization. I wouldn’t expect them to. What I’m attempting to do in this article is to offer some concepts concerning correct planning. In my experience, improper planning causes massive problems but is one that is most easily avoided.

I have worked in organizations that owned massive swaths of non-RFC 1918 subnets that they used internally. You wouldn’t need to re-IP your data center for an unforeseen IP conflict. However, I never needed to burn that space for wireless. Using RFC 1918 blocks for wireless sounded like a decent plan because it was simple to adjust within the event of overlap and you preserved valuable IPv4 addresses. Your situation might vary, however, the concept remains the same.

The troubleshooting problem at the start of this article related to a) offloading all wireless traffic in the data center instead of on the local LAN, b) junior employees assuming all subnets were /24’s, and c) poorly documented global address assignments. Your address plan must be thought out, documented, and versatile. Particularly in the IPv4 space. If you’re adjusting your Wi-Fi infrastructure, have all the heat maps, all the BOMs, however, leave address planning to chance and you’re hurting yourself and therefore the guys who help fix problems.

Download Free Aruba Resource

Get access to authentic content from one of the leading experts in the world from the Philippines’ premiere technology provider.

The post Aruba Networks: Developing an IP Address Plan for Wi-Fi appeared first on MEC Networks Corporation.