The Lippis Report

June 10th, 2008

Data centers are the largest single IT investment CIOs and business leaders appropriate. Data center networking is leading edge by default and where high-speed links and new approaches are first deployed. While data centers are consolidating and becoming increasingly virtualized, networking requirements are fundamentally changing. High performance end-of-row and top-of-rack network switches are uniquely positioned to increase network throughput and reduce operational spend. I talk with Doug Murray VP/GM of Extreme Networks about new data center design options thanks to its Summit X650 high end Ethernet switch. If you're designing a data center network, then you need to listen to this podcast.

June 2nd, 2008

The Cisco mobility group has always had the broadest view and product portfolio for mobility solutions. Their definition of mobility expands beyond wireless LANs to include cellular, VPNs, and location services. But last week the Cisco mobility group elevated their value proposition beyond physical and geographic independent networked computing with the launch of Cisco Motion. Cisco Motion offers the broadest technical and business architecture for mobile networks and communications positioning Cisco far from its smaller WLAN competitors such as Aruba, Meru, Trapeze, et al.

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June 2nd, 2008

By ProCurve Networking by HP

ProCurve is the new heart of the Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs) around the world, having replaced outdated switching equipment with advanced technology from HP ProCurve. This new networking infrastructure enables the MTCs to showcase Microsoft’s leading-edge technologies to its most important enterprise and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) customers. Established in 2001, each MTC has a team of architects that work with customers to plan, design and evaluate customized solutions – using Microsoft and partner technologies including ProCurve – prior to deployment in their customers’ own IT environments. In this high-tech and mission-critical environment, it is essential that a secure, reliable, high-performance network infrastructure is in place.

June 2nd, 2008

By Cisco Systems

Today the aggregation edge of the network must be capable of managing massive video traffic growth and changes in the upstream and downstream mix resulting from Web 2.0 and collaborative business applications. Managing the ever-growing complexity of policy management and the integrity of the user experience is essential, yet emerging network requirements are occurring at a faster and faster rate. Service provider and enterprise networks are being transformed, and having the right solution at the network edge is increasingly important. This technological disruption has created new complexities and challenges for first-generation network edge designs. Cisco® has created a new router processor to enable the delivery of a new price/performance class for high-end enterprise customer premises, enterprise WAN, and service provider edge routing solutions: the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers.

This paper describes the carrier-class characteristics of these routers and can provide technical decision makers, network engineers, and technically minded business development managers with a basic knowledge of the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router architecture.

June 2nd, 2008

By Ruckus Wireless

Businesses are struggling with the complexity and cost of installing and managing large-scale WLANs. Wi-Fi meshing is a solution to this problem. An enterprise mesh WLAN is made up of a group of cooperating APs, only some of which are directly attached to Ethernet. The APs form a wireless topology to route client traffic between any member of the mesh and the wired network. Meshing greatly reduces, if not eliminates, WLAN cabling costs and delays as well as AP placement constraints. But despite these compelling benefits, most enterprises have not overcome their concerns over the performance, reliability and complexity of mesh WLANs to take advantage of it on a broad scale.

June 2nd, 2008

By Ruckus Wireless

With physical data rates up to 600Mbps, many believe that 802.11n will replace wired networks within the enterprise and at home. But there's significant disparity between the 802.11n promise and the actual throughput experienced by users of the current generation of 802.11n systems. The most overlooked and under-optimized aspect of commercial 802.11n systems is the control over radio frequency (RF) variability. A robust, responsive RF layer is central to wireless network performance, particularly for Wi-Fi which operates in the open spectrum. It is ironic that most of the system products based on 802.11n, designed to make maximum use of the RF domain, do little in this regard beyond integrating more radio chains and antennas.

Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi technology combines advances in miniaturized multi-element antenna design and sophisticated RF routing software to direct signals onto the best paths in real time to deliver the highest possible performance and reliability in ever changing RF conditions. It also features client- and media-intelligent QoS to optimize multimedia transmissions. With 802.11n, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi has been extended to optimize antenna operations with multiple radios and intelligent channel utilization software to overcome many of the challenges in realizing 802.11n's true potential.

June 2nd, 2008

By Nicholas John Lippis III

During the past ten years two organizing principles have dominated enterprise network design: to converge voice and data onto a single IP network and to exploit internet technologies for efficiency and gain. These simple principles unleashed innovative products and services that savvy business and IT leaders used to lower total cost of ownership and gain greater productivity, while forcing an entire industry of suppliers to restructure through mergers, acquisitions, private placements, initial public offerings, etc. But while the converged networking business cycle is in an accelerated stage thanks to unified communications, a new organizing principle is emerging that is centered on layering IP video on top of this converged network and promising to deliver greater value than its converged network predecessor. The IT industry is delivering on this new organizing principle as IP video is being massively consumed in consumer and corporate markets. This white paper provides a framework describing the impact of the IP video organizing principle on corporate networks with planning guidance for business and IT leaders to best prepare corporate operations for a new era in IP video-based collaboration, education and social networking.

June 2nd, 2008

Scott Lucas, Senior Director of Solutions Marketing for Extreme Networks is my guest as we discuss Extreme Networks' major product portfolio expansion and the launch of its widget central. Extreme launched its new Summit X350 fixed configuration switch for network edge applications plus 802.11n access points and controllers. A new version of ExtremeXOS with enhanced automation capabilities to help IT leaders reduce operational spend is now available too. Extending the usefulness of its flagship BlackDiamond 8800, it launched the "œC" Series of core switch interface and management blades for increased scalability and density of 1GbE and 10GbE ports plus PoE support. Extreme has created an ecosystem around the development of application widgets by exposing features and providing software developers access to its ExtremeXOS. This ecosystem is called Widget Central. I talk with Scott about the new design options and widgets available to network architects afforded by this launch.