The Lippis Report

May 3rd, 2010

This past Interop in Las Vegas was one of the best I have attended, since even before the economy took a noise dive in 2008. The tone and level of excitement of the industry’s growth potential was refreshingly up beat from the hundreds of IT and vendor executives I talked with. While the size of Interop is a small fraction of what it was in the late 1990s, (70k attendees with over 600 exhibitors to ~ 15K attendees with ~ 200 exhibitors) it still provides a pulse of the networking industry. In fact, Interop has come full circle, back to being a networking event even though it has added other topics. You have to give Dan Lynch credit for creating such a long lasting venue for our industry. Congratulations to Cisco, Arista Networks, HP/3Com, Mallonx for winning best of show in their respective categories and for Arista for winning Best of Interop. In this Lippis Report Research Note I provide the key industry themes that were evident at Interop this year.

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May 3rd, 2010

By Cisco Systems

A system wide feature of the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, CleanAir technology improves air quality by:
– Detecting RF interference that other systems can’t see
- Identifying the source and locating it on a floor plan
- Providing automatic adjustments to optimize wireless coverage around the interference

CleanAir technology provides the following benefits:
- Self-healing and self-optimizing wireless networks
- Faster troubleshooting for less downtime
- Effective policy enforcement

Layer 1 security

See how CleanAir technology avoids interference and speeds troubleshooting by watching this short video

May 3rd, 2010

By opusresearch

Disparate modes call for disparate measures. Avaya’s new unified communications architecture, Avaya Aura, supports self-service (based on the Voice Portal) and intelligent routing over IP and hybrid networks. Cross-channel interactions are coordinated by a new “Session Manager” function. This white paper provides an analyst view of Avaya’s Aura architecture.

Read it now by downloading this paper.

May 3rd, 2010

By HP/3Com/H3C

The convergence of storage and Ethernet onto a common end-to-end network infrastructure is still early in the evaluation stage as the (DCB) standards for Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) are not completely finished. Instead of collapsing both storage and data onto a common backbone, many IT leaders plan to keep the two technologies on dedicated networks for years to come, converging networks where and only when it makes sense for their business.

One area that seems ripe for this type of targeted FCoE deployment is at the server to network edge. This type of (in-the-rack) solution decouples access layer server and storage I/O consolation from end-end full fabric convergence – allowing customers to gain many near term practical benefits of 10GE I/O consolidation, including; dramatically reduced cost and complexity, simplified cabling, reduced power consumption and a 10X boost in network performance. This solution allows customers to extend rather than replace Fibre Channel, preserving the investments that organizations have made in their storage infrastructure while laying the foundation for broader network convergence in the future.

To learn more, download this paper from HP/3Com.

May 3rd, 2010

By Arista Networks

Can Ethernet compete with Infiniband in the low-latency trading and high performance computing markets? Administrators and IT professionals face a choice when deciding whether to invest in Infiniband or Ethernet for their low-latency networks. This paper addresses many of the characteristics of Infiniband that have made their way into Ethernet.

To learn more, download the Arista Networks whitepaper.

May 3rd, 2010

By Cisco Systems
This white paper addresses the RF interference challenges that result from high usage of a shared spectrum. It explores the limitations of standard Wi-Fi chip design and how this affects the ability of an IT organization to gather critical, actionable data about the wireless spectrum for effective troubleshooting. Finally, it introduces Cisco® CleanAir technology and explains how by integrating RF intelligence into the network, users gain tremendous insight into actual usage of the wireless spectrum. This insight is critical to proactively managing Wi-Fi networks to support mission-critical and latency-sensitive applications needed in today’s hospitals, distributed enterprises, manufacturing sites, retail stores, and offices.

To learn more, download the Cisco whitepaper.

May 3rd, 2010

There is huge growth in video traffic on corporate networks thanks primarily to on-demand video clips and increasingly video collaboration, TelePresence, video surveillance and Digital Signage. However, how do IT business leaders support the various forms of video on their corporate networks before a video tsunami wreaks havoc to network performance? Also, how do IT business leaders deliver a good video experience to a wide range of endpoints, such as, low bandwidth remote offices, mobile smartphones, WiFi connected laptops etc? Tere’ Bracco, Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco joins me to discuss Cisco’s Medianet technologies that offer an approach to managing and delivering video services over corporate IP networks.

Find out by listening to this podcast.

May 3rd, 2010

Our industry is in a compute innovation cycle thanks to virtualization and cloud computing and it’s changing fundamental networking requirements and design. These changes are beyond increased packet processing performance and ultra low latency. They extend to network design and product features that enable increased server virtualization scale, workload mobility and cloud computing. I discuss a new model for networking born out of data center virtualization and cloud computing with Doug Gourlay, Vice President Marketing at Arista Networks. This is Arista Networks’ first podcast; sure to be a classic.

Enjoy, Nick