For most of the decade that began in 2000 LAN design was very staid. The basic design guidelines were well established, few new technologies were introduced into the market and the major vendors each had their market share and those shares changed little over the decade. You could argue that during that decade that the enterprise LAN architect was as busy as the proverbial Maytag repairman. However, as we will show in the next four newsletters, that situation has dramatically changed.
Virtualization, cloud computing dominate Interop
One of the biggest changes in branch office and campus LANs has been the growth in the deployment of wireless LANs (WLAN). It was only a few years ago when enterprise IT organizations in most industries were telling us that they had made only very limited deployment of WLANs. Now that situation has changed and driven in part by the deployment of high speed wireless LAN technologies, WLANs are being widely deployed. Another factor driving the growth in the deployment of WLANs has been the amazing proliferation of wireless handheld devices, most notably smartphones and tablets.
Quiz: Can you identify the misfires, milestones and high jinks from Interops past?
Some enterprise IT organizations are looking to deploy WLANs for the first time, while others are looking at deploying their second generation of WLANs. In either case, there are some interesting options available in the market from myriad vendors. Some of the options include how much intelligence resides in the access points, the physical vs. virtual nature of the controllers and the degree to which the WLAN integrates with the wired LAN from both a network and network management perspective.
The bottom line is that wired and wireless LAN technology is changing rapidly and that creates new and better LAN design options. It can also create confusion relative to which technologies are ready for production, which technologies are still being developed and which ones have already passed their prime. To dive into those questions and resolve at least some of the confusion about LAN technologies in general, Jim is moderating a panel at Interop entitled “Breakthrough LAN Technologies” on May 10 at 3:30 p.m. The panelists work for a wide array of vendors including LSI, Blue Socket, Juniper, Extreme Networks and Cisco. If you are going to be at the conference, plan on attending this session to find out what new LAN technologies make sense in your network.
