Project "CleanWallet": The Newest Way To Separate Wi-Fi Customers From Their Money

The best pickpockets create a diversion before they dip and run. They'll bump into you, drop an object nearby, or yell something to catch your attention.

Distracted by the commotion, the extraction proceeds unnoticed. That is until you next reach for your money only to find it's gone missing. Never to be seen again.

This week at Interop Cisco created such a diversion when it announced the availability of a new hardware-based spectrum analyzer. With features remarkably similar to Aruba's recently announced software-based spectrum analyzer - and using words so closely paired to Aruba's that a plagiarist would swoon - Cisco proclaimed that the world at last had a solution for dirty air. The secret: a new line of access points containing - drum roll, please - an embedded ASIC. Did that get your attention?

Now for the dip. In order to get this feature you have to replace your existing access points. If you want clean air everywhere then you have to replace all of the access points in your network. Every single one. Brilliant!

You've got to credit where credit is due. Project "CleanWallet" is really a double-dip - once for new APs and once for the 802.11n APs you only just purchased. Even the Artful Dodger would be impressed.

Silly sods, us. Instead of forcing customers to divvy up cash to replace their access points, our new software-based spectrum analyzer works with all Aruba 802.11n access points, including those already installed. Aruba's spectrum analyzer is feature rich, and includes Fast Fourier Analysis, spectrograms, interference classification, and programmable recording/playback.

We don't require any new hardware to make spectrum analysis work, and for customers using our Wireless Intrusion Prevention Module the feature comes for free. Aruba's 802.11n access points are already significantly less expensive than Cisco's, so the entire Wi-Fi system, including spectrum analysis, is easy on your wallet.

If Project "CleanWallet" isn't your thing, give us a call. We'll prove that you don't have to pay through the nose or sacrifice features to get clean air.

Innovation Shouldn't Have To Be Delivered By Forklift

Ever notice how the latest and greatest innovation from some vendors invariably requires replacing the equipment you've already installed? Known as a "forklift" upgrade, these swap-outs benefit the vendor at the expense of the customer's time and money.

Let's face it, forklift upgrades are driven by vendor greed. The worst offenders make no apologies for their inability and/or unwillingness to design upgradable products. It's just not in their DNA. Product design recapitulates corporate philosophy, to paraphrase Haeckel.

There are existence proofs that a forklift is not a mandatory prerogative to obtain a new feature - even one incorporating a profoundly complex new technology. Therefore a forklift-based strategy must originate in a forklift-oriented mentality.

Case in point - spectrum analysis.

Wi-Fi networks operate in environments containing electrical and radio frequency devices that can interfere with network communications. 2.4 GHz cordless phones, microwave ovens, wireless telemetry systems, and even adjacent Wi-Fi networks are all potential sources of interference. Interference sources can be either continuous or intermittent, the latter being the most difficult to isolate.

The task of identifying interference typically falls to a spectrum analyzer, the gold standard for isolating RF impediments. Spectrum analyzers help isolate packet transmission issues, over-the-air quality of service problems, and traffic congestion caused by contention with other devices operating in the same channel or band. They are an essential tool to ensure that networks run as they should.

To be effective the analyzer needs to be in the right place at the right time. The ideal solution is a spectrum analyzer that’s built into the wireless LAN infrastructure, and can examine the spectral composition of the RF environment anywhere in the Wi-Fi network, at any time. Today vendors offer handheld spectrum analyzers as well as ones that require the addition of spectrum analysis monitors (effectively doubling the total number of access points on site for full coverage).

Rumors are that at least one vendor will be offering new access points with integrated spectrum analysis. Consistent with their company policy, however, a forklift upgrade will be required to use it.

Aruba has taken a completely different tack with spectrum analysis. Its recently introduced scientific-grade spectrum analyzer includes traditional tools such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), spectrograms, and interference source classification. It also includes powerful new features such as interference charts, channel quality measurement, and spectrum recording and playback.

Uniquely, the new spectrum analyzer works with all Aruba 802.11n access points, including those already in service. That is, a customer with an existing Aruba 802.11n deployment can enable spectrum analysis on any of their existing access points without adding any new hardware. None.

And the cost? Zero if you are already using Aruba's Wireless Intrusion Protection (WIPS) Module into which the new analyzer is integrated.

Why does Aruba introduce new features that expand the capabilities of its customers' already deployed networks? Why did it add distributed forwarding without a controller in the data path? E9-1-1 call positioning? Wired switch management?

Because adding features recapitulates our corporate commitment to value, driving growth by enhancing the utility of our customers' investments. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement, and one that stands in sharp contrast to a forklift mentality.

The next time you consider an IT vendor consider how they deliver innovative features. With a hand outstretched in partnership or reaching for your wallet.

Adversity Drives Innovation

Economic downturns are commonly viewed as a time of retrenching and cut-backs, but they're also times of intellectual ferment and innovation. While budget cuts and scaled back programs create adversity, there remains a job to do and customers to satisfy.

The issue is how to accomplish this with fewer available resources. To do this you have to get creative, and adversity catalyzes the process. It is the gap between available resources and demand that drives innovation, creativity, and opportunity.

In the words of J.C. Maxwell, “adversity motivates.” Maxwell’s "Benefits of Adversity" identifies the positive attributes of adversity:

1. Adversity creates resilience;
2. Adversity develops maturity;
3. Adversity pushes the envelope of accepted performance;
4. Adversity provides greater opportunities;
5. Adversity prompts innovation;
6. Adversity recaps unexpected benefits;
7. Adversity motivates.

The present downturn is no exception. IT managers face budget and headcount cuts, yet the companies for which they work cannot stop running. Leveraging investments in existing infrastructure, minimizing major new capital investments, and recouping savings from company operations are the new marching orders. If satisfying existing needs was good enough then the task at hand would be straightforward – weather the adverse economic climate by cutting as much spending and headcount as possible.

But in business it isn't that simple. The end of any downturn is followed by an uptick that will require increased IT services. Cut too far today and IT won’t be able to respond tomorrow. Business will suffer - again. IT managers must therefore be cognizant of the future and look at changes and cuts with an eye towards their impact on a future recovery.

This begs the question – is it possible to batten down the hatches to survive the current economic storm while laying the foundation for a future recovery? The answer is yes...but the challenge to doing so, surprisingly, is neither technological nor monetary but conceptual.

Doing more with less requires a new way of thinking about problems. In the IT world it means reconsidering the value of overbuilding complex, expensive infrastructure. In this market, in this economy, the first priorities need to be streamlining costs, boosting productivity, and enhancing efficiency.

A simple example will drive home the point. To lower costs, most enterprises are reducing their real estate footprints. Today 88% of employees work somewhere other than the corporate headquarters - many hotel in branch offices, work from home, or work on the road. The traditional way in which these remote users would be served is with a branch router. This paradigm might be acceptable for a large office but it's outrageously expensive for a branch of just a few people.

The challenge is how to network a large and growing remote workforce in an environment focused on cost reduction. It is here that adversity catalyzes innovation. By standing the problem on its head and saying the real issue is how we enable mobility at low cost for a large number of users - not how we connect a branch office - new, non-traditional solutions emerge.

To a router vendor every problem ends with a hardware-based solution - it is the proverbial key under the streetlight. Reconstituting the problem expands the area of illumination, revealing, for instance, that cloud-computing and virtualization are new options not previously considered.

Simply reframing a question can open a completely new set of solutions. Adversity forces the process by highlighting the inadequacy of the “old school” way of thinking and opening the door to innovative new solutions. Ones that focus on today's needs instead of yesterday's answers.

VBN Killed The Branch-In-A-Box

In 1979 The Buggles released their debut single, 'Video Killed The Radio Star,' a nostalgic look at radio from the perspective of the video age that killed it.

Progress drives on, looking nostalgically in the rear view mirror from time to time, but propelled forward by the engine of our insatiable desire for something better.

Tube-based table radios are nostalgic. So are rotary phones, wooden plows, and iron clad ships. Doesn't mean we want to use them anymore. They were abandoned because something better came along. Something easier to use. Faster.Less expensive.

Technology transitions happen all the time in enterprise IT, but the branch office and fixed teleworker seem to have been neglected along the way. And what an oversight it was. Today more than 85% of employees work outside of the primary corporate campus. Yet they need - but haven't had - the same access to corporate network resources and applications as someone in the home office.

The solution cobbled together by router vendors was to remotely replicate the infrastructure that's on the corporate campus. That is, assemble a stack of appliances for security, VPN, Wi-Fi, routing - and then try to integrate them to work together.

Over time the separate appliances morphed into an integrated branch-in-a-box router. But experience showed that while you can morph a router from a hairball, but you can never take the hairball out of the router. From the user's point of view, the solution was little improved.

The fundamental problem is that the campus network and its branch offspring were designed assuming static users sitting behind protective firewalls. Mobility - mobile users specifically - breaks that model. You have to punch holes in firewalls, configure complex VLAN assignments for segmenting traffic and user types, install VPNs to protect roaming users. The list goes on and on. And grows more expensive, complex, and user unfriendly as it does.

Virtual Branch Networking (VBN) 1.0 was introduced in 2009 as a ground-up, mobility focused solution. VBN made it less expensive and simpler to securely connect remote users with the enterprise network at low cost and without changing the user experience.

VBN 2.0 goes one giant step farther by leveraging cloud services to do the job done by branch routers today - application acceleration, content security, remote access. Only it does so using a lower cost, more scalable solution that delivers a consistent user experience regardless of where you work: in the corporate HQ, in a branch office, from home, or on the road.

The cloud provides a massively scalable, economical way of delivering services and applications. It has changed the way we transfer data, download files, and use applications. When applied to branch networks, cloud services are the perfect tonic. They deliver essential business-critical services, without complexity, to widely distributed users at less than half the cost of the branch in-a-box router. This is one change you'll make and never, ever look back.

In my mind and in my branch,
We can't rewind it bought the ranch,
VBN killed the branch-in-a-box.

Read more about VBN 2.0 on-line.