Enabling Pervasive Mobility and Bring Your Own Device

With the broad adoption of sophisticated mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets, and laptops, users are demanding that their own devices connect to and function seamlessly at work or across the university campus. From an IT perspective, sentiment is changing from initial resistance to a complete embracement of user devices with the anticipation of cost reduction and increased confidence in security solutions. Consequently, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) has emerged as a top IT initiative.  

The challenges of BYOD are clear: security and infrastructure capacity. With disparate devices, platforms and operating systems, protecting critical resources from malicious attacks in the face of shrinking IT staffs is a tremendous burden.  With the sophistication of these devices and their ability to access bandwidth-intensive applications such as video, the need for a reliable, scalable, high performance wireless and wired infrastructure is paramount.

Successful deployment of BYOD with a high-quality user experience demands a wireless and wired network built and supported with the high level of experience and expertise Brocade is known for.  Found in 90 percent of the world’s Internet Exchange Points (IXP), Brocade has a reputation for delivering secure, high-performance, reliable networking solutions. This reputation is why more and more enterprise, education, and healthcare customers worldwide are switching from their incumbent networking vendor to Brocade for their campus networking needs.

Security: A Business Imperative

Security challenges have not changed over the years with two exceptions: mobility and scalability. Just a few years ago, security could be accomplished with a combination of user credentials and physical access control to a wired network port. But today, with the average user carrying three or more wireless devices with increasing levels of sophistication, protecting assets from malicious attacks can present significant challenges to IT. Fortunately, there is a broad range of security options available from Brocade “out of the box” or from any of the diverse eco-system of security providers from Brocade that enable organizations to confidently meet their security policies and objectives. 

Brocade Mobility solutions come standard with the most popular security features such as: AP-based stateful firewalls, customer-configurable guest portal, and integration with RADIUS, AAA, LDAP, or Active Directory.  In most cases, this broad array of security features will meet the needs of organizations without additional expense. If a more comprehensive security solution, such as Network Access Control (NAC), Mobile Device Management (MDM), or rogue device detection is desired, the vast Brocade eco-system of security providers which include McAfee, Impulse, and ForeScout deliver proven and secure solutions that integrate seamlessly with the open architecture of Brocade.

Whatever the level of security sophistication required, Brocade Mobility solutions can deliver. Whether it’s basic guest portal capabilities or a comprehensive NAC and MDM solution, Brocade Mobility solutions and  the certified security partners of Brocade provide a secure and reliable solution that fits both business and budget while delivering a high-quality user experience.

Infrastructure: The Foundation for Successful BYOD Deployments

All too frequently, BYOD deployments encounter significant delays due to excessive focus on security and coverage and not enough on capacity planning. Enabling BYOD for an organization’s user community will significantly increase the number of devices on the network and with each device able to consume bandwidth-intensive applications, ensuring the wireless and wired network can provide the required reliability, coverage, and capacity is critical to success. When planning a BYOD deployment, consider the requirements needed on both the wired and wireless infrastructure to ensure a high-quality end user experience.

Wireless Infrastructure

Given the majority of BYOD technology is wirelessly connected, the most critical component for any BYOD solution is the access point (AP). Brocade Mobility solutions’ unique architecture provides the highest capacity and automation to reliably meet the increased demands of BYOD initiatives. The following examples of key features and benefits demonstrate why Brocade Mobility solutions ensure the highest quality user experience while minimizing the impact to IT resources and budgets:

• Load balancing – Automated load balancing between radios on an AP and neighboring APs ensures an equal workload of devices. In addition, integrated “band steering” automatically directs 5 GHz-capable devices to the appropriate radio thereby freeing more capacity for 2.4 GHz devices and ensuring optimal overall capacity during high-load, high device density situations such as lectures, large gatherings, or events.
• Non-blocking Architecture – Brocade Mobility solutions’ unique non-blocking architecture improves throughput by eliminating the traffic congestion and subsequent application responsiveness caused when all wireless traffic is forced to pass through the wireless controller.
• Self-Configuring, Self-Healing Access Points – Deploying Brocade Mobility APs is effortless. The toughest part is mounting the AP and plugging in the Ethernet cable. From there, Brocade Mobility APs talk with neighboring APs to collect and apply configuration information. Once up and running, Brocade Mobility solutions’ SmartRF technology powers up and down automatically to ensure optimal signal coverage.  In the unlikely event that an AP fails, neighboring APs will increase power to fill the coverage void to ensure continued and consistent wireless access.

Wired Infrastructure

Today's enterprise, education, and healthcare campus networks must provide anytime, anywhere mobile BYOD access and scale to meet rising user expectations. These networks are also expected to deliver services thought impossible just a few years ago. High-Definition (HD) video conferencing, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC) are just a few of the applications that organizations are deploying to enhance employee, student, or staff productivity. At the same time, organizations face continued pressure to reduce costs and do more with less. More than ever, campus networks need to quickly and efficiently evolve with the ever-changing environment. The Brocade campus line of wired infrastructure helps organizations meet this challenge with high-performance, reliable wired infrastructure solutions offering unmatched simplicity and investment protection.

Class-Leading Performance and Non-Stop High Availability

With today’s campus LAN becoming increasingly mission critical to an organization or institution, Brocade’s reputation for delivering reliable high performance campus LAN solutions ensures the best solution to meet this challenge. Brocade Campus LAN switch products deliver wire-speed, non-blocking performance across all ports to ensure smooth operation of latency-sensitive, bandwidth-intensive applications such as real-time voice and video streaming and VDI. And when every second matters, Brocade Campus LAN switches help deliver continuous network services availability with capabilities such as instantaneous hitless failover, real-time state synchronization, and hot-insertion/removal of stack members.

Unmatched Simplicity and Investment Protection

HyperEdge technology is a new Brocade solution for today’s campus LAN. HyperEdge technology includes two important innovations: single-point management and mix-and-match stacking. With HyperEdge technology single point management, you can manage your entire campus infrastructure from one single IP address avoiding costly (time and resources) visits to multiple switch closets whenever ACL, maintenance, or other updates are required. HyperEdge mix-and-match stacking provides a significant improvement in investment protection by enabling initial deployment of basic and inexpensive infrastructure that meets the current needs of an organization. As these needs change, mix-and-match stacking enables the addition of a single premium switch at the top of each stack enabling all switches in the stack to inherit the premium capabilities and providing investment protection that extends the lives of infrastructure investments. HyperEdge technology will be available in the first half of 2013 and is field-upgradeable on many Brocade campus LAN solutions.

Total Cost of Ownership: A “Business” Imperative

All enterprise, school, or healthcare institutions are dealing with budget challenges and the promise of reduced user device costs is the driving interest in BYOD. Regardless, the cost of acquiring and maintaining technology is a critical decision factor for everyone. Brocade solutions for BYOD address these challenges by presenting the best value:

• 30 percent lower TCO than leading wireless providers
• Shared controller licensing supports growth without incurring more costs
• More powerful, scalable, and smarter APs result in fewer needed to provide the same coverage and capacity
• Wired infrastructure: 30 percent lower CapEx than Cisco and 15 percent lower CapEx than HP
• HyperEdge technology’s mix-and-match stacking that protects investments and supports a 10-year LAN
• HyperEdge technology’s single point management that reduces operational costs by enabling the entire campus infrastructure to be updated with a single command

A successful BYOD solution means providing a secure, high-quality user experience. To achieve this goal requires research, solid planning, and a focus on both security and infrastructure. When considering a BYOD deployment, consider Brocade. The combination of reliability, performance, low cost of ownership, and open architecture provide all the key ingredients for delivering a secure, high-quality user experience that fits both business and budget.

• Brochures

  • Delivering Dynamic Solutions for Higher Education (1046.3 KB)

• Design Guides

  • Designing a Robust and Cost-Effective Campus Network (4.1 MB)

• Positioning Papers

  • The Effortless Network: HyperEdge Technology for the Campus LAN (2.6 MB)

• Technical Briefs

  • Dormitory Wireless Is a Snap: Leveraging Existing CAT 5 cable for a Cost-Effective 802.11n Upgrade (2.7 MB)

  • Extending the Classroom Without Breaking the Bank (309.7 KB)

• White Papers

  • Redefining the Economics of the Campus Networks (948.4 KB)