While Enterasys Networks has been recognised as a leader in terms of its NAC (network access control) offerings by research group Forrester, the network infrastructure vendor has assembled a formidable arsenal of weaponry aimed at delivering solutions to meet a wide range of challenges in the network switch, management and security arenas, says Martin May, regional director (Africa) of Enterasys Networks.
Enterasys has an established presence in the marketplace, delivering proven broad-based networking solutions. Unlike many competitive offerings, our products' functionality is deeply integrated into networking workflows, bringing proven reliability and confidence to many thousands of customers worldwide.
Switches
For example, the Enterasys K-Series is one of the most cost-effective flow-based switching solutions in the industry, providing exceptional levels of automation, visibility and control at the network edge. These flexible, modular switches significantly reduce operational costs while still offering premium features.
Designed to address the challenges associated with a growing demand for access to new applications and services, the K-Series is engineered to protect business traffic and support changing operational needs. This includes the 'consumerisation' of IT and BYOD (bring your own device) programmes that require more robust location, identification, visibility and overall management capabilities.
The K-Series is particularly suited to intelligently manage individual user, devices and application conversations, as well as provide the visibility and management to troubleshoot connectivity issues, locate devices and ensure protection of corporate data.
For other networking applications, Enterasys S-Series switches are designed to enable combinations of 802.3af and 802.3at technologies and provide full Power over Ethernet (POE) support for 576 copper ports in an S8 chassis.
Significantly, the S-Series is designed and optimised 'from the ground up' to support and scale to future technologies such as 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet.
The current generation of S-Series hardware is more than capable of supporting 40 Gigabit Ethernet, and future generations will support high-density 100 Gigabit Ethernet. This design approach ensures the S-Series will have an extended life cycle in even the most demanding networks.
The S-Series is designed with highly flexible power systems in mind; POE allows users to provision power in small increments and use only enough power for immediate requirements. From a power-saving perspective, this means the S-Series uses one third of the power per Gigabit of performance than its industry predecessors.
This reduces overall system power consumption and heat output, thus reducing ongoing data centre operational costs and overall cost of ownership while minimising an organisation's carbon footprint.
Management
Turning to network management, Enterasys offers a complete wireless management solution that will also manage other network infrastructure components from a single pane and support demanding voice/video/data applications to enhance mobile worker productivity and convenience.
We also focus on role-based grouping of users, devices and applications to deliver priority, QOS (quality of service), and security in accordance with business needs. Seamless roaming across an entire multi-subnet campus is possible without the need for cumbersome client software.
In addition, integrated management, security and QOS features reduce operating costs and ensure a consistent user experience regardless of location. Moreover, centralised visibility and control from the Enterasys Wireless Management Suite and Enterasys Network Management System accelerate problem resolution, optimise network utilisation and automate management.
Other features of the Enterasys network management portfolio include the ability to migrate to the latest 802.11n standard without requiring power, switching or cabling upgrades as Enterasys' adaptive architecture reduces complexity and optimises information flow for each application.
In addition, Enterasys' DRM (dynamic radio management) functionality ensures optimal access point coverage and maximises the availability and quality of wireless service across the enterprise, while Enterasys' WDS (Wireless Distribution Service) enables access points to wirelessly interconnect while extending WLAN (wireless LAN) service to distant areas.
Recently, in line with Enterasys' record of innovation in cloud computing, it introduced a new approach to network infrastructure and application services management via a social media interface.
Isaac is an Enterasys technology geared to control anything connected to a modern IP-based network via the Internet and social media. By allowing network devices such as routers, switches and applications to securely join the social network, IT can now use familiar and accessible interfaces for more efficient, real-time interaction and communication, providing automated and predictive responses to network issues.
Isaac gives IT machines the ability to communicate their status and receive commands from an IT manager using any mobile device and via familiar social media interfaces, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Chatter.
It provides a real-time bidirectional translator that enables managers to communicate with their networks in their native tongue - as opposed to complex CLI scripts and syslogs.
For the first time machines are capable of speaking the language of humans; instead of humans needing to adapt to the language of machines. This will help reduce the time to diagnose and resolve network issues while automating change processes.
Isaac will simplify language, geography and application access challenges allowing network managers and IT administrators to securely interact with their IT infrastructure via intuitive mobile Internet applications. And it will enable IT organisations to stay ahead of any potentially disruptive networking issues, at the same time boosting QOS agreements.
Security
Network security is an Enterasys strong suite. It allows proactive control to authorise, limit or block access to the network based on authentication, location and needs assessments.
Features include the provision of assisted remediation without the need for an assessment agent and the ability to rapidly deploy and operate in third party environments, while leveraging full policy-based capabilities of secure networks - including significantly improved remediation and response times.
The Enterasys Dragon Security Command Console, for instance, has ability to correlate and sort large volumes of threat data while providing complete visibility and control of the security environment.
It delivers compliance enablement and eases the audit process, at the same time providing open interoperability with third party devices. It also offers an array of forensic tools together with native VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) support and the ability to upgrade or combine intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) in the same application and within the same 'box' or appliance.
In the modern network, both technologies are required for maximum protection against malicious traffic. Enterasys is able to combine the two technologies with virtual sensors operating as one or more IDS/IPS system able to detect several types of malicious traffic that would otherwise slip by a typical firewall. Several methods are used to detect threats, including signature-based and anomaly-based detection, as well as stateful protocol analysis.
Other Enterasys security features include centralised management, flexible custom signature creation, as well as scalability and flexibility as a result of Enterasys' distributed modular architecture design.
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