Networking intelligently

Organisations are continually looking to IP convergence and next-generation networks (NGN) to facilitate the consolidation of voice, video and data networks across disparate IT infrastructures and geographies.

Putting voice and data on the same network goes beyond just `combining networks`.

Rob Hafner, head of research, Gartner

The immediate benefits of converged network environments are cost-efficiencies, says Eric Jorgensen, Micromuse Africa director. Linking voice and business applications also makes possible the fast roll-out of new value-add services, he says.

However, the ability to leverage these new opportunities for converged networks depends on the creation of a multimedia environment that preserves voice network intelligence while using the benefits of IP networks.

There are many challenges and risks around the creation of a converged network that extend to underlying systems and applications - issues IP service providers and enterprises need to deal with.

"To be successful, voice network intelligence must be preserved without operators losing any of the benefits to be gained from the flexibility and enormous bandwidth of cost-effective IP networks," says Jorgensen.

He stresses that integrating the proven intelligence and quality of voice networks into the new technology is essential to the success of the NGN, and will be the true test of convergence.

According to Rob Hafner, head of research at Gartner, companies tend to assume that their data networks are automatically voice-capable without having them certified against latency issues and best quality of service (QOS). He warns that putting voice and data on the same network goes beyond just "combining networks". There has to be some work done to improve the network`s performance, he says, as adding voice on a traditional data network demands improved latency.

There is an increasing need to enable users to access information from back-office systems remotely via mobile devices. With voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) capabilities being extended to wireless networks and some handheld devices, users can have calls forwarded to them, or even make calls over the corporate IP network while moving around, rather than using the fixed-line or cell networks.

According to both Wolfgang Held, network consultant at 3Com SA, and Mike Dessey, IronPorts technical manager for Australia, New Zealand and Africa, organisations wanting to merge their voice and data networks and implement VOIP on their LAN and WAN infrastructure need to ensure their networks have sufficient bandwidth and QOS. This challenge extends to both the network and the underlying systems.

Now that IP applications will be competing for bandwidth, Jorgenson says, it will be increasingly important to be able to identify performance irregularities and address emerging capacity issues and problems.

Vendors are developing solutions that will assist service providers and enterprises to meet these challenges.

Tobie van Schalkwyk, D-link country manager, says more and more people are moving to a Gigabit backbone on their networks, because of bandwidth-intensive applications. More people are also installing firewalls on their networks to keep out unwanted traffic. The launch of 10GB infrastructure will also give companies with heavy traffic the opportunity to get rid of network lag and bottlenecks.

"With 10Gb coming out, I think you will see that more people will go for an Ethernet network rather than an ATM [Asynchronous Transfer Mode] backbone," Van Schalkwyk says. The role of firewalls and devices that block applications like chat, music and videos will become more popular, he adds.

According to Rajan Padayachee, GM of infrastructure business at arivia.kom, most enterprises are standardising on pure IP MPLS or IP VPN networks to optimise the use of expensive bandwidth.

"With convergence happening on the IP layer, running IP networks over an ATM or Frame Relay core infrastructure can lead to additional bandwidth overheads and adds unnecessary complexity to the enterprise networks.

"However, there is a large installed base of Frame Relay and ATM networks, which can be used extremely efficiently in carrying both voice and data traffic," he says.

Padayachee believes wireless and wired environments will continue to co-exist. "Wired environments are suitable for high-speed corporate networks or branch offices with many people and also offer guaranteed service levels for mission-critical business and operational traffic," says Padayachee.

IS Digital Networks MD Barry Cribb says a number of manufacturers have wireless VOIP and SIP systems, although these can be expensive in non-specialised environments.

There are also a number of problems with compatibility, as standards are at an early stage of development.

One problem is QOS. There is also the problem of encryption, prominent in wired VOIP systems, with the difference that wireless VOIP using WEP technology, for example, is even easier to read and decode.

But are converged networks the answer to rising costs? Padayachee says cost savings will vary, depending on factors such as remaining life of current voice and data network equipment, voice and data traffic patterns, and percentage calls to cellphone operators.

Held says wireless technology might be the way to go, because not only does it allow companies to save money by allowing them to make "free" phone calls in the WAN and LAN environments, but it allows for breach containment on the network security side, which saves company costs by reducing downtime.

Gartner`s Hafner says a converged network allows people to move around in a campus environment, but keep their profiles on the network.

Keith Bothma, national sales manager at GijimaAst, is confident that as more companies move into campus environments, the converged environment is a possible solution to rising telecommunication costs. It also provides for unified management of networks and application roll-out is made much easier, he says.

"I think it will be a sad day if applications are ahead of technology. You always need to have the technology available that can cater for any application, no matter how big or small," comments Van Schalkwyk.

IS Digital Networks MD Barry Cribb says in the case of network security, users have no way of uncovering holes or flaws in their systems that allow an intruder or unauthorised person to gain access, until the deed has been done. "To a user it would appear that, if they can log on, the system is working. Companies don`t employ people to spend their days trying to hack their systems," he says.

Tobie van Schalkwyk, D-link country manager, says: "People now have the option to add a radius server onto their wireless network, meaning you have to be authenticated by the radius server before you can log on. Wired LAN can also be connected to a radius server," he says.

On the same note, Cribb says security systems could have a few minor flaws that have been overlooked. The question is how a company will discover the faults.

Users have no way of uncovering holes or flaws in their systems that allow an intruder to gain access, until the deed has been done.

Barry Cribb, MD, IS Digital Networks

Michael Horn, executive of managed security services at NamITech, says: "Place a probe outside almost any firewall and you will find a continual stream of low-level network attacks, peppered from time to time with serious break-in attempts."

Early solutions were ad hoc and gradual, he says. Not only is it labour-intensive and expensive ensuring that solutions are in place, it`s problematic sufficiently co-ordinating them to ensure adequate and timely protection.

Unified threat management (UTM) security appliances are products that unify and integrate multiple security features integrated onto a single hardware platform.

These appliances all encompass network firewall capabilities, network intrusion detection and prevention, and gateway anti-virus functionality.

Says Horn: "Larger enterprises and service providers offering managed security services vary their use of the anti-virus firewall capabilities in their networks. Industry analysts attribute the rapid market adoption of UTM security appliances to the fact that the rise in blended threats requires a greater breadth of integrated functionality and deployment flexibility."

"The emerging UTM security appliance market transforms single function appliances into a more flexible environment for deploying multiple security features on a single platform," says Horn.

Sacha Alton, channel manager at McAfee, says companies need to be clear about their security needs. "In the past, threat protection has been defined as successful if it prevents the hacker stealing data, the virus infection occurring. These carry a tangible cost to business; for instance, clean-up cost is commonly tracked for virus infection," she says.

She adds that this is no longer a sufficiently exacting measure - there might still be a financial cost to bear. An example is Sasser, one of the major worms of 2004.

"Your known systems might have been up-to-date with signature files, therefore reducing the cost of infection to zero. However, unpatched systems might have succumbed to Sasser`s buffer overflow exploit, which often results in system reboot. As Sasser attempts to make up to several hundred IP connections per second, loss of productivity due to this downtime is very likely - and this of course is a business cost also," explains Alton.

Two months ago, Cisco announced the next phase of its Intelligent Information Network (IIN) initiative with the unveiling of Application-Oriented Networking (AON).

The technology integrates awareness of application-to-application messaging into the network fabric, enabling the network to speak the language of common business applications.

The company`s approach to AON is based on new technology that moves beyond the packet level to read application-to-application messages flowing within the network - such as purchase orders, investment transactions, or shipment approvals.

Willie Oosthuizen, Cisco`s systems engineering manager for Sub-Saharan Africa, said at the announcement that AON products enable business applications and networks to work together as integrated systems. The network vendor unveiled new AON modules for data centre switches and for branch office routers to complement current packet and content-aware products by providing application message-level awareness of business applications.

"In the past we built separate physical networks for voice, video and data, but thanks to convergence, all network traffic can now run on a single infrastructure over Internet Protocol, and the different types of traffic can be managed by intelligent software," he says.

He adds that the next step was to enable virtualisation and provisioning of network resources on demand, so that bandwidth, CPU capacity and memory can be automatically allocated when and where they are needed.

"The third step is to provide applications with a network that is clever enough to provide the message translation services they need to communicate. The problem in the real world is that although the network may be homogeneous, there are many thousands of different interfaces that applications use to talk to each other. AON provides the network with the intelligence to enable applications to communicate seamlessly," explains Oosthuizen.

He says the AON approach is also based on collaborative efforts with industry leaders, such as IBM and SAP.

Oosthuizen points out that once data centres and networks gain "dial-tone"-style intelligence, AON will allow businesses to reinvent themselves overnight if required.

"Imagine reconfiguring an entire business process in your organisation simply by dragging and dropping icons to reflect the new layout. This is the promise of AON - that the network will take care of the necessary translation in the same way that IP phones today can automatically find the nearest server when plugged into a network," he explains.

A glossary of some of the terms used in this feature:

Convergence: From a networking perspective, convergence can be understood as when a single advanced IP network handles the majority of a corporate`s communications needs. (Legacy networks such as the PSTN still have a role; however, the IP network interconnects into these older environments.) This is done for the sole goal of achieving anytime, anywhere communications. At this point, new applications - such as multimedia, video content and object tracking - are possible in real-time.

Gigabit backbones consist of Ethernet switches for interconnecting large numbers of hubs and lesser switches, each of which can serve a number of end-users. Standardised at rates of 1Gbps (100Mb) and then 10Gbps (1 000Mb). (Source: Gartner)

IP VPNs (Internet Protocol virtual private networks), are managed or unmanaged Layer 3 offerings, providing a full range of metropolitan-area network/local-area network (MAN/WAN) networking functionality using IP backbone transport technology - either a private carrier-operated network or shared public Internet IP network for a closed (or at least well-defined) community of interest. (Source: Gartner)

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPNs are fully meshed network-based solutions using Layer 3 routing, with a mix of various vendor-specific and standard-based protocols. (Source: Gartner)

Next-generation networks: Gartner has described a next-generation network (NGN) as one that enables the delivery of a broad range of communications formats via standard protocols and platforms, such as Internet Protocol (IP). It converges the transmission of voice, data and image handling more varied content in a unified way.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is a technology in which voice communications are sent over a packet-based network (IP) instead of traditional circuit-switched systems. VOIP has a number of different definitions, depending on what part of the network is under consideration. These definitions are:

* In the wide-area or transport network, VOIP is one of the voice-over-packet-network systems available. The others include voice over Frame Relay and voice over ATM.

* Voice over the local loop or access line, normally called voice over DSL.

* Voice in CPE, which includes both IP telephony and PBXs with IP gateways.

* VOIP applications where the greater convergence offered by running voice and data over the same network allows for more sophistication and interaction between the systems. Unified messaging is an example. (Source: Meta)

Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP is the standard security mechanism for 802.11b wireless LAN networking.