1THE RISE OF THE VIRTUALIZATION ENGINEER

2WHEN NETWORK MONITORING TOOLS IMPROVE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

3CIOS ARE LAYING SDN PLANS, BUT SLOWLY

4802.11AD: THE OTHER GIGABIT WIRELESS

BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO ENABLE THE CHANGING FACE OF IT

k

k

k

k

HARVESTING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE WITH NETWORK

MONITORING TOOLS

1GOODMAN: DIVING INTO SDN WAN? TAKE A DEEP BREATH

2WAN OPTIMIZATION POLICY GOES DEEP

3WHAT IS ETHERNET- DEDICATED INTERNET?

4SHOULD YOUR NETWORK HARDWARE PROVIDER BE YOUR WAN SECURITY VENDOR?

BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO ENABLE THE CHANGING FACE OF IT

JUNE 2013 \ VOL. 4 \ N0. 3

k

k

k

k

WAN Optimization Policy Goes DeepNetwork pros are turning to user-aware policy

setting to enhance optimization.

Network monitoring tools take on a central role in providing overall business intelligence.

AUGUST 2013 \ VOL. 4 \ N0. 4

2   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

EDITOR’S DESK

EDITOR’S DESK | RIVKA GEWIRTZ LITTLE

Can You Miss the Boat on Emerging Network Technology Investment?

What does it mean to “miss the transi-tion” when it comes to network technology investment? Can one wait too long or in-vestigate too much before deciding to buy?

The answer is yes. When promising technologies emerge, it may not be time to invest immediately, but you should re-search them and keep them on your radar as you acquire related infrastructure or applications.

In this issue of The Network Evolution, we address two different emerging network technologies—software-defined network-ing (SDN) and 802.11ad gigabit wireless—that are both on the radar of CIOs and

network managers, but are nowhere near mainstream uptake.

In the article, “CIOs Are Laying SDN Plans, But Slowly,” IDC analyst Brad Case-more says CIOs are waiting for SDN tech-nology to mature and prove itself before investing. Yet as companies build hybrid clouds and enable automated provision-ing, for example, they’ll need to keep SDN in mind as they are buying. In that scenario, they may want to buy OpenFlow-friendly switches or consider orchestration frame-works that can incorporate virtual network provisioning as it is implemented with SDN. One CIO quoted in the story suggests

New technologiessuch as SDN and gigabit wireless are exciting, but how do you know when to invest?

3   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

EDITOR’S DESK

that companies should begin investigating now, but make room in their budgets for 2014.

Meanwhile, in an article about gigabit wireless, expert Craig Mathias explains how 802.11ad technology will offer 7 Gbps of throughput and notes frankly that these speeds are not yet necessary in typical en-terprise networks. But that doesn’t mean that enterprises shouldn’t investigate and keep 802.11ad in mind as they consider ex-panding their 802.11n networks or even think about an 802.11ac investment.

Although 802.11ad is mostly a short-range technology and won’t replace 802.11n or 802.11ac, it does have the potential to supplement these networks for applica-tions like video or large-scale BYOD con-nectivity. The Wi-Fi Alliance is set to release a final specification for 802.11ad in

2014 and that will mean devices that sup-port the protocol will soon emerge, making 802.11ad a viable BYOD connectivity op-tion over the next couple of years. Network managers should take this into consider-ation as they decide how to expand their current networks.

At times, emerging network technol-ogy can seem more sci-fi than investment reality. It sometimes offers capabilities that don’t seem necessary yet (as with 802.11ad). But doing basic research on emerging technologies enables network managers to purchase technology today that allows for an easier migration to a more proven technology tomorrow. It’s something to keep in mind. n

Rivka Gewirtz Little

Executive Editor, Networking Media Group

4   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION | KEITH TOWNSEND

The Rise Of The Virtualization Engineer: Are You Ready?

Whether you refer to the new data center as the software-defined data center (SDDC), the cloud, or just plain old virtu-alization, it all amounts to the same thing: agile provisioning of converged storage, compute and network resources. For that to occur, the siloes among storage, net-working and systems teams must come down. And as this transformation in the IT organization occurs, so too will the en-gineer’s job description. We’ll see the rise of a new IT position—the virtualization engineer.

The term “virtualization engineer” once referred to an x86 server administrator

who knew how to take a bunch of physical servers and make them virtual machines. But now virtualization engineers typically extend their reach to network and storage virtualization, managing across all three.

The change in the engineer’s role is being driven by a new school of IT products based on the tenets of converged infrastructure. Nutanix’ new Virtual Computing Platform is a perfect example of this. Virtual Com-puting Platform consolidates storage and compute into a single tier and enables man-agement across storage, servers and net-working from a unified box.

That leads one to ask: Who manages the

Now that virtualization hasstretched across servers, storage and networks, engineers must gain skills across the IT spectrum.

5   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

Nutanix solution? Is it the storage team? The systems team? Networking folks? The answer is the new virtualization engineer.

This demand for a cross-discipline en-gineer is only going to continue to grow with the rise of network virtualization. In the past, integrating virtual x86 infrastruc-tures with the network looked a lot like putting lipstick on a pig—a little prettier, but still a pig. But it will become a reality if VMware delivers the goods with its NSX network virtualization product. What’s

more, a number of SDN start-ups are enabling au-tomated provisioning of virtual networks that can be integrated into a holis-tic orchestration system that manages and provi-sions across storage and

compute. Basically, we are seeing the same type of revolution in networks that we have seen in servers and storage; this transition will require engineers who understand the new integrated infrastructure and systems.

How Do You Gain The Skills?Businesses understand that there is a tran-sition underway and they pay guys like me to take a look at their IT operations and align the org charts with their technology roadmaps. They may not understand the nuances of implementing a virtual net-work, but they understand the business value of operations consolidation.

That means businesses will be looking for engineers who are well-versed in storage, networking and compute, but who have the ability to go deep in one of the three. This

Business will be looking for engineers who are

well-versed in storage, networking and compute.

6   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

person will likely be part of a team of sev-eral skilled professionals responsible for the entire data center infrastructure and not just a single technology pillar.

But how does one get training across disciplines?

Most of us who have cross-discipline skills have achieved this from years of ex-perience working in each part of the field. In that situation, it was a natural progres-sion that developed out of the need to solve technical challenges. But what if you don’t have that opportunity? Unfortunately, there isn’t an “Infrastructure Specialist”

certification at the moment. So the answer is probably to undertake a series of certi-fications that include the Cisco Certified Network Associate, VMware Certified Pro-fessional in data center virtualization, or Microsoft/Red Hat Enterprise Linux cer-tifications, as well as at least one vendor course in storage.

Gaining cross-discipline skills may seem like a huge undertaking, but ultimately the convergence that we are seeing in the data center will only continue, and it is bound to change the requirements for engineers in every part of the organization. n

7   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

Ω Now that the network is essential to cloud and application delivery, networkmonitoring tools are taking on a central role in providing overall business intelligence.

When Cardinal Health Inc. replaced its legacy network monitoring tools last year, the multibillion-dollar health care services company hit the network analysis sweet spot—the new software offered the ability to monitor both network hardware operations and application performance, while providing analytics that could im-prove overall business processes.

Cardinal’s investment reflects a shift in

Monitoring Tools

Improving Business Intelligence with Network Monitoring Tools

BY CHUCK MOOZAKIS

MONITORING TOOLS

8   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

the IT industry where information tech-nology directly affects business intelligence and enterprise productivity—and the net-work plays an increasingly central role. The idea is that the network ties together every element of cloud provisioning and service or application delivery. To handle this, monitoring tools must provide a broader set of information.

“Networking used to be pretty much its own little silo,” said Jim Frey, vice president of research, network man-agement, at Enterprise Management Associ-ates. “Now we’re seeing a shift where networking is bringing with it systems, applications, storage and other components,

providing a more systemic view. Organiza-tions need to see a cross-domain view of operations. If something is broken in one domain, they need to see the problem in another domain.”

Now that the network has become “rel-evant again,” new monitoring strategies are emerging, said Dimitri Vlachos, Riverbed Technology’s vice president of marketing and products.

“There are finally tools for network teams to see the role the network really plays, and that it’s an integral part of [ensuring] app performance across to end users,” said Vlachos. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, I’m going to look at my network for the network’s sake.’ It’s really diving into how well it’s deliver-ing applications.”

Cardinal uses SolarWinds’ Server and Application Monitor and Network

MONITORING TOOLS

“Now that the network has become ‘relevant again,’

new monitoring strategies are emerging.”

—Dimitri Vlachos, Vice president of marketing and products

Riverbed Technology

9   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

Performance Monitor applications, placing eight polling stations running on Windows-based virtual servers between two data cen-ters for redundancy. The software monitors 10,000 devices in two data centers and 148 satellite offices.

“We brought [SolarWinds in] to handle availability monitoring, hardware moni-toring, what I call, shrink-wrap app moni-toring and custom app monitoring,” said Leon Adato, Cardinal’s monitoring archi-tect. “‘We have a specific app? Let’s moni-tor that.’ This type of granular examination wasn’t possible with the older system.”

Tools That Align With Business ProcessCardinal can use this clearer picture of ap-plication performance to improve business processes.

“We can go back to the development teams and ask them what they really want from their application performance in the first place,” said Adato. “We will be able to go from ‘alert convert’ to ‘alert improve.’”

Specifically Adato’s team can more accu-rately monitor the performance of custom applications that drive Cardinal’s business.

“This will give us the ability to drive up the chain from hardware to the OS to the app itself, to get us to what I call business-process monitoring. I want to be able to say things like, ‘I see 35 connections to the Web server; 15 are on the sales page but only one is going through. Why?’ We never had that type of information before,” Adato said.

For the IT team, the positive outcome of the new tools is already clear—perfor-mance data is more precise, he said. “Our Exchange team went from 80 [help desk]

MONITORING TOOLS

10   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

tickets per month to eight, and we know now those eight tickets are real; the other 72 were noise. When [the support team members] get a help desk ticket at 2 a.m., they know they have to get up and move.”

Next up for Cardinal: virtualization and voice-quality monitoring. Adato is cur-rently reviewing vendors that include So-larWinds, VMware and others.

A Patchwork of Monitoring ToolsAt Oppenheimer & Co., the New York City-based financial services organization, Henry Jiang, executive director of network systems and IT infrastructure, engineered a network monitoring strategy that links together a number of tools for packet in-spection, server monitoring, network up-time and anomaly detection.

With only seven employees in the com-pany’s IT infrastructure/network services team, Jiang’s greatest “challenge is increas-ing operational efficiency,” he said.

The department oversees two data cen-ters and 100 branch offices, spanning more than 2,000 devices. Responsibilities in-clude the data centers, the network, IP management, engineering support and data security. “We are heavily reliant on different toolsets that let us pinpoint prob-lems from an operational perspective,” Ji-ang said.

Jiang’s primary monitoring tool is Riv-erbed’s Cascade network performance platform, but he also uses products from Ipswitch Inc., Net Optics Inc. and Solar-Winds for uptime, packet inspection taps and server-monitoring, respectively.

“From the networking side, I’m getting

MONITORING TOOLS

1 1   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

huge benefits [from Cascade],” Jiang said. “It’s capturing data flow from the entire network, and that’s extremely important.” Jiang uses Cascade’s software to create long-term versus short-term performance charts that allow network operations cen-ter (NOC) workers to see network traf-fic patterns at a glance, which reduces the amount of time operators must spend as-sessing traffic. “They just take a look and

they can determine if we are operating in a normal parameter or if there are anomalies,” he said.

Oppenheimer employs a hub-and-spoke net-work topology, which sends traffic from branch offices to the New York-based data centers via

Multiprotocol Label Switching and dedi-cated links. “This model lets us detect any traffic anomalies [including viruses and other threats] because everything comes back through the chokehold of the data center,” Jiang said.

Within the data centers, Jiang’s team gathers NetFlow data generated by the cen-ters’ Cisco equipment, but performance information is also captured by the Net Op-tics physical taps. “This fills in the Trans-mission Control Protocol performance parameters, server delays, network delays. These are the parameters that can only be detected by looking at the actual packets.”

The monitoring foundation gives Jiang the performance and status information to ensure uptime and data integrity, he said, “IT here is a function; we provide a service to the business. And we have to do more

MONITORING TOOLS

“We are heavily reliant on different toolsets that let

us pinpoint problems from an operational perspective.”

—Henry Jiang, Executive director of network

systems and IT infrastructure

12   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

with less. For example, the NOC. It’s a key function that I manage as a primary re-sponsibility. That NOC is a single person operating on his or her own all day. Without tools, I would need two shifts, two people, so the toolset I use is extremely important to streamline that process.”

Vendors Fortify Monitoring Platforms Network monitoring vendors are respond-ing to the more complex needs of their us-ers with platforms that span hardware and applications, integrating information from both. NetScout Systems Inc. and Com-puware Corp., for example, each recently rolled out software that allows customers to gauge both application performance and network operation.

NetScout’s nGeniusONE, unveiled in late

June, tracks the delivery of services and their underpinned applications across a company’s entire infrastructure, said Steven Shalita, vice president of marketing. The deep packet inspection app supports data, voice and video, as well as remote desktop applications and unified communi-cations services. Users access performance data through any HTML5 browser.

NGeniusONE examines all other com-ponents within a service, from software and firewalls to routers and protocols, to determine performance and ultimately user experience, Shalita said. “Any one of those components could be giving you a problem, but if you are just monitoring the network or just the app or the application delivery controller, the light could be green but the downstream performance could be suffering.”

MONITORING TOOLS

13   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

All this monitoring and reporting occurs in real time. “We’re not just collecting traf-fic and analyzing later. We can from a dash-board perspective tell you how a service is performing and give you an early warning if there is a problem,” said Shalita.

Platforms like these are all part of the broader focus on application behavior, said Patrick Hubbard, head geek and senior technical product manager at SolarWinds. “Five years ago, you knew which apps were

being added [to a network] and you could build some-thing that would allow the traffic to flow and ful-fill the business require-ment,” he said. “Today, the network team is provid-ing software from a Web server. Administrators

are looking at traffic like never before; they need to know what’s filling up the pipes. It’s more than QoS [Quality of Service] or ToS [Type of Service]; it’s using quality maps to do more thoughtful and intricate packet shaping [and thus optimize application de-livery] than in in the past.”

Networks, Jobs Become More ComplexCreating network monitoring tools to meet these demands is becoming even harder now that network architectures are getting more complex as a result of virtualization, software-defined networking (SDN) and the converged data center.

“I’m virtualizing servers; I’m overlaying networks; I have an SDN-defined data cen-ter. Within the data center, I can have all of these virtual data centers running on top of

MONITORING TOOLS

Network architectures are getting more complex

as a result of virtualization, SDN and the converged

data center.

14   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

it. How can an operations team keep track of all these systems for each customer? How can I understand the performance they are experiencing and what problems they are facing when they occur?” River-bed’s Vlachos said. “It used to be, ‘It’s not me.’ Now it’s shifting to ‘We are part of a team that will solve the problem.’”

As this transition occurs, network

engineers may have to expand their own skill sets. “The notion that you will have dedicated network people focused only on networking, those days will be gone,” Vlachos said. “As we move forward, you will have to understand more about apps. You will have to script, and you will be au-tomated. It’s all about an interconnected world.” n

MONITORING TOOLS

15   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

802.11AD

PLANNING FOR SDN

Ω C-level executives are considering SDN, but they’re taking it slowly and keeping it quiet.

Most companies and enterprises are in stealth mode when it comes to their software-defined networking (SDN) plans, which can easily lead to the misperception that the technology is all talk and no action. Don’t be fooled—CIOs say SDN is indeed on their radar.

Why the need for stealth? One reason companies choose to keep quiet about ex-ploring SDN plans is the possibility of ex-posing their networking team members with SDN skills to recruitment raids by other organizations.

Planning for SDN

CIOs Are Laying SDN Plans, But Slowly

BY SALLY JOHNSON

16   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

802.11AD

Beyond that, CIOs who are already em-bracing SDN tend to regard IT as a central part of their business strategy, so they don’t openly chat about their technology tran-sitions. “Early SDN adopters—including Google, Facebook, Rackspace, Microsoft, Deutsche Telecom, NTT Communica-tions and Goldman Sachs—view what they do from their applications through their infrastructure as competitive advantages and keep implementation details a closely

guarded secret,” said Brad Casemore, research di-rector of data center net-works for IDC.

Although hyper-scale companies were the first to embrace SDN, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach and

many others are moving toward SDN at a slower pace.

“The allure of SDN is that by virtualiz-ing the network, you get a natural visibil-ity in management, which in turn allows agility in matching network infrastructure with application requirements,” Case-more explained. “It provides automation to match what you already have for compute architecture.”

The typical broad-based enterprise mar-ket is busy exploring the potential of SDN, “but there hasn’t been much in the way of vendor outreach to them,” said Casemore. After all, “traditional vendors still have a business model and products installed in those customers’ data centers and through-out their networks. These vendors have next-generation products coming out and aren’t inclined to disrupt that flow.”

PLANNING FOR SDN

CIOs who are embracing SDN tend to regard IT as a central part

of their business strategy, so they don’t openly chat about

their technology transitions.

17   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

802.11AD

SDN for Data Center Interconnect and Cloud ProvisioningTelecommunications giant NTT Com-munications “has been involved with SDN for years,” according to Christopher Davis, senior director, corporate marketing com-munications, at NTT America.

Four years ago, NTT’s Yukio Ito, now se-nior vice president of service infrastructure and board member of the Open Network-ing Foundation, visited Stanford University and met with professors Nick McKeown

and Guru Parulkar to talk about their OpenFlow re-search. “They believed it could change network configuration in the data center, and Ito-san de-cided to explore it for NTT’s data centers and the

entire transport network,” said Davis.What does NTT hope to gain from SDN?

A shorter time to market, service differ-entiation and a reduction in capital and operational expenses. “OpenFlow is being used for inter-data center backups between our global data centers, as well as for band-width on demand, migration to the cloud and automation,” Davis said.

NTT is using SDN as a gateway so that enterprises can use the same IP addresses in their cloud as in their on-premises loca-tion. Data can be more easily migrated to the cloud this way, and having bandwidth on demand helps.

A University Tackles Big Data With SDNThe University of Wisconsin’s involvement in massive big data applications has made

PLANNING FOR SDN

NTT is using SDN as a gateway so that enterprises can use the same

IP addresses in their cloud as in their on-premises location.

18   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

802.11AD

SDN especially appealing to its CIO. “SDN happened to align well with the

strategic direction we were heading,” said Bruce Maas, CIO of the University of Wis-consin, which is in beta trials with Cisco ONE technology, Cisco’s forthcoming SDN product line. “We run a very robust net-work that serves 70,000 individuals and do $1B worth of research every year, so we continually look at ways to improve our ca-pabilities for moving huge quantities of re-search data at very high speeds for massive

big data applications.”With SDN, Maas be-

lieves his organization will respond more nim-bly, with fewer network staff, to changing network demands. “We should be able to do dedicated

connections fairly rapidly, on the fly, through software, and with appropriate se-curity in place,” he said.

SDN Bolsters Server VirtualizationMany CIOs view SDN as a logical exten-sion of virtualization. As servers and ap-plications become more virtualized, it “just makes sense to virtualize the rest of your infrastructure,” said Christopher Steffen, principal technical architect at Kroll Fac-tual Data, a provider of independent verifi-cation services to banks. CIOs are unlikely to pursue SDN, however, if their compa-nies are still in the early stages of server virtualization.

“If you’re a small- to medium-sized en-terprise and don’t have a lot of virtualized infrastructure yet, it’s time to get more up

PLANNING FOR SDN

CIOs are unlikely to pursue SDN if their companies

are still in the early stages of server virtualization.

19   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

802.11AD

PLANNING FOR SDN

into the cloud or get the rest of your server farm virtualized first,” Steffen said.

Managing the Transition to SDNThe transition to SDN isn’t simple, and there will be implications for the entire IT operation.

“You need to be aligned around the same objective to make this work—and that ob-jective needs to be the applications and performance and delivery across the net-

work,” Casemore cau-tioned. He spoke to one CIO whose company had to retrain its systems and software people to be more aware of what the network can provide and, of course, to make the

networking people more aware of the appli-cation needs and virtualization.

His advice to CIOs and others just getting started with SDN plans is to follow what’s going on in the industry, attend related in-dustry organizational meetings, talk to lots of vendors and ask trusted partners how they’re handling it.

Taking the actual plunge into SDN should start with an experimental lab so that engi-neers have room to test potential use cases.

The University of Wisconsin, for ex-ample, received a National Science Foun-dation grant for $500,000 to create an experimental demilitarized zone (DMZ) on campus. “A DMZ is a place where data can be moved without being impacted by firewalls; it’s the unimpeded movement of data. It’s very important to have 100% reli-ability, yet our researchers need to be able

The transition to SDN isn’t simple, and there will

be implications for the entire IT operation.

20   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

802.11AD

PLANNING FOR SDN

to experiment,” explained Maas. “We’re building it right now on fiber not being used by our core campus network to ensure any experimental work we do won’t affect our normal production network. Our research-ers are beginning to work with OpenFlow in this DMZ environment.”

There’s plenty of SDN research going on at universities in the U.S., and many are in-credibly open with it and willing to share information. “As a community, we’re a re-source and the private sector should take advantage of it,” said Maas.

Timing the SDN Investment RightThe SDN story is new and continues to evolve so rapidly, so large IT companies in particular are nervous about timing the transition just right.

“There are so many moving pieces and the large IT companies are really watching this. Not just networking, but compute, storage and the management systems that wrap around them. As enter-prises really get more intensively into virtualization and begin to push their cloud capabilities private to hybrid, and look at things like cloud bursting and so forth,” that’s when they’ll want to re-architect their IT departments and adopt things like SDN-enabled network virtualization, said Casemore.

Enterprises are watching it play out and waiting for the technology to develop, but at the same time, they’re concerned they’ll miss the transition.

“IT organizations say they don’t want to push it too early because enterprise cus-tomers may not be ready. But by the same

21   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

802.11AD

PLANNING FOR SDN

token, they don’t want to be too late,” Case-more said. “If you’re too late, you may miss the party entirely. The thing to watch now is how enterprises are virtualizing their data centers. This will affect networking and how they adopt the cloud—in what way and how aggressively. This will ultimately drive SDN.”

For CIOs and IT directors who don’t be-lieve in waiting years for a technology to prove itself, “the time to move on SDN is in fiscal 2014,” said Steffen of Kroll Factual Data. “If other organizations are anything like my company, they’ve probably started to look at SDN very seriously and are bud-geting for it right now.” n

22   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11AD

Ω The new 802.11ad wireless standard offers super throughput and capacity … along with a few challenges.

While many enterprises are knee-deep in 802.11n wireless migration, and some are even eyeing 802.11ac with its 1.3 Gbps of throughput, another higher throughput wireless standard is on the horizon – 802.11ad gigabit wireless.

The 802.11ad gigabit wireless stan-dard offers an unprecedented 7 Gbps of throughput. While the technology has its challenges, it could supplement existing wireless networks, better enabling large-scale BYOD connectivity and high-speed video delivery.

802.11ad

802.11ad: The Other Gigabit Wireless

BY CRAIG MATHIAS

23   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

802.11ad was originally developed by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, which has since merged with the Wi-Fi Alliance, the orga-nization responsible for developing every major Wi-Fi standard, including 802.11b, g, a, n and ac. Now the Wi-Fi Alliance is set to release an 802.11ad specification in early 2014, which is likely to bring the technol-ogy into the mainstream for both consum-ers and the enterprise.

802.11ad Is Super-Fast, But There’s a CatchThe 802.11ad standard is known for its 7 Gbps of throughput, but raw specifications tell only part of the story.

The standard operates in 60 GHz bands, differing from 802.11n, which works in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, and 802.11ac,

which runs in the 5 GHz band. Like 2.4 and 5 GHz, the 60 GHz bands are unlicensed in most parts of the world, but the frequency trumps the other bands, offering between seven and nine GHz of spectrum, as com-pared to 84 MHz at 2.4 GHz and about 1 GHz at 5 GHz.

Yet, the 60 GHz spectrum is also known as the “oxygen absorption band.” That means radio waves at those frequencies are actually degraded by the presence of oxy-gen in the air. For this reason, 60 GHz was considered only appropriate for point-to-point, outdoor applications using highly-directional antennas (e.g., wireless links between two networks) until recently. It could also be used in outer space for inter-satellite communications where oxygen is obviously not a problem, or for indoor short-range applications, such as linking

802.11AD

24   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

device docks with wireless interconnects.As it turns out, though, the degradation

caused by oxygen really isn’t all that bad and most regulators around the globe al-low fairly high-power transmissions and antenna gains at 60 GHz, at least partially compensating for the behavior of the air. Higher power transmission enables more range even though the air at those frequen-cies absorbs some of that power. The con-cept is similar to speaking louder at noisy cocktail parties to get your message heard.

However, a bigger challenge for 60 GHz systems is going through walls. The ex-tent of these problems is influenced by a number of factors, including the distance between endpoints, building construction (dense concrete walls will always be an is-sue), and the type of antennas applied.

Antennas play a critical role in all

wireless network performance, but even more so in the case of 60 GHz, where the inherent directionality of the radio waves themselves can be challenging. Nonethe-less, there’s a good deal of technology that can be thrown at the propagation problem to improve performance in all dimensions, including range, throughput, reliability and capacity. One of these technologies is com-plementary metal–oxide–semiconductor chips, which are less expensive than other silicon chips and reduce concerns about range performance and reliability by better using spectrum.

Do We Need 7 Gbps of Throughput?Considering that 802.11ac already of-fers such high throughput, do we really need 802.11ad? After all, what enterprise

802.11AD

25   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

applications really require throughput on the order of 7 Gbps?

It’s generally wrong to think in terms of throughput alone because capacity is just as important. In this case, capacity refers to the ability of networks to meet the ever-growing traffic requirements of certain sets of super users. Technology based on the 802.11ad standard can supplement existing wireless networks, giving network manag-ers the ability to offload heavy demands on 2.4 and 5 GHz. That’s where large-scale BYOD connectivity and high-speed video come in.

Will 802.11ad Change the BYOD Connectivity Game?The BYOD phenomenon is driving demand for enterprise network connectivity, much

of which depends on wireless LAN capac-ity. Given the limited number of channels available to Wi-Fi systems today, access to more spectrum is more than enticing, espe-cially for power users, such as universities that must serve tens of thousands of users that each bring multiple devices.

The basic proposition is that the faster any given user gets bits reliably on and off the air, the more capacity is left for everyone else—and 7 Gbps enables a lot of capacity.

What’s more, in the open-office environ-ments typical today, the propagation of 60 GHz signals shouldn’t be an issue. In fact, the relatively limited range of 60 GHz en-hances frequency reuse (using the same spectrum in multiple locations simultane-ously without mutual interference). This might even augment overall wireless secu-rity because eavesdroppers outside a given

802.11AD

26   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

EDITOR’S DESK

THE VOICE OF EVOLUTION

MONITORING TOOLS

PLANNING FOR SDN

installation will have a much more difficult time grabbing 60 GHz signals.

However, in the short term, 80211.ad can’t be used for BYOD because it’s not na-tively supported in most user devices. For now, 802.11ad could be used as a notebook tool with add-on adapters (although some laptops will have it built-in). As the tech-nology moves into the mainstream, more supportive devices will emerge.

Using 802.11ad for High Definition, Streaming VideoStreaming video consumes more band-width than almost any other application in the enterprise, so it could play a role in pushing 802.11ad uptake. As the use of video grows, network managers will need to offload this traffic from networks to leave

room for more general traffic, and 802.11ad is an obvious choice because it provides so much capacity.

For most video, network managers plan on about 20 Mbps per video stream for rea-sonable frame rates, resolution and overall quality. But 60 GHz can be immediately useful in HDMI video links, which require about 3.3 Gbps for uncompressed trans-mission. While this is more of a residential application, eventually it will move into the enterprise and 802.11ad will become necessary.

To be sure, 802.11ad technology is na-scent and many parts of the market won’t need it for a very long time. Yet consump-tion will increase, and in the meantime engineers will continue to tackle the tech-nical challenges of this high-throughput gigabit wireless. n

802.11AD

27   N E T W O R K E V O L U T I O N, A U G U S T 2 0 1 3

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

RIVKA GEWIRTZ LITTLE is the executive editor for Tech-Target’s Networking Media Group. She and the Network Media Group recently launched SearchSDN.com, a new site on software defined networking and network programmability.

KEITH TOWNSEND is the founder of Virtualizedgeek.com and is an IT management consultant with more than 15 years of related experience designing, implementing and managing data center technologies.

CHUCK MOOZAKIS is the site editor for SearchNet-working.com. He has covered networking, telecom-munications, new media and newspaper and magazine production technologies for more than 25 years. Prior to joining TechTarget, Moozakis was editor-in-chief at News & Tech and also served as senior editor for InternetWeek.

SALLY JOHNSON is the feature writer for TechTarget’s Networking Media Group. She writes about networking, data centers, cloud computing and network management topics for SearchNetworking.com and SearchEnterprise-WAN.com.

CRAIG J. MATHIAS is a principal with Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in wireless networking and mobile computing.

Network Evolution  is a SearchNetworking.com e-publication.

Kate Gerwig, Editorial DirectorRivka Gewirtz Little, Executive EditorKara Gattine, Senior Managing Editor

Shamus McGillicuddy, Director of News and FeaturesChuck Moozakis, Site Editor

Sally Johnson, Feature WriterRachel Shuster, Associate Managing Editor

Linda Koury, Director of Online DesignNeva Maniscalco, Graphic Designer

FOR SALES INQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT:

Doug Olender, Vice President/Group Publisher dolender@techtarget.com

TechTarget, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466

© 2013 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. TechTar-get reprints are available through The YGS Group.

About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technology profes-sionals. More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deep store of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products and processes crucial to your job. Our live and virtual events give you direct access to independent expert commentary and advice. At IT Knowledge Exchange, our social community, you can get advice and share solutions with peers and experts.

@WEBSITE

Visit us E-MAIL

Contact usTWITTER Follow us