Announced recently at CommunicAsia in Singapore, Extreme Networks (Nasdaq: EXTR) will support and encourage the use of BYOD within organisations using closely controlled wireless access points.
In conjunction, Extreme's Software-Defined Networks (SDN) strategy will assist in the convergence of desktop and BYOD solutions.
Based on the expectation that there will be almost 15 billion wireless network connected devices (according to Secure Edge Networks) and the expectation that Wireless is always on (just like the lights as Extreme's Bill Wester notes) there is a huge and growing need for versatile wireless access.
Extreme Networks offers a significant advantage by not tunnelling wireless traffic through existing wired infrastructure, but instead implementing "local bridging."
As Wester describes it, "basically our access point can map an SSID directly to a VLAN, and that VLAN can terminate the SSID directly on the switch where the IP [address] is plugged in and that allows the switch to do the data forwarding across the network. That eliminates the data plane portion of the controller's job. We call it Local Bridging, which we believe is the future of wireless network forwarding".
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In conjunction with their announcement of OpenFlow support across the entire range of backbone products, the recognition of BYOD and tightly-integrated edge routing means that any device can be served with corporate-grade networking.
"Customers should be able to program their network like compute and storage apps," said Shehzad Merchant, vice president of technology strategy at Extreme. "Extreme plans to use OpenFlow and other standard protocols to standardize SDNs as part of a larger strategy to create all-Ethernet open fabrics. We believe OpenFlow is shaping up for networks what Linux represented to servers 20 years ago."
As part of their launch at CommunicAsia, Extreme has introduced a range of specialised wireless access points addressing the needs of BYOD and the demands of such users on corporate environments. Details are available at Extreme.
Image courtesy of bigstockphoto
