Ruckus Wireless is an innovation machine having pioneered technologies such as SmartMeshing, BeamFlex, SmartCast and now ChannelFly.  These innovations have differentiated Ruckus in the enterprise and service provider markets with outstanding results.  Ruckus is also involved in the IEEE and WiFi Alliance where new Wi-Fi standards such as gigabit WiFi or 802.11ac, and 7 Gbps 802.11ad are being developed.  Bill Kish, Ruckus’s CTO is my guest as we talk about Ruckus’s unique architecture to product differentiation and development.   Bill shares his view of the next three years in the wireless technologies.  It’s must listen for network architects in the enterprise and service provider markets.

Ruckus Wireless has been firing on all cylinders.  It’s the fastest growing Wi-Fi supplier on the plant in the enterprise wireless market and owns the largest market share in the carrier Wi-Fi space. Ruckus, an Enterprise supplier latecomer achieved the highest year-over-year revenue growth of all WLAN suppliers worldwide, growing over 134 %, according to Gartner’s Enterprise WLAN Equipment Market Share 4Q11 report.   For the second year, in the Service Provider Wi-Fi space, Ruckus was identified as the 2011 market leader with a 26.7 % share of Wi-Fi mesh node shipments, according to Dell’Oro. Very few firms can serve both service provide and enterprise market well; Ruckus is one of those firms.  Selina Lo, CEO of Ruckus Wireless joins me to talk about its business strategy and recent growth.  Since recording this podcast Ruckus announced its IPO plans, this could be one of the last times that you will hear Selina Lo talk for 20 minutes on its business strategy until after the IPO.  Enjoy it's a great listen.

Every corporation’s application portfolio is undergoing a massive transition thanks to mobile and cloud computing plus web2.0 applications such as social, peer-to-peer, browser-based file sharing, etc.  Clearly there are economic and corporate productivity gains in mobile and cloud computing, but not knowing what applications are flowing over an enterprise network can impact enterprise productivity.  Broadcom’s App-IQ technology, which is available as an integrated feature in its latest generation of Enterprise LAN Ethernet switch solutions promises to provide the enhanced technology for Web 2.0 traffic visibility and control.  Together with integrated WLAN capabilities, these switch solutions form the cornerstone of leading switch OEM products, as they deliver on the promise of mobility and visibility required in current and next-generation networks.  I talk with Sujal Das, Director of Product Marketing at Broadcom about its App-IQ technology and the visibility it provides to IT business leaders to control applications flowing over their networks. 

You can also download a white paper on App-IQ HERE

There are still many manual steps, such as phone calls and emails between IT teams, throughout the lifecycle of a virtual machine impeding timely and efficient VM deployment and, ultimately, the expanded deployment of virtual environments and associate benefits.  To deliver on the promise of cloud computing’s on demand application availability tasks need to be automated.  Inflobox has launched its Automation Tasks Board tools in the model of a Software Defined Network to enable IT department members to initiate with the click of a single button multi-step, often-repeated and time-consuming network tasks while providing cross team visibility and auditability.  If you want to build a real cloud computing facility, then you need to listen this this podcast.

In one of the most candid discussions with Jayshree Ullal, Arista Network’s CEO she voices her view of Software Defined Networking as not a market but a set of features.  Jayshree views OpenFlow as but one in many APIs becoming available to program layer 2/3 networks.  If you’re looking for SDN hype, then no need to listen to this podcast. But if you want a realistic view of this important industry trend, then listen up.

The edge network has to be more intelligent to support Bring Your Own Device or BYOD as well as existing wired desktops.  But many SecOps group would rather deny mobile access than allow it due to security threats thanks to lack of visibility or device, user and location information mobile devices offer upon network access.  To mitigate this concern, Extreme Networks launched its Intelligent Mobile Edge Network initiative including Ridgeline 3.1 to provide SecOps context aware identity information and application visibility for mobile and fixed endpoints entering the network.  In addition a new line of edge switches called the Summit x440 works closely with WiFi equipment to increase 802.11n performance and scalability.  Huy Nguyen, Sr. Director of Product management at Extreme joins me as we discuss the fundamental changes in edge networking thanks to BYOD and Extreme’s approach to securing mobile devices so corporations can gain the productivity gains of user device freedom. 

Virtualizing a physical network into multiple logical networks each with unique attributes has grown in popularity.  This network design is popular in healthcare, education, travel and other industries.  Network virtualization was available only to the largest of enterprises and service providers thanks to its cost and complexity of MPLS and VRF-Lite.  But a new approach called Easy Virtual Network from Cisco changes all of that by reducing cost and eliminating configuration and management complexity opening network virtualization to a much larger segment of the enterprise market.  In this Lippis Report podcast I talk with Sehjung Hah about Cisco’s Easy Virtual Network.

The term “fabric” has nearly as many definitions and permutations as “cloud,” so in this Lippis Report podcast Vikram Mehta, Vice President IBM System Networking joins me to discuss the top 10 attributes that a data center network fabric should possess.  With the back half of 2012 kicking-off aggressive data center fabric deployments listening to this podcast is a must to help you with your planning.

There are a growing number of options to make data center networking more flexible.  One option is the use of Edge Virtual Bridging or EVB, which has been standardized in project IEEE 802.1Qbg and championed by IBM, HP, Brocade, QLogic, Emulex and many others.  This approach extends the Virtual Ethernet Bridge or VEB sometime called Virtual Ethernet Switch (VES) used by hypervisors to connect VMs to the data center network.  Renato Recio, IBM Fellow & System Networking CTO joins me to discuss IBM’s approach to virtual network infrastructure overlays and in particular its support for Edge Virtual Bridging. 

Modern corporate networks are under increasing pressure to support a wider variety of applications thanks to mobile and cloud computing, desktop virtualization plus video traffic having skyrocketed.  Not only are bandwidth rates increasing from 1 to 10 to 40 GbE, but most importantly network services are needed to manage and support a different application portfolio mix and network access methods.  Network services such as firewalls, WLANs, network diagnostics and monitoring plus application performance acceleration are needed to deliver a consistently excellent user experience.  Cisco recently announced an upgrade to its popular Catalyst 6k with the availability of the Supervisor 2T that included re-vamped high performance service modules to deliver these network services.  Shweta Goyal, product line manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss which network services need to be available in modern networks. 

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.