The NAC market is at a pivot point as a key piece of technology that offers a third deployment option is about to enter the market. This third option, based upon authentication and distribution of NAC functions across existing appliances and network infrastructure will enable NAC to scale across an enterprise from its early deployments of guest, wireless and remote access to headquarter and campus LAN environments. Most NAC appliances support two deployment options, in-band and out-of-band. In-band for small deployments and out-of -band for larger ones, but neither scale well for campus LANs. A new deployment option distributes device posture assessment, authentication and enforcement across NAC appliances, a radius 802.1x server and NAC enabled LAN infrastructure. This distribution of NAC tasks across NAC appliances and NAC infrastructure create scale to support large campus environments. Steven Song, Marketing Manager for Cisco Systems joins me to discuss NAC and how its maturing to the point that campus LANs are now being equipped with its defense mitigation protection capabilities. If you have requirements to implement NAC in your campus, then you need to listen to this podcast.

The networking industry has started to open up its software in the form of SDKs and APIs. Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, 3Com and the open source routing initiatives are allowing developers to write to well defined router software interfaces. This is an important development as it provides a venue for increased innovation in networking. But Cisco has taken this activity to a higher level by offering Linux and Windows platforms within its Integrated Services Router (ISR) and Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) products, delivering on the network as a platform concept. We focus on the ISR-based solution today as I talk with Shashi Kiran, Senior Manager Network Systems for Cisco Systems. We discuss this new trend in IT which takes integrated networking to the next level by integrating computing and applications in to the network fabric offering business and IT leaders a new approach to branch office value creation with the Application eXtension Platform. If you’re designing new applications for, or optimizing branch office operations then you need to listen to this podcast.

We all have multiple workspaces where we deliver value to our corporations. Workspaces span from your office to your home and every place in-between. The devices we use may be desktop and laptop computers, fixed, mobile and soft phones. The bottom line is that our communications conveniences that being directory, presence, messaging, call logs, click-to-call, click-to-conference, etc should be extended across all these workspaces. The question we ask in this podcast is can a workspace ready network be implemented with different network and communications suppliers or are their compelling attributes to build workspace ready network with a single vendor? Sanket Amberkar, Manager Solutions Marketing of Network Systems & Security for Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss workspace ready networks and how they increase corporate value while simultaneously reducing IT operational cost. If you’re planning a UC deployment then you need to listen to this podcast.

aCerno is a company that serves online ads at sub-millisecond speeds. It uses anonymous shopping data from a group of over 450 multichannel retailers to predict which products of more than 140 million online consumers will be likely to purchase. aCerno reaches nearly all online shoppers and processes over a couple billion queries per day. From the time of the query to the time an ad is served has to be 150 milliseconds or less. Foundry Networks' equipment makes that possible. Wayne Earl, Director of Network Operations at aCerno is my guest as we explore aCerno's IT infrastructure that allows it to deliver a fantastic service to its customers with very strict time constraints. If you're looking to increase application performance then you need to listen to this podcast.