RM Managed Wireless Brian Andrews Senior Product Manager

RM Managed Wireless

Brian AndrewsSenior Product Manager

Wireless within Education

• Computers and Internet used daily– Curriculum– Administration

• Ubiquitous network access– Throughout the school– Across the LA area

• Growing number of wireless clients– Staff phone within the classroom– Student portable devices

• Increased demand on security– Student network safety– School resources

Schools WLAN Requirements

• Low deployment and operations costs– Minimal IT and RF expertise required– Simple to deploy indoors or outdoors– Simplified district-wide management

• Secure access and user segregation– Satisfy regulatory requirements– Separate students, teachers, admin, guests

• Extended operational life-span– Must last 5+ years, and handle traffic growth– Immune to evolving standards and higher data rates– Ability to support new applications over time

• Voice, Streaming video, Surveillance, Location

WLANs enable New Services

• New teaching methods– Distance learning, Podcasts, Blogs– Teach anywhere, even outside– Not dependent on lab availability

• Improved teacher productivity– Attendance, Grading– Curriculum development– Professional development– Internal communication

• Improved security and safety– Wireless voice services– Video surveillance over IP– Location tracking

RM Managed Wireless Goals

• Reliable– Fundamental part of the

School infrastructure– Eliminate downtime and

disruption to learning

• Safe and secure– Secure network access – Identify and correct rogue

activity

• Flexible management– Zero maintenance for small

schools– Monitored and controlled

centrally for LA wide deployment

• High performance– Deliver educational benefits

to students and staff– Available throughout the

school whenever required

• Commercially viable for Education

– Low Operational Cost– Investment protection

• Allow for future growth– Easy, flexible and secure

Guest access– Advanced location tracking of

individuals and equipment

RM Managed Wireless Solution

Controllers

Management

Security

Location

Access Points

Controller Scalability

32-192 Access Points16 FastEthernet (10/100) PoE2 x 1 GB SFP

12 Access Points8 FastEthernet (10/100) (2 PoE)

4 Access Points2 FastEthernet (10/100) (1 PoE)

Library/Primary

Secondary/Academy/College

LA Data Center

Cost

/ C

ap

acit

y

512 Access Points2 x 10GB XFP8 x 1GB SFP, RJ45

32-192 Access Points2 x 1 GB SFP


Reliability

Performance

Safe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth

Reliability

• Standard reliability measures

– Low MTBF

• AP Controller ‘virtualization’

– LA based controller for resiliency

• Single point of management

– Large geographic area monitored and controlled

• Multiple load-balancing levels

– Users– APs– Controllers

• No single point of failure

• In-service upgrade– Minimise disruption

N : 1 Failover

• Management– Load-shared AAA server groups– Local and/or remote AAA– Distributed MX database– RingMaster redundancy

• Controllers– Dual hot-swap power– Load balanced uplinks – N:1 Controller failover

• Access Points– RF auto-tuning– Radio load balancing– Dual homed uplinks

Device ResiliencyRingMaster

AAA

RingMaster


Reliability

Performance

Safe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth


ReliabilityReliability

Performance

Safe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth

High Performance

• Key issues– Optimum voice support– QoS preservation– ‘Local’ access to data– Scale to 802.11n throughputs– Band-steering capability

Local Switching Capability

Distributed Switching• Most direct path– Optimal data flow– Extremely low latency

• Optimized for Voice Over IP– High quality calls– Eliminates dropped calls

Local switching eases scalability

Handles 802.11n without upgrade

.11n .11n

Offered load increases by up to 10x

.11n

• Traffic forwarding– Handled by the AP

• 802.11n– No impact on controller– Scales without upgrade

Balancing Resources• Most Wi-Fi devices default to 2.4Ghz (better range)

– Increases contention for spectrum, while 5Ghz virtually unused

• WLAN improved by steering 5Ghz-capable clients to 802.11a/n– Provides 30-40% better bandwidth utilisation with no cost

802.11b/g 802.11a

Dynamic Load Balancing• Clients tend to collect on same AP

– But often the client is in range of other APs that are idle

• APs collaborate to balance client load more evenly– Takes account of global load-balancing policies



Performance

Safe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth



PerformancePerformance

Safe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth

Safety and Security

• Key Issues– Secure session mobility– System-wide fast handoffs between APs– Standards compliant– Identity-based networking– Built-in Firewall and Intrusion Detection System– Endpoint Integrity integration– Safe and scaleable guest access– Location-aware access control– Dynamic authorisations

AAA

Secure, Identity-Based Roaming• User credentials define access

and network resource privileges

• Different groups with different privileges share infrastructure

• Privileges and services follow users as they roam

• Overlay on Layer 2/3 network– No VLAN / Subnet changes

Central Policies

User roams1

Credentials& servicesfollow user

2

StrongEncrypti

on

Security

AAAServers Rogue AP

Trusted Client

XX

Authentication

•802.1X, EAP-TLS, PEAP, TTLS, MAC, Web

•802.11i, WPA2, WPA, AES, CCMP

Endpoint Integrity •Trusted Network Connect (Trusted Computing Group)

•Microsoft Network Access Protection (NAP)

•Network Admission Control (NAC)

Intrusion Protection

• Core WIDS/WIPS

• Scan, detect, locate, disable Rogues

• Location aware access control

802.1X Authenticati

on

RingMaster

Intrusion Detection & Protection

Application Firewall

•Per user, per station, per group policy enforcement

•Application-aware QoS scheduling

•Time and location based access control

Guests

Location Tracker

Rogue User




Safe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth




Safe & SecureSafe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth

Network Management• Planning and Deployment

– Predictive planning tool– Creates network plan

• Configuration and Verification– Complete offline configuration– System and service wizards– Pushes configuration to MXs

• Monitoring and Reporting– By user, radio, AP, Controller, VLAN– Present location, roaming history– 30 day history– WIDS/WIPS integration

• Advanced Location tracking

LA Central Management

• Plan entire buildings

• Supports CAD files with pre-configured layers

• 3 dimensional model takes account of other floors

• Auto computes attenuation based on building properties

• Auto generated wireless coverage map and work order

• Predictive planning


• Easy two-click configuration

• Powerful wizards – Voice, security, switch configuration

• Cluster-based configuration management

• Network wide change management

• All possible as in-service upgrades


• Network-wide Deployment


• Dashboard view

• Network wide fault correlation and location

• Drill down to details

• 1 hour to 30 day reporting

• End user custom reports


• Network-wide Deployment

• Comprehensive Monitoring





Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth





ManageableManageable

Cost Effective

Growth

Easy Network Deployment

Wireless Network

• Non-disruptive overlay– Same security model– Same L2 / L3 topology– Same VLANs / Subnets– Zero changes required

• Industry standard security– Same directory / AAA– Active Directory, LDAP – All major RADIUS servers– 802.1X authentication– WPA, WPA2 certified– AES CCMP encryption

• Flexible Deployment Models

Wired Network

Same Solution Indoor/Outdoor

Indoor/Outdoor WLAN• Self-optimizing and load balancing

• Distributed policy enforcement

• Single management platform

• Seamless indoor/outdoor roaming

• Best performance

• Lowe operating costs

Common Feature Set

Indoor / Outdoor

Flexible Deployment Options• Cost effective controllers for small schools

– Primary, Library– Failover to LA based controllers

• Controller-less schools option– LA managed controller

– Local switching model

• Remote management– Value-add from the LA– Eliminates burden from school

Maximise Investment

• Load balancing uses WLAN resources better

• Capable of best in class voice services

• Scales easily to 802.11n with no controller upgrades

• Easiest to manage school district from one point

• Fully standards compliant from RF to Voice






Cost Effective

Growth






Cost EffectiveCost Effective

Growth

Managed Wireless Architecture

Thin AP Architecture

Security Management

Reliability Performance

Fat AP Architecture

Security Management


Central & Distributed

Security Management


CENTRALIZED

DISTRIBUTED

Location Tracking

• Find assets and staff quickly– Laptops, PDAs, Phones, Tags, Wi-Fi enabled devices

Modular Guest Access

Are you who you claim to be?

MAC Address, User ID, Password, Keys

Authentication End Point Integrity

Can your device be trusted?

Virus definitions, Firewall, Encryption

Are you who you claim to

be?

Can your device be trusted?

What access have you been granted?

Time-of-day, Location, Bandwidth, Apps

Access ControlAdvanced

Conventional






Cost EffectiveCost Effective

Growth


Reliability

Performance

Safe & Secure

Manageable

Cost Effective

Growth

RM Managed Wireless

Questions?

Documents

RM Managed Wireless Brian Andrews Senior Product Manager