#farpoint group

The Wi-Fi array, which I once described as either a super multi-radio AP or a collapsed-backbone WLAN switch (or both), is a great way to provision a lot of capacity in a given location, and Xirrus, who pioneered and lead in this space, have in recent years been offering arrays with modular radios. It's possible, then, to mix and match and even field-upgrade the radios in an array as new technologies appear. And that's exactly what Xirrus announced, a new pre-order upgrade plan for adding three-stream .11ac modules to their current product line. Xirrus arrays enable the collocation of 4, 8, or 16 radios in single package, and modularity is the key to investment protection as new technologies, like .11ac come along.

The only cautionary note here is that multiple .11ac radios could swamp the inherent backhaul capacity of certain models, so this will need to be taken into account when configuring a solution. Not all radios in a given array have to be .11ac, and it would be hard to recommend such anytime soon regardless, so Xirrus presumably has users covered.

I recently posted an entry on how I see the separate and distinct classes of wireless-LAN systems on the market today, with an open question as to the degree of functional overlap we'll likely see among them. The midmarket sector is today of particular interest, motivated by a recent announcement from Cisco of new APs (the 1600 and 2600) aimed just at that opportunity. Coupled with a new release of the Cisco Prime unified (wired and wireless) management console and an increasing emphasis on virtualizing key components (very important to midmarket firms trying to minimize costs), and the midmarket opportunity suddenly looks like anything but a niche.

We've identified the key requirements that define this segment. These include ease-of-use for operations staffs, because midmarket firms don't have the large IT departments of their enterprise counterparts. Staff productivity, always a key to lowering operational expense (OpEx), is thus especially critical here. The other major issue is scalability, as in non-disruptive, cost-effective, and easily managed, because midmarket firms often see higher growth rates than larger firms.

Domain name hosting provider GoDaddy.com recently suffered intermittent network outages that brought down customers' email and websites for six hours. The Go Daddy outage was originally thought to be the work of a DDoS attack, but later was determined to be the result of corrupted router data tables stemming from a series of internal network events. In a message posted on Go Daddy's website, CEO Scott Wagner said the provider wasn't hacked and no customer data was compromised. Go Daddy has since implemented measures to prevent this type of network outage from occurring again, Wagner wrote.

"Having failover between the systems in case one should start behaving strangely is important because it allows traffic to be quickly moved to another system that has not been impacted," said Craig Mathias, principal with Ashland, Mass.-based Farpoint Group advisory firm.

A highly distributed network architecture is much more likely to survive and bounce back quickly from any type of network failure compared to a monolithic system, Mathias noted.

While providers can adopt technologies and procedures to minimize failure impact to their customers, enterprises do not need to sit idly by while the service provider works out networking issues.

"[Enterprises] must understand that they are dealing with complex, imperfect systems that will fail and they do need a contingency plan so they don't become a victim," Mathias said.

Failing over to another provider is one way that enterprises can ensure that business will stay up and running, even though they may not have 100% functionality, noted Farpoint's Mathias.

An enterprise considering a multi-provider environment can also benefit from using vendors -- like Akamai Technologies -- that offer load balancing and redundancy between providers, Mathias added.