What Do You Need to Know about Campus Architecture in the Web 2.0 World?
Wired in and video savvy - that's what new generation computer users are. Cisco Technical Marketing Engineer, Mike Herbert, explains how the demands of the Web 2.0 generation impact network design.
The Campus Network
Think of a large network. Think of the people who use the network. It could be in large area, or in a building, or a college campus site, an office tower: we call this the campus.
The campus is the portion of the network that is focused around providing network services for people, their laptops, their phones, their Personal Digital Assistants - or PDAs.
The campus network can also be thought of as that portion of the network that glues people and their devices together with the data centre servers.
New Expectations
It's being driven by user expectations. Today's generation of Internet users show us how expectations are changing. For young users - the so-called 'video kids' who have grown up with Internet technology - kids at home and at university, communication isn't just text based; they'll pull up a camera and send a video snapshot.
They're more interactive, more visual. They want to convey more information, they want to convey it all the time, in real time, and they want it to be not just at their desk but wherever they are, whenever they're there.
And this is a harbinger of things to come.
Changing Times
Something that we in the industry are seeing is that home use is increasingly influencing the way that businesses use IT. The way that we use technology for recreational purposes is rapidly becoming the way that technology is being used in the business environment.
Three things are changing
First, people are increasingly mobile- they're taking their computers, PDAs or phones with them.
Secondly, the primary means of communication is through these devices, and people keep them by their side all the time.
Finally, there is convergence; the mobile phone, PC and PDA are becoming just one device - or devices with multiple functions. Allof them require connectivity to the network - greater connectivity and mobility support.
Mobile users will rely increasingly on data networks and use a variety of devices
What Users Want
When you look from a network architecture perspective, designers previously assumed that all they needed to provide was connectivity, which they still need do. However, it's the expectations for that connectivity that are changing.
Campus Availability - People nowadays expect instant gratification. Business people asking a question want an answer not some time later today but now. You expect an instant message to pop up, a voice mail to be delivered. The Web 2.0 mindset means the network availability is quite different. A few years ago, I'd be waiting another ten minutes for an email to come in before I gave up. Designers must now push the network performance to the limit.
Mobility - people pick up their machines and they move around. They need the network to be available everywhere, not just at their desk.
Security - People take their laptops with them on their travels. The network now cares that the laptop that was at their desk is no longer there but on another continent, and has picked up the local computer virus, and is infecting every device in the office. The network needs to be designed at all levels to expect that infected devices will be returning. Users expect the same services wherever they go, and it has to be available all the time.
Data Volume - We used to be a text-based society. Web 2.0 is a video-based society, and this means that the amount of information we're sending is going to grow by an order of magnitude. Video uses up a lot of bytes: the information content of a movie on a DVD contains a whole lot more data than a book or a text version of the same material.We speak with video now not texts - once we've used this once we won't want to go back.
What Today's Engineer Really Needs to Know
It's not simple any more; it's become a complex problem. From an availability perspective, the uptime requirement is 'never goes down, ever.'
This is what you have to take into account in the design of the network and the choice of the equipment you specify.
Networking engineers of today and tomorrow will need to understand the technologies that will enable them to build the kind of networks we're talking about. They need to understand five technologies in particular:
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Deep Packet Inspection
- a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data and/or header part of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for non-protocol compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or for the purpose of collecting statistical information. *
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- the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow.*
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Identity (802.1x and Location Services)
- 802.1x is an IEEE standard for media-level access control, offering the capability to permit or deny network connectivity, control VLAN access and apply traffic policy, based on user or machine identity (cisco.com).
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- is the process of combining hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network. Network virtualization involves platform virtualization, often combined with resource virtualization.*
*Definitions from www.wikipedia.com
Feedback Cycle
All the things I mentioned apply not just that one plug at my desk. They apply when I'm having a meal, a drink in a café, down the hall in the meeting room. I need the same thing in all these places.
What we are seeing is a feedback cycle. Once people have experienced new technology, they want more of the same: the more you get, the more you want. Today's Web 2.0 technology mirrors natural human communication cycles and people intuitively want that.
I believe that this is the direction we are going in this business.We will see more demands and higher expectations, as the IT-savvy 'video generation' enter and take over businesses.
As networking engineers, it is our job to be able to match expectations and respond to our customers' needs, today and tomorrow.