In search of the never-never LAN

More companies are realising that employing a LAN is much more sophisticated than simple switching architecture, writes Jon Collins

From the layperson’s perspective, LANs have seen little change
over the past few decades ­ at least since switched Ethernet swept the floor with other local networking approaches.
While there have certainly been plenty of advances, they have largely remained under the radar, tending to revolve around widening the pipe from 10 to 100 to 1,000 users, for example, improving service levels in terms of scalability and availability, and implementing such things as security through virtual networks, centralised management and wider area connectivity.
However, there is more potential in the average LAN switching infrastructure than this simplistic picture might suggest. Many enterprise organisations are taking advantage of a wide variety of features, such as quality of service mechanisms and the more esoteric types of virtual LAN (VLAN). But in the mid-market there has not been as great a need for such advanced features.
There are signs, though, that this is changing. In a recent pan-European survey Freeform Dynamics conducted on behalf of Force10 Networks, we found a number of projects under way that will have quite an impact on the networking infrastructure and how it is architected.
About 85 per cent of respondents told us that wireless LAN (WLAN), voice over IP (VoIP) and network access control (NAC) were likely to be adopted by their organisations. Indeed, WLAN and VoIP were already being deployed by more than 60 per cent of respondents.
The good news for UK-based vendors and resellers is that these numbers were even higher in the UK; for example, more than 95 per cent of respondents said they are planning or are already implementing network access control.
What is significant about these findings is that each of these project types places a number of new, quite different demands on the network infrastructure. For example, WLAN can be “bursty” in terms of traffic and requires the capability to hand off a connection between access points; voice requires specific guarantees in terms of latency and reliability; while NAC requires specific features that link with policy criteria specified in the server layer (for example, user verification and device compliance testing).
All of this means that many medium and large organisations are finding their LAN infrastructures lacking, so are reconsidering them. For example, WLAN was cited by nearly 60 per cent of respondents as giving them cause to review their network equipment. For voice and NAC the figure was closer to 50 per cent.
So, what does all this mean for technology suppliers? Organisations tend to buy LAN closet switching equipment from one of three sources: direct from the vendor, from a reseller, or from a systems integrator. Unsurprisingly, buying habits vary according to the company’s size: larger organisations prefer the direct model; and smaller enterprises tend to favour the channel.
There are clearly opportunities to be had for the channel, however, it is important to note that different sizes of company have very different priorities when it comes to what they expect and need from their various suppliers.
And despite those significant opportunities, suppliers would do well to remember that there is no “one size fits all”.
Jon Collins is service director at Freeform Dynamics.