Enterprise Mobility Summit 2013: A farewell to Ethernet?

HP argues that intelligent wireless access points and SDN may make Ethernet a thing of the past in enterprises

Speaking at the Computing Enterprise Mobility Summit 2013, HP EMEA marketing leader networking, Matt Walmsley, explained how in planning for BYOD firms need to look beyond devices to include consolidation and automation of wireless networking and - ultimately - to software defined networking (SDN) and managed services.

Walmsley stated that the role played by Ethernet in connecting users to the corporate network is diminishing, thanks to the rapid rise in the use of mobile devices.

Its place is being taken by wireless, although, as Walmsley explained, existing Wi-Fi infrastructure is likely to be deluged by the volume of traffic flowing in as a result of the exponential rise in mobility - a rise that he claimed has been and still is severely underestimated by CIOs.

While some firms might be tempted just to expand their coverage by adding more wireless access points (APs), Walmsley suggested that a more root and branch change is necessary to future-proof the system.

Today, wired and wireless infrastructures are treated as separate islands. This needs to change if networks are to become device, application and connectivity agnostic. With reference to projects undertaken by HP in its own campus, Walmsley said that intelligence should be pushed out away from the centre to the access points themselves, so as to reduce the latency caused by constantly having to tunnel back to the central network.

Intelligent APs, he said, can enforce policies locally, scale up as needed, as well as being able to dynamically select the most suitable radio spectrum frequencies depending on congestion and the application requesting it. This is important for applications such as streaming video.

It is also important for the infrastructure to be able to switch users between 3G/4G and Wi-Fi seamlessly - something that carriers are increasingly looking to do - in order to eliminate dead zones.

By sharing loads not only between intelligent APs, but also within the AP itself by using multiple radios, performance is increased. Controlling devices can then be virtualised into a single logical controller, allowing for quicker failover, more uptime. Effectively you now have a SDN.

Walmsley claimed that wireless availability on the campus is now better than it was for Ethernet five years ago.