Last year at Interop New York, Sujai Hajela, VP/GM Cisco Wireless presented a Keynote: Mobility and the Social Enterprise.  He asked the audience to show a raise of hands to see how many devices people were carrying.  As you would expect, there were plenty of people with 5 or more devices—some with as many as 7!

Similar to IT industry veterans, college students are also gadget geeks. Charles E. Spurgeon, Senior Network Architect at the University of Texas sees most students carrying 2-3 devices—typically a laptop, smartphone and some students also carry iPads.  Last Wednesday, more than 2 million pre-orders were placed within 24 hours of Apple announcing the iPhone 5—I’m sure many college students, Interop attendees, and gadget geeks were among those first orders.  

So what’s an IT director to do with all these devices on their network? How do you design a network to accommodate the influx of users, devices, and applications on your wireless network?

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Tags: 802.11n, high density, wi-fi

I know BYOD is hitting close to home when I’m receiving notices from the local middle and high schools requiring students to bring their own tablets to class. It is efforts like these that show BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) as more than simply a marketing term being thrown around by various network vendors—it’s undeniably real and it’s all around us.

With that in mind, the promise of BYOD will come with its challenges—the deployment and management risks involved threaten to be a major headache for IT managers if they are not properly prepared for it. When it comes to wireless networks, preparing and planning for potential future technological trends is always a best practice. We know our customers will be faced with the challenge of preparing for BYOD, and we want to help. That’s why we are hosting a webinar called Pervasive Wireless for BYOD.

We plan to discuss how to best prepare your network for the challenges and management risks inherent to a BYOD deployment:

• New user expectations in an evolving workplace landscape.
• The enterprise no longer owns the mobile devices accessing the network.
• IT has lost visibility and control of user devices and applications.

With BYOD, anywhere, anytime, any device usage is expected from the user, and the workplace is now globally dispersed with users touting mixed wireless devices. This paradigm shift calls for dramatic changes in how IT controls and manages users, devices, and applications.  It is critical to be aware of these challenges when planning, deploying and managing your network for BYOD.

To give you a taste of what is included in the webinar; here are four steps we will be discussing:

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Tags: 802.11n, Aironet, byod, Enterprise, wi-fi, wireless, wlan

We’re in the midst of an incredible megatrend. We know it and we’re living it. We all love our mobile devices; whether it’s our laptop (yes, I’m sitting at my kids swim class typing away for work), our mobile phone (I’m getting texts on what’s for dinner), or our tablet (where Draw Something awaits me). Apple recently stated that they have sold more than 67 million iPads in the recent 18 months. That is more than all the Mac sales in the past 27 years. There’s no denying it:  we are in the midst of an incredible megatrend—a mobile megatrend.

But what does this mean to businesses?From the IT perspective, the role of the mobile devices has transformed from a luxury item used for personal communication and entertainment to an integral tool for employee productivity. Mobile devices are now the main platform for work (laptop or tablet) and the primary medium for corporate contact (mobile phone). With employees bringing an average of two mobile devices each (laptop/tablet + mobile phone), companies can reap the benefits of new business opportunities and more productive employees.

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Tags: 11n, 2x2:2, 802.11a, 802.11a/b, 802.11b, 802.11n, access point, bring your own device, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, iPad, midmarket, midsize, mobility, tablet, wireless

As technology consumers, we take almost every aspect of wireless connectivity, network technology innovation and performance for granted. As technology workers, we tend to think about standards more than most people. But even so, do you really think about standards much when you use one of your many wireless devices? When you bought your tablet, did you wonder whether it supported 802.11n or 802.11a/g? Did you think it would matter when you started using it? And when a new standard gets introduced, do you jump online or race to the tech shop to swap out all of your devices so they support that new standard. I’ve never seen an ad for a device that uses standards compliance as a feature or benefit, just as no one has ever said to me, “Hey, check out my new smart phone! It’s 802.11n compliant, man! It’s so cool!” My point: we generally choose our devices based on features and price, rather than on standards compliance. (Well, there are many who are paid to test new devices for standards compliance, so my opinion will not be without some controversy to someone.)

The reality we face, however, is that wireless networks need to account for and support multiple standards, just as they must support multiple device types. The challenge for IT managers is to ensure that they are providing the best experience for users wherever they are on the network, efficiently, so that a user with an older device has the same experience as a user with a newer device. Cisco ClientLink 2.0 Technology does just that.

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Tags: 802.11a/g, 802.11n, Cisco Aironet 3600 Access Point, ClientLink 2.0 technology, innovation

There is a new generation of college students out there, I would know as I recently was one of them.  Information being at your fingertips is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity.  Professors’ expectations of their students have increased dramatically due to the wealth of information on mobile devices.  Every class I attended leveraged some form of wireless access to the web.  Instant message in response to real-time questions and online submissions are just two of many examples of how network access has been integrated into the education system.  Professors would consistently use online tools such as online drop boxes for projects and web conferencing tools.  According to MarketWire 92% of college students feel a laptop is a necessity, this indicates that the requirement of mobile access at a university is a given and the college experience is defined by the ease of that access. 

Professors are on tight schedules and are generally available only at certain times of the day.  Imagine- wanting to contact a professor during open hours only to fall short because your laptop had difficulty getting any kind of connection.  I remember the frustrations of wanting to revisit PowerPoint presentations on a class website in the library, only to realize that I was sitting by the one window notorious for being a wireless dead zone.  Dorms were infamous for spotty coverage.  Having the dorm room located closest to the access point for best access was purely by luck of the draw.  I was not so lucky.  In my dorm, you would not get any wireless access unless you were sitting right next to the hallway.  That’s why I am especially envious of the students of Colorado University, whose alma mater upgraded to enterprise-class coverage. 

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Tags: 802.11n, Borderless Networks, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, cellphone, Cisco, Cisco Catalyst 6500, Cisco CleanAir, cleanair, college, colorado, controller, education, laptop, mobility, preparing students for the future, professor, scale as you grow model, security, student, system, tablet, Tablets, teacher, university, wireless, wireless access point, WiSM2