In this week’s episode of Engineers Unplugged, we hear from VMware’s Andre Leibovici (@andreleibovici) and Chuck Hirstius (@rexremus) as they discuss how to Be Kind to Your Protocol, including solutions to common problems and the art of tuning.
Welcome to Engineers Unplugged, where technologists talk to each other the way they know best, with a whiteboard. The rules are simple:
Episodes will publish weekly (or as close to it as we can manage)
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Practice drawing unicorns
Andre Leibovici and Chuck Histrius on Engineers Unplugged at VMworld Barcelona.
Do you agree with Andre and Chuck? Are you being kind to your protocol? Find more information on Chuck’s blog and Andre’s blog. Post a comment or a question here, or join the conversation with @CiscoDC on Twitter or Facebook.
The question isn’t IF your users will need more bandwidth, but WHEN they will need more bandwidth. 802.11ac represents the next evolution of the 802.11 standard, and, as you’ve heard, this one really pegs the gas petal in the quest for speed. Offering a link-rate of up to 1.3Gbps, 802.11ac represents the first wireless standard that surpasses the gigabit barrier.
But what makes 802.11ac unique isn’t just bandwidth. The new standard represents a forced push to the cleaner 5GHz spectrum, as well as extended battery life, made possible by getting devices on and off the air more quickly. To learn more about the technical details under the hood of 802.11ac reference this whitepaper.
Cisco’s Aironet Access Point 3600 and an alpha version of the 802.11ac module were demonstrated during Cisco’s presentation during Wireless Field Day 3 (the demo occurs at timestamp 15:30 in the video). Keep in mind that this is a demonstration of a pre-released product so it is expected that throughput and functionality will change and likely increase when the product is available for customers in early 2013.
The test goal was to measure one client, one Access Point 802.11ac performance and leveraged Ixia’s IxChariot to generate UDP traffic over the air. The test was done in an open real world environment, so the achieved throughput is less than what would be expected in a clean RF environment typical of a benchmark test.
There are many challenges IT managers face on a daily basis. As the proliferation of user devices and the growth in business, personal and collaborative applications continue to grow, almost exponentially, these challenges only make the job of an IT manager harder. For instance, imagine what goes through the mind of an IT administrator who is responsible for helping a hospital and medical school get a handle on device and application growth and usage:
Is a guest or patient downloading movies using Bit-Torrent –in other words, stealing valuable airtime away from my mission-critical applications?
My network supports a mixed use of guests, employees and vendors/doctors. Without prioritizing applications on the network, employees risk losing productivity and response time to patients, insurance providers, labs. Can I prioritize business-class applications such as Cisco Webex/Jabber and de-prioritize the applications such as Netflix?
Who are my top 10 users and the top 10 upstream and downstream applications? Can I save a detailed report of all application flows in my network for compliance purposes?
The number of devices, number of users is exploding, and use of video is growing 50% year over year. Should I add more access points in my auditorium or conference room areas? Or should I upgrade to 802.11ac for more capacity?
Enter Cisco Application Visibility Control(AVC) integrated into wireless infrastructure.
Demand for Internet services continues to build. The increasing popularity of smartphones, tablets, and video services is creating a “data tsunami” that threatens to overwhelm service providers’ networks.
So far, service providers have mainly reacted to the data flood with technical counter-measures—for example, by deploying Wi-Fi and small cells to offload data in heavy traffic areas such as sports stadiums and downtown urban areas. The Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) believes that operators should also act on the demand side, which can be best influenced by pricing.
Back in the early 2000s, network operators were clamoring to build their Internet customer base; they replaced their old metered models for dial-up Internet, and enticed new subscribers with unlimited, flat rate, “all-you-can-eat” broadband data plans. This pricing strategy has enabled mass-market penetration—first in fixed, then in mobile. But it has not increased ARPU.
While flat rate pricing plans have contributed to the waves of Internet data swamping the capacity of broadband operators, these plans have done little to create value from all that traffic. In fact, the decoupling of connectivity and service layers can destroy value if you compete on easily comparable flat rate access prices only. Flat rates shift the focus from quality and service differentiation to price competition, and expose operators to the risk of cost-plus-based pricing, with diminishing returns.
In some countries, fixed-broadband providers have started altering flat rates by introducing some forms of usage-based pricing: “throttling” data download speeds for the heaviest users, switching them to potentially more costly metered data plans, or introducing new tiered price plans. Just in the last few months in the United States, both Time Warner Cable and Comcast made announcements about their plans to experiment with usage-based pricing.
While usage-based pricing models are required to fight “bandwidth hogs,” they must be carefully introduced and managed. Customers have learned to love flat rates. The 2011 Cisco IBSG Connected Life Market Watch study found that Read More »
The world of transportation is rapidly changing, which is in turn driving rapid change in the world of manufacturing. Transportation products of all kinds have had connectivity in some form for many years however; the connectivity was confusing, unreliable and often deficient in adequate bandwidth and technology to sustain a continuous stream of interactions between equipment and operation centers. New means of M2M have emerged out of necessity, which have broadened the ecosystem of participants to include tech companies, service providers, and others. Read More »
