The HP Unified Wired and Wireless Access solution gives your IT the platform it needs to capture today’s rich-media, BYOD, UC&C, and converged-infra-structure transformations to enable business innovations. Selecting products from the comprehensive HP portfolio of campus access technologies, your business can deliver reliable high-performance network services to mobile users and rich-media applications. With guest and BYOD access, high-speed performance, consistent policy enforcement, and single-pane-of-glass man-agement, HP unified access solutions deliver a clear advantage over stand-alone wired or wireless LAN solutions.
High-performance wireless—HP offers a portfolio of high-performance wireless solutions, including dual 802.11n 450 Mb/s access points (APs) with three-stream technology. Also, HP MultiService Mobility (MSM) access points, RF optimization features, and wireless controllers deliver the wired-like per-formance needed to support today’s mobile workers.
Optimal wireless connectivity—Enterprises and solution providers can use HP RF Planner to accurately model WLAN coverage by factoring in variables, such as physical features, building materials, and WLAN equipment char-acteristics. With RF Planner, your network architects can optimize 802.11n networks for today’s dense mobile environments. RF Planner also facilitates deployment by assessing security risks and generating equipment lists.
As organizations add WLAN capacity to meet workers’ mobility needs, they typically deploy more PoE. PoE gives organizations greater flexibility in deployment and eliminates the need to run additional wires to power wire-less access points or IP phones, IP surveillance cameras, and other devices.
HP supports 802.3af PoE and IEEE 802.3at PoE+ in a broad selection of HP switches.
Unified security and policy—In a world where users are constantly on the move, you can unify access control with HP products to strengthen your secu-rity. Permissions are associated with a user’s identity, so the appropriate security policies are applied—regardless where the user goes. IT has a con-sistent method to provide guest and BYOD access, user authentication, policy enforcement, and user management, whether users connect over wired or
wireless networks. Unifying access control also reduces the number of net-work tools. And it reduces the complexity and cost of the netnet-work application services needed to provision, manage, and authenticate users across one or multiple enterprises.
Today, with the HP Unified Wired and Wireless Access solution, you can deploy hardware platforms on the access layer with integrated functionality that deliver unified wired and wireless LAN connectivity, including guest access, single-pane-of-glass management, and reliable security and policy enforce-ment. With this integration, you can deliver a consistent user experience while minimizing capital and operational expenditures.
Energy efficiency for greater savings—With HP solutions, you can optimize power for your campus networks and thus deliver additional savings. Multiple HP switches support Energy-Efficient Ethernet (EEE). Also known as IEEE 802.1az, EEE optimizes switches’ power usage by reducing power to switch ports when they are not transmitting or receiving.
In addition, multiple HP switches conserve power through power-manage-ment techniques implepower-manage-mented in the highly integrated HP ProVision applica-tion-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), including voltage islands and variable clocking, which reduce the chip’s power consumption.
Greater visibility into network performance—HP products support sFlow, which provides clear visibility to the usage and active routes of both wired and wireless connections. Integrated support for sFlow across HP Networking portfolio means higher performance and a more cost-effective solution. Using HP sFlow, your administrators have insight into metrics, such as top talkers, top applications, and network connections, on wired and wireless networks.
Network monitoring and troubleshooting is simplified with a unified access layer, and support for sFlow is essential for gaining visibility to the unified network.
Single-pane-of-glass management—HP IMC delivers unified and consistent management for all network components, including wired and wireless net-works, and delivers single-pane-of-glass management. In addition, access control, application performance management, and management of Virtual Application Networks on the campus are modular features that can be added to IMC, further extending its rich capabilities.
Role-based access and centralized policy enforcement—Identity-based access ensures that the appropriate security and policies are applied consis-tently, whether the user connects through a wired or wireless LAN. Advanced QoS provides your users with the optimal experience, even when using time-sensitive voice, video, and other rich-media applications. With HP IMC, you can enforce the controls you need, while giving users the freedom to use the mobile devices they want.
Enterprise-class reliability and lifetime warranty—All HP Networking switches that are part of the HP Unified Wired and Wireless Access solution are backed by the HP lifetime warranty with next-business-day advance replacement. There is no charge for software updates and phone support.
This lifetime warranty from HP with free, normal-business-hours phone sup-port drastically reduces your TCO. While most businesses pay close attention to the availability and reliability of their core networks, campus networks are often considered to be less critical. However, mobility makes the resiliency of the campus network more important than ever before. If a wired switch fails, the attached access points can lose connectivity, potentially cutting off network services to hundreds of users. HP access switches are prepared to meet high levels of reliability, and they are designed with redundant and hot-swappable power supplies, modules, and fans to ensure continuous network operations.
Key takeaways
Before you begin planning for a unified network, there are several issues to take into consideration. After you understand these issues, you can use the HP three-phase approach to implement your strategy without disrupting your company’s network.
Using HP Networking products, you can implement your BYOD and UC&C policies while planning for future needs.
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Ensure high performance for bandwidth-intensive applications, simplify deployment and management, and maintain security with limited resources.9
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Use an evolutionary—not revolutionary—approach to move from a mostly wired solution to a high-speed, secure, mixed wired and wireless solution. Use the HP three-phase approach to bring legacy networks into unified networks.9
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Deliver a unified solution to campus networks to improve the user experience, strengthen security, and simplify management with an HP Unified Wired and Wireless Access solution.9
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Capture today’s rich-media, BYOD, UC&C, and converged-infrastructure capa-bilities to enable business innovations at the edge of the network with the HP Unified Wired and Wireless Access solution.In Chapter 3: Building a better network with HP, we take a look at current HP wired, wireless, and management features and benefits that can help you build and optimize your network for unified wired and wireless access.
Reference
1 Mullins, Robert. “Network Buyers Survey: Standards Trump Features.” January 11, 2012. www.networkcomputing.com/next-gen-network-tech-center/
network-buyers-survey-standards-trump-f/232400059
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