Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are becoming integral to help network managers get insightful, actionable answers to questions like these – and help them deliver a better user experience with far less effort.
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Let’s take a university as an example. Academic buildings, libraries, residential halls and dining halls are spread across the campus. Building interiors can be radically different – classrooms, dorm rooms, labs, dining areas or common areas. Yet most universities keep it simple, with specific wireless LAN configurations only for classrooms, dorms and outdoor areas. It’s simply too labor-intensive to create specific profiles for a myriad different Wi-Fi scenario across campus, even if it would improve the user experience. And when connectivity problems arise, the IT team largely depends on users to report problems, and then a time-intensive, high-stress troubleshooting process kicks off.
What if there were a way to have wireless industry experts look at the wireless deployments of all the universities and continuously determine what the optimal configuration should be for dorms, for cafeterias, for class rooms, lecture halls, and across campus? And what if that knowledge could be applied?
Get Expert Help
Aruba NetInsight is a new way to assure a great user experience for mobile-first networks. Powered by smart analytics and prescriptive recommendations, IT teams have the insights and guidance they need to continuously adapt and improve the quality of experience for users and IoT devices.
NetInsight applies machine learning algorithms, along with the expertise of Aruba’s expert wireless engineers and data scientists, to automate insights into the network, find root causes of problems more quickly, and make recommendations for improvement.
Let’s look at four ways NetInsight can improve network performance and the mobile experience with continuous monitoring, analysis and benchmarking.
1. Take the guesswork out of Wi-Fi configuration.
NetInsight automatically determines the best Wi-Fi configuration for an organization’s varied environments. It measures Wi-Fi characteristics for each AP, and automatically classifies each AP environment. It can tell, for example, that the building is a residence hall, that a particular floor has 10 APs, and how each AP is behaving based on whether it sees people walk by or students sit for hours streaming video.
NetInsight measures a broad range of details, including path loss based on the building materials, room size, and occupancy; traffic per AP based on application profile and user behavior; and mobility or user movement.
NetInsight benchmarks the organization’s network against similar networks and gives each building a performance score. A particular academic building on campus might have a score of four, but at similar universities, academic buildings may score an eight. NetInsight can recommend changes to the network configuration to improve performance.
With this kind of detailed insight, NetInsight makes it easier to have configurations tuned to different environments beyond the typical classroom, dorm and outdoor profiles that universities use. And that delivers a better user experience.
2. Ensure your changes make a difference.
When the network team makes changes, it’s usually over the weekend or late at night. IT may watch the network closely for a couple of hours or days. In contrast, NetInsight continuously monitors the network after changes to configurations, firmware or Adaptive Radio Management technology.
NetInsight measures factors like traffic, client uplink quality, airtime utilization, power distribution and connectivity attempts, and provides a clear before-and-after picture. IT finally has the data to know whether a change improved the network or not. Changes can be made confidently even when change management windows are tight – and IT can be confident that the changes were effective.
3. Find and fix problems before they turn into nightmares.
With a baseline of normal performance, NetInsight is an early warning system for performance anomalies, problems with client or AP performance, and authentication issues. It uses machine learning to detect problems early – long before users are impacted, and the helpdesk phone starts ringing.
4. Eliminate problems that truly impact the user experience.
NetInsight enables IT to find and eliminate problems that truly impact the user experience. It proactively monitors connectivity and provides root-cause analysis of problems with recommendations for failures.
NetInsight discerns between real problems and the volumes of meaningless alerts. For example, it automatically eliminates irrelevant connection failures with machine-learned roaming patterns. IT can see the difference between someone walking past an AP with a phone in their pocket, which is not a real attempt to connect, as compared to an executive who can’t get Skype connected.
That insight is beneficial beyond improving the user experience – that insight can be used for real-estate planning and emergency services.
Getting Smarter
It’s getting harder and harder for IT to assure a great Wi-Fi experience to meet the demands of a mobile-first world. Mobile environments have unpredictable connectivity patterns as people move around. With the rise of IoT, there are more connected devices than ever on the network. Network quality problems, no matter how brief, impact productivity and satisfaction.
NetInsight combines powerful machine learning algorithms and Aruba’s extensive wireless engineering expertise to continuously monitor and improve your network. And the longer you use NetInsight, the more it learns, and the smarter it gets. And the better your network gets – with less hassle.
Once we have configured the profiles without dependencies, we can start moving up the hierarchy until we reach the “AP Group” profile.
Everyone has their own preferences, but I find it very useful to keep the type of profile in the profile name itself. For example, if I want to configure an “AAA profile”, I would name it something like “Site_aaa-profile”. It allows me to quickly analyze the configurations and decrease the number of mistakes made when creating the dependencies. This is especially true if you like to use CLI to configure your controllers.
Building the Configuration
Once you have defined which profiles you need and choose their names, you are ready to prepare your configurations. You could do it yourself. It is actually a really good exercise if you want to learn or if you are studying for an Aruba certification.
An alternative is to use the online tool provided by Aruba called Aruba Solution Exchange: https://ase.arubanetworks.com/
The tool can help you generate a set of configurations. Templates are available and can be modified so the profiles and their name match exactly what you need. You can use the template to build a simple set of configurations is called “Wireless SSID”.
At the end of the process, you can download the configuration. At this point, it is an excellent idea to review and adjust it if it doesn’t quite meet your needs.
Once you have your configuration ready, you can go ahead and apply it to your controller. I am a fan of the CLI, so I usually use the CLI to do so.
The Golden State Warrior’s Steph Curry is an avid golfer, who tees up as much as possible during the off season. When Curry is on the greens in California, he can draw seriously large crowds that are good for golf course business but overwhelming for guest services such as Wi-Fi access and clubhouse food orders.
During the shorter, colder days last winter when a local Bay Area golf course upgraded its network, the plan was to keep things simple. It would offer Wi-Fi over the 18 holes for golfers and streamline service at the clubhouse with a faster order entry process for the wait staff. During normal business days, the network handles the traffic easily, but there is nothing normal about the two-time All-Star, three-time NBA champion Curry. His visits are making the golf course an unexpected destination point for golf enthusiasts and basketball fans—and the bare-bones, simple network is simply not up for the task.
More guests mean more potential cybersecurity threats, more people and devices accessing the network, slower POS systems, and more complaints about slow or spotty Wi-Fi. The network team is struggling to respond to those requests and to provide management with an overview of traffic patterns in and around the restaurant, clubhouse area and even which holes are most popular with the guests.
Unfortunately, the small (but very experienced) network team is blindfolded and shooting airballs. They don’t have the tools or capabilities they need to troubleshoot the guests’ network access problems or answer management’s questions—but they don’t have to be in this predicament. If they had chosen a network that supported business-class services, they could have handled the unexpected spike in users, stayed safe from malware threats, and had visibility to understand network usage.
Simplicity without Sacrifice
Business-class network services and simple are not mutually exclusive. Like strength and flexibility, networks can be simple and provide robust services that businesses need. Aruba midmarket solutions enable network administrators, users, and business owners to hit ”nothing but net."
Aruba's Cloud-Managed Networking solution delivers a first-in-class user experience, is easy to deploy and manage, and has the strong security and solid reliability that growing businesses need. The bottom line is that the network just works, simply and pain-free so businesses can focus on their game plans.
Here are four game-changers that business-class services can deliver to that struggling Bay Area golf course:
- Instant Access Points ensure access points can be deployed in two simple steps and without any networking knowledge. With this simplicity, network access can be deployed throughout the golf course by grounds crew or hospitality staff, providing guests with pervasive access.
- Guest Wi-Fi ensures that every guest has a high-quality access experience. When logging in, guests are directed to a golf course-branded login page with multiple login options and an overview of access and services availability.
- Presence Analytics uses built-in advanced analytics technology with reports that show who passed by the club house or pro shop, who walked into a location and are connected. This data can be matched with historical data to understand which users are new and which are returning. At the golf course, management is considering offering vendors a chance to set up a tent at specific holes. Presence analytics would let them create a pricing model based on which sites are most popular with guests.
- Multi-dimensional security detects rogue APs, filters unwanted application traffic with deep packet inspection, and applies two-factor authentication for safe access. IT can control who has access to the network and prevent users from introducing potential security threats.
Aruba combines network simplicity with business-class features that every organization needs to thrive amid the changes happening all around us. Even if a basketball star’s visit wouldn’t shake things up on your network, you never know what will. A simple network with business-class services can keep you prepared for whatever life throws your way.
We’ve all seen the stats on cybercrime, and the numbers keep ticking upward. More attacks, more data breaches, more business disruption. Organizations are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in cybersecurity, and the problem is getting worse. But still, the good guys keep pushing ahead.
I’ve been in cybersecurity for more two decades, and the answer keeps changing. To understand the current state of the IT security gap, Aruba partnered with the Ponemon Institute to survey 3,866 IT and IT security practitioners in Asia-Pacific, EMEA and North America. This is the first in a series of blogs exploring why it’s so difficult to detect attacks and stop breaches.
The Expanding, Blurring Perimeter is a Big Pain Point
People love their mobile devices and cloud access, but the Ponemon study confirmed the consensus that the attack surface has expanded. In fact, 62 percent of respondents said gaps in their IT infrastructure made it easier to for attackers to penetrate their companies’ defenses.
Fifty-five percent said it’s harder to protect the expanding and blurring IT perimeter with the rise of IoT, BYOD, mobile and cloud. Securing IoT devices is particularly challenging, not only from sheer numbers of devices but also because IoT devices are lightweight and often can’t be protected with traditional endpoint security.
Security teams know that you can’t control what you can’t see. But the reality is that IT lacks visibility into what users and devices are on their networks and what they’re doing. Half of the survey respondents admitted that a lack of visibility into what users and device were doing when connected to the IT infrastructure was the main reason for the security gap.
Compromised users, negligent users and IoT devices were the three big worries when it comes to insider risk. Many breaches involve the theft and misuse of credentials for a mobile device, which often provides privileged access to the enterprise.
Making matters worse, it’s getting harder and harder to find and retain highly skilled cybersecurity pros. Half of the respondents pointed to shortages in IT staffing as the reason for the growing security gap.
Aruba Provides 360-Degrees of Active Protection
At Aruba, we’re working to make cybersecurity less difficult.
Gaining better visibility into what your users and devices are doing on your network is a crucial step to closing the gap. Aruba is delivering that visibility and control through Aruba 360 Secure Fabric, a framework that provides a set of integrated solutions, including Aruba ClearPass and Aruba IntroSpect.
With Aruba, you can use policy-based controls for access and onboarding of mobile and IoT devices from wired and wireless networks. Components of the fabric use machine learning to detect slowly gestating attacks that have eluded traditional defenses, while proactively responding to these advanced cyberattacks across any network infrastructure. Aruba security solutions are open and integrate with more than 140 technology partners to provide an end-to-end solution.
Security is built into the very foundation of Aruba’s wired and wireless infrastructure, with unmatched innovation in the areas of encryption, physical hardening and remote access to ensure that user, system and device traffic can always be trusted.
Engineers commonly think of wireless networks as those that are positioned indoors. Warehouses, hospitals, and office buildings are the common places that engineers work to provide wireless access to end users. Now look at the world around us today.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a very real idea. People are constantly keeping connected while on the go with a wide range of devices, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet or a computer. This new realm of wireless network planning has some extremely useful topologies and use models that engineers around the world are turning to and using.
Uses for Outdoor Wireless Networks
Common outdoor wireless networks can generally be summed up into two broad configurations. The first would include general, blanket wireless coverage configurations designed for end users. The other is “specialized” configurations such as point-to-point networks designed to function more like infrastructure. The more general outdoor mesh networks looking to just serve clients over a wide area are used in places such as metropolitan areas, school campuses or even outdoor sport stadiums.
Through the use of more rugged, outdoor antennas, engineers are able to project wireless signal over specific areas in a very intentional manner. With the advent of wireless mesh networking, every access point in these outdoor environments is no longer required to be connected to a building with a wired connection available. This is quite the contrast to providing wireless access outdoors with all wired access points and directional antennas. Heat maps will begin to show the better coverage for the end users when outdoor mesh environments are used.
The other common configuration is either point-to-point or point-to-multipoint topologies. This is a very useful way to connect multiple buildings that are all positioned nearby each other in a certain geographic location. The last case that I worked with a wireless network in this configuration involved extending network access from a large office building to a smaller office location across the street. This is a prime example of a way to extend the network where other designs like trenching a new fiber line may not be an option.
The reality of a lot of situations is that this new, wireless option to bring network connectivity to other locations is a prime candidate. Whether it's for reasons like cost or required permits, trenching a new line for an uplink isn't always a possibility. Outdoor wireless mesh networks configured as a point-to-point can provide a stable network solution when a wired connection is out of the question.
Regardless of which design, these outdoor mesh networks are becoming more widely used than ever, in a wide range of configurations.
Mesh Wireless from Aruba
Aruba’s mesh wireless capabilities are designed to extend wireless networks to new places where a hardwired connection might not normally be possible. When it comes to these networks using mesh access points, they can connect back to their wireless controller in one of two methods:
- Direct connection to network, via hard line network connection. This is called a mesh portal.
- Wirelessly, through communications with a mesh portal. These are called mesh points.
Direct network connections provide a method of connecting these access points just like you would any other indoor access point. The wireless mesh option though has many specialized uses. The most common use that I have encountered is point-to-point topologies to connect an outlying building near the main site. A single mesh portal can connect one (or multiple) mesh points to extend the network to additional buildings on a campus. Depending on how you position these mesh access points, the amount of coverage and the possibilities of where you could extend the network are endless.
For more information and details on MeshOS terminology and usage, I highly recommend the following video from Aruba:
