HP Networking

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By Vishwas Manral, Distinguished Technologist, HP Networking, Advanced Technology Group

As we approach the end of the year, I can look back at some very fond memories. This year has been a hectic one. On the personal front, I became a father a second time over – to a son now 4-months old. On the work front, I have been looking at nurturing our router platforms, which taken just as much of my attention and time.

With this blog I intend to bring out some of the important trends that affected the enterprise networking world this year. . . mainly to highlight what it means for the router platform. I of course understand “important” is subjective, as for my 2.5-year old daughter it means visiting the doctor because she gets her lollipops (with lollipops being something we obviously want her to avoid!).

Besides cloud computing which I have analyzed in my previous blogs on NVGRE/ VXLAN and Cloud-aware WAN, the main trends and change drivers this year have been:

1.  Content tsunami – We are in the midst of a transformation where video is becoming the way we ingest content. Video is transforming the way we do collaboration in enterprises. There is a growing need to cache content, not only in Service Providers but also in enterprises. In the shorter run this means that there will be closer integration with solutions like transparent caching and WAN Optimization. It also means more security for the content sessions.

HP Router software was enhanced to provide setting up media connections in a secure manner over TLS, as well as utilizing Secure Real-Time transport protocol functionality (SRTP).

2.  Network proliferation – The continuous growth of traffic leads to content proliferation. With trends like “consumerization of IT”, we see a marked trend for enterprise applications becoming “consumerized” (richer experience and interactive). The network proliferation resulting as a result has caused the businesses to rethink the way they manage their IT infrastructure. The longer-term direction is to be able to manage a minimal set of devices using orchestration, rather than an appliance for each functionality.

HP Routers are designed to work with orchestration and not with it as an afterthought.  HP is also continuously expanding the functionality on the routers for branches to provide a “branch-in-a-box” approach, considerably easing management. We have also now passed the DevConnect testing with Avaya Aura for  the voice media gateway functionality. HP Routers also provide intelligent SIP Trunking features.

 

3.  Survivability – As a side effect of the increase in cloud computing usage, more and more services will be moved out of the branch/ campus. This would mean that it would be even more critical to have features that provide survivability of branch services in case the WAN goes down. Also the use technologies like 3G/ 4G for backup will increase on the Router platform.

HP Routers now provide additional 3G modem support solutions for better survivability of the Branch office.

4.  IPv6 with BYOD – Early this year the last two unreserved IANA IPv4 /8 address blocks were allocated to APNIC. This event along with the much talked about IPv6 day, has brought some much-needed focus on the IPv6 world. With the trend of Bring-Your-Own-Device, or BYOD, and LTE-enabled devices in a lot of cases using IPv6 as the default address for connectivity, the need to use IPv6 is ever greater. Though nearly all router platforms support IPv6, there are new challenges being found as the IPv6 technologies defined and implemented eons ago are now being stressed in the field. Besides feature parity between IPv4 and IPv6 is a must, to allow an effective IPv6 transition.

To deepen the already extensive IPv6 support HP routers were enhanced to allow IPv6 branches to be connected over an MPLS cloud using the 6VPE solutions. Also there were extensive enhancements for IPsec security for applications running over IPv6.

What do you think when it comes to routers?

These of course are my views based on trends and discussions I have with fellow technologists in the industry. I would love to hear from you, which other important trends you feel, affected the networking industry and in turn the router platform this year?

>> Read my related blog posts:

VXLAN: consider the network virtualization technology cost angle

Enterprise networking reaching for the clouds: 4 steps to service-aware WAN 

>> Learn more about HP Networking products and solutions.

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