The new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard is already being adopted by many large companies due to its numerous advantages over the previous version: increased speed, the ability to work with technologies like video over the Wi-Fi network, and the possibility of moving one step closer to the All Wireless Office (AWO). “Our wireless network is saturated; it’s obvious that we need more and more capacity and speed, and the 802.11ac standard gives us that,” said Mauricio Valdueza, EMEA Enterprise Technologist at Dell. “But not only that, the completely wireless office is just around the corner, and in a world where tablets, smartphones, and laptops have taken over desktops, we must consider that the rest of a company’s technology, from the landline phone to the photocopier, also needs that wireless connection. Starting today will save us a lot of headaches tomorrow.”.
Julio Alba, Senior Networking Systems Engineer at Dell, spoke about how Distributed Architecture can help companies save costs and improve network efficiency, all while achieving greater scalability. “There is strength in numbers,” Alba asserted, “and this is also true in the world of networking. We are seeing how architectures of simpler, interconnected machines are surpassing physically larger ones in robustness and performance, while also achieving improvements in management and, above all, in system stability.”.
Finally, the event included a discussion on one of the fastest-growing, though perhaps lesser-known, trends in this field: Software-Defined Networking (SDN). This networking approach allows network administrators to manage network services by abstracting low-level functionalities. “SDN involves separating the control plane from the data plane in the switch, greatly simplifying the management of a complex network. More control and fewer errors—the goal of every CIO,” Alba concluded.
