Good to Great: Patrick Foy, VP of Engineering

I was sitting in my office looking at a book in my book shelf, Good to Great, by Jim Collins and it reminded me of a discussion I had recently with a long-term healthcare customer and was asking about their network and their plans to upgrade to 11n. This particular customer initially had issues with their legacy wireless deployment because of various complexities; however, after going through training and re-design of their network, they now have a wireless network that they can trust. As part of the discussion, we were talking about moving to an 11n network and what should be considered to have a great network.

The first step in the process to go from a good wireless network to a great wireless network requires customers to take a hard look at their current wireless deployment including their network design and RF environment and determine if their current solution enables them to support the demanding applications that are appearing on the horizon.

As customers are moving to 802.11n networks, they should consider their network topology and design because over the next 5 years, most of the user traffic will be from wireless users/devices. Should all wireless traffic be trunked to the central data center or should traffic remain local? Where should QoS policies such as packet prioritization and bandwidth limitations be enforced? In a large distributed enterprise, should multiple wireless controllers be deployed to support each branch office? A high performance and scalable network requires IT manager to ask these fundamental questions.

Wi-Fi operates on an unlicensed spectrum, so IT managers need to accept the fact that they are subject to RF variations at any time due to new networks or non-802.11n sources. I advocate IT managers buy the appropriate wireless tools and take the necessary training to understand their RF network. These tools are becoming more intuitive and with a few days of training, IT staff can gain valuable insight to the RF network and proactively resolve issues before they turn into help desk calls.

I was recently looking at an RFP where the customer was upgrading from a legacy wireless network to an 802.11n wireless network and I identified a few key goals, which I would say are the right goals to get you to a great wireless network:


- Provide a wireless environment suitable for users to adopt as their primary means to access the network [Scalability]

- Increase system throughput to enable streaming video, advanced graphics, and large data transfers [Performance]

- Create a unified user experience across the campus with a single sign–on capability and the ability to facilitate users roaming from building to building [Seamless Mobility]

- Increase administrative flexibility for campus departments to manage their own private, secure wireless networks virtualized on the centralized solution [Simplicity]

- Increase wireless network security options for guest access, endpoint compliance, and user policies. [Security]

- Ensure compatibility with IPv6 addressing and facilitate the conservation of campus IPv4 address space [Future Proof]
As you can see, customers are demanding a solution where they will be future proof for at least the next 4-5 years with a solution that offers the 3S’s - scalability, security, and simplicity Great wireless will only come with setting the right goals, educating yourself about wireless fundamentals, selecting a WLAN solution that satisfies most of your technical requirements, and finally make a commitment to proactively monitoring your network. Pretty basic stuff.