How Network Fabric Reduces Complexity and Simplifies Network Management

The irony of technology is that while its intended purpose is to make our lives easier, the complexity that often surrounds it can take a toll even on the most experienced IT professionals. This is especially true for enterprise networks. Built and operated in a traditional way, node by node, they closely resemble a house of cards – there are layers of protocols and many of them are interdependent; If one layer fails, the entire network can be affected.

The result? Deploying and provisioning applications and services consumes more and more time and resources, limiting scalability and pushing your IT teams to work at or past their capacity and budgets. To make things worse, manual configurations can lead to errors, and errors can result in a network outage or security vulnerabilities. If you only focus on day-to-day tasks and solving problems, it is difficult to protect your organization against potential breaches.

So how can you make your enterprise network more stable, scalable, and easier to manage without sacrificing security? IT teams often feel they need a complex and sophisticated solution, but sometimes the simpler the idea, the better the outcome. That’s why new networks need to be built differently – with automation, unification, and security in mind. This approach is best represented in network fabric.

What is Network Fabric?

The term “network fabric” describes a specific type of network topology where all nodes (switches and endpoints) are interconnected to all other nodes, creating a matrix that resembles a woven square, hence the name.

While most traditional data network topologies emphasize north/south network traffic data traversal, a fabric network employs multiple possible paths of equal length because of the large number of connections between peers. This translates into a number of benefits, including:

• Shorter time-to-service
• Reduced risk of human error
• Improved network resiliency
• Enhanced security

How secure network fabric simplifies network management

Automation. A fabric network encompasses both the underlying physical infrastructure, as well as the Virtualized Service Networks (VSNs) that run seamlessly on top of it. This decoupling enables far greater flexibility in establishing services or introducing any moves, adds, or changes. With Extreme’s unique approach to network fabric,whenever a new network device is plugged in, there is no need to configure it manually – it is automatically detected, provisioned, and assigned the right access, saving IT time and minimizing the risk of network outage due to human error.

Unification. Time-to-service is further improved with the Fabric Attach functionality that simplifies and automates the connection of non-shortest path bridging devices to the Extreme Fabric network. For example, a wireless access point, IoT device, or an IP phone is automatically attached to the fabric network and connected to appropriate resources – it doesn’t matter if it’s a VSN or a conventional VLAN. This solution integrates with the existing network infrastructure and can be deployed over any type of connectivity and topology, allowing IT teams to provide secure, end-to-end services across the entire environment, which can be composed of mixed-vendor networks.

Security. Unlike traditional networks where security measures are bolted on, fabric networks are inherently more secure by design, making it far easier to reconcile scalability, user experience, and high level of protection against bad actors. While the traffic separation in legacy networks requires box-by-box configuration and is limited to only certain areas of the network, Extreme Fabric allows IT teams to segment and protect critical applications, data, and users easily and at scale, extending thousands of secure zones across the entire network infrastructure through hypersegmentation.

Real-world applications and benefits

Reducing complexity in Steele County

The more complex environment, the more visible and tangible the benefits from implementing a fabric network – as evidenced by Steele County, Minnesota, a rural county inhabited by approximately 40,000 residents. With a mix of state-managed and locally controlled fiber connections servicing multiple departments and locations, as well third parties, the local IT team was facing increasing difficulties in provisioning new VLANs and maintaining a proper level of security.

The introduction of Extreme Fabric allowed the county to manage their network without involving state ISP which normally led to delays, resulting in significant time savings and improved network agility – deploying new services used to take a week, now it’s a question of minutes. What’s more, the inherent security weaved in the new solution allowed to meet stringent requirements and compliance demands for supporting critical services such as the Sheriff's Office, jail management, and community corrections.

Improving security and flexibility for Volkswagen

Another prime example of fabric technology enabling higher flexibility and improved security comes from Poland. Volkswagen Poznań, a subsidiary of the multinational automotive giant Volkswagen AG, was looking to reshape its legacy network infrastructure in a way that would enable greater agility to address customer needs and evolving expectations, while also ensuring critical redundancy, operational efficiencies, and data security. Should a need arise to provision a new service, the IT team needed to be able to expand it to other locations quickly and securely, without manual changes affecting other services running at the same time.

Extreme Fabric enabled this and much more, allowing them to easily isolate hundreds of end-clients groups with different levels of security and support. With simplified and automated operations and network hypersegmentation, Volkswagen Poznań has gained a high-performance network that enables smart factory operations.

Simplifying highly complex environments at Resorts World Las Vegas

Circling back to the US, our final customer story comes from the hospitality industry. Resorts World Las Vegas is a luxury combination of hotels, casino, a theatre, nightlife venues, boutique shops, and more – all to make the guest experience one to remember. Now, the complexity of this environment is reflected in the technologies that run on the network: state-of-the-art audio-video technology, more than 900 video endpoints, 1,000 video streams, and 700 audio endpoints, all constituting the single largest AV infrastructure on the iconic Las Vegas Strip.

So how many engineers does it take to deploy a network of that scale and magnitude? Just one. With its automated, zero-touch provisioning of VLANs, Extreme Fabric has greatly simplified the setup of temporary switches to support ongoing events, while also enabling superior network performance on an ongoing basis. Supporting AVB protocol and boasting AVNU certification, the technology guarantees that the network can support Resorts World’s most complex audio-video requirements.

Unify, automate, secure

With server mobility, IoT, and cloud computing becoming increasingly present, IT professionals are asked to deliver more connectivity and introduce network moves, adds and changes at an increasing pace. In many cases, legacy networks are just too complex and too costly to scale with the evolving needs of the organization. The answer to these challenges lies in fabric networking.

Discover how the industry’s most widely deployed fabric solution supports advanced network management options and learn how you can unify, automate, and secure your enterprise network!