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	TABLE OF CONTENTS Home Give Me Access Consolidation Is King Monday Morning Quarterback Standards Groups You Can't Ignore

To survive and thrive in 2007, infrastructure pros must prepare for and adapt to a shifting landscape. New and expensive technologies, such as unified communications, network access control, the expanding distributed enterprise and fatter applications are stretching IT dollars thin, increasing management overhead and placing performance demands on networks.

2007 SURVIVOR GUIDE INTRODUCTION BUSINESS STRATEGY SECURITY WIRELESS STORAGE & SERVERS MESSAGING & COLLABORATION APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS NETWORK MANAGEMENT NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

Unlike past years, when vendors focused on increasing speeds or selling new must-have devices, 2006 was characterized by consolidation. One example: the merging of AFEs (application front ends) and WAFS (wide-area file systems). The so-called branch office in a box includes features such as routing, switching, wireless access, network storage and DNS/DHCP. Appliances and management products also are coming to the fore for DNS and DHCP--both more critical than ever given the growth of VoIP and NAC.

Pressurized Networks

Unified Communications, as discussed on page 48, will require more reliable transport of real-time data over a wider area. More than just VoIP, UC can enhance collaboration and communication, particularly with a distributed or mobile workforce, but the infrastructure has to support it. The raw bandwidth must be available, but more importantly, end-to-end latency and jitter must be low and constant. The Dell'Oro Group expects Ethernet port growth to increase to 324 million by 2010, with the lion's share being Gigabit Ethernet. That means 10 Gigabit Ethernet gear--for which pricing is still high, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 without optics for a switch module--will be needed to aggregate traffic into the core network.

Increasing bandwidth isn't always the best way to solve network bottlenecks. Chatty network protocols, like network file sharing and real-time communications, gobble up the wire, limiting maximum real-world capacity to a level well below rated throughput. Bandwidth-management techniques, such as queuing and prioritization, can boost application performance, but they can't solve WAN bandwidth woes alone.

Organizations are straining to support remote offices, whether down the street or across the country. Adding bandwidth is far more costly than beefing up the LAN, hence bandwidth constraints. Techniques such as byte- and block-level compression have long been offered as a way to eke out more WAN bits per second, but technical advances in data reduction and application optimization can increase performance by a factor of 10 to 20 times. See nwc.com/2006/1221 for more on data reduction.

AFEs often reside next to specific servers, such as Web servers or databases, and perform TCP compression and optimization, SSL off-loading and bulk compression, and they can complement data reduction technologies.

In cases where extra bandwidth is required, other new WAN technologies, including Carrier Ethernet, offer more bits per buck. There are two critical requirements for using Carrier Ethernet. The first is proximity: In many cases, Carrier Ethernet is available only in major metropolitan areas. We expect to see expansion into smaller markets in 2007. The next consideration is wiring between the local carrier's PoP and your building: Carrier Ethernet over copper, TDM circuits and other conventional WAN services are available on a limited basis, but not at the speeds available over fiber, which can reach 1 Gbps or higher.

Finally, beware mixing and matching carriers. In many cases, Carrier Ethernet will be available at all your branch offices, but not from a single provider. The protocols for network-to-network peering are still being ratified, but that hasn't stopped providers such as Yipes from forging peering relationships with other carriers. Incumbents like Verizon often control the link end to end by leasing access lines from local carriers. Geographic coverage is growing, so assess a prospective provider's plans.

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