Over the past few years, the “bring-your-own-device” trend has become increasingly popular – providing opportunities for employees to use their mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets or laptops to solve business problems. In most companies, these devices operate via a wireless network. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index white paper, by 2016, more traffic will be offloaded from cellular networks onto Wi-Fi than will remain on cellular networks. Therefore, learning to work with Wi-Fi safely and effectively is a must.
In addition to optimizing employee efficiency and productivity, the concept of a “workplace in your pocket” presupposes new business strategies based on new levels of customer interaction. There are several key points to which companies developing mobility strategies should pay attention.
Wi-Fi as the main way to connect employees
Ordinary users are abandoning wired technologies. The majority of mobile devices, including evergreen laptops, already don’t have a wired network interface. Wi-Fi is becoming the main medium of data transfers, and therefore expectations are higher for enhanced failure proofing, better coverage and speeds of data transfers via wireless networks. And if Wi-Fi hot spots have not been used as additions to the corporate network in the past, meaning the applied requirements weren’t very high, now companies have to invest in the technical and radio frequency characteristics, office architecture, office materials and hot spot locations to march in step with the Wi-Fi trend.
As a rule, modern wireless access points don’t work alone; they are connected into a single system called a cluster, by one or more wireless controllers, which in turn functions as a network monitoring and user authorization party. The wireless network can dynamically adjust the RF noise pollution for more productivity and higher quality of communication with end devices.
Ever-increasing capacity
In the next few years, everyone expects a boom of wearable gadgets: watches, bracelets, sunglasses, and music players with Wi-Fi support, etc. A large number of mobile devices and portable gadgets creates so-called background traffic generated by different applications. Often, it can demand as much as half of the total capacity of the wireless network. On devices that support the latest wireless standards, 802.11ac for example, this isn’t a huge problem. But the increase in density of user devices often imposes certain restrictions on the choice of devices with Wi-Fi connectivity. In scenarios where there is a high density of users and Wi-Fi access points, especially when neighboring points are forced to use the same frequency channel, it’s advised to use co-channel interference cancellation technologies, allowing to significantly increase the ratio of “signal to noise,” and therefore the overall signal level.
Roaming
One of the advantages of wireless technology is not being tied to a particular location and the opportunity to change it right in the middle of a task. An obvious example is the possibility to make audio and video calls while moving around the office. But what can users do when the device leaves the coverage area of one access point and enters into the coverage area of another? This leads to a connection failure and a relatively long process of re-authentication.
In such cases, technologies that allow roaming come to the rescue. Roaming allows the user to move around the office, changing wireless hot spots without losing the connection. This can be achieved by using wireless access points that are connected to a wireless controller that “follows” the movements of previously authenticated devices between different access points, guiding them through the process. The problem of a weak signal between the wireless client and the access point is solved in a similar way. For example, using technologies of optimized roaming, you can:
• Control the switching of Wi-Fi clients from one access point to another.
• Provide optimized distribution of customers and connect them to hotspots with the best speeds.
• Prevent users from getting “stuck” when the Wi-Fi device is connected to the nearest access point and “holds on” to it up to the point of signal loss, not having the intelligence to detect nearby access points with a better signal.
There are also alternative options for roaming; for example, mesh networks using mesh network technology (arranged like mobile networks and possessing a number of unique properties), but these are not yet widespread due to their architectural peculiarities.
Security threats and protection methods
With the obvious advantages of using BYOD strategies and mobility in the enterprise comes the disadvantages; unfortunately, it also means dealing with a large number of risks associated with security.
On the one hand, the practice of using personal mobile devices is built on trust; on the other hand, it relies on strict compliance with corporate security policies and software used for those purposes. On the mobile user side, it is imperative to monitor the process of timely updates for the operating system and software products used, as well as to consider the possibilities of using various restrictions to control these devices. For example, corporate security policy should not permit wireless connections to devices without real-time antivirus protection and properly installed software updates. In accordance with this policy, the employee in question must install the software, which firstly will allow him or her to meet security requirements, and secondly enable the access control system to receive information about whether the necessary security steps were taken.
Let’s look at another example: a company is very strict about protecting corporate trade secrets and forbids its employees to use cameras on mobile devices while in the office. For that purpose, all mobile devices are equipped with a special software program that controls the location of the user based on what wireless network or GPS connection they are connected to, which in turn controls the camera of the mobile device in accordance with corporate security requirements.
The wireless data transmission channel itself provides a large number of attack vectors, so the wireless network infrastructure (access points, controllers, commutators and routers) should be able to automatically analyze traffic and identify suspicious activity.
Almost all mobile devices are equipped with a variety of custom software that can harm corporate networks and infrastructure. Considering these dangers, the network access policy should be implemented, carefully prioritizing different levels of network access, such as restricted access, guest network access and so on.
Bottlenecks
With the emergence of new wireless technology standards, network capacity increases, but often bottlenecks appear in places where wireless networks are “joined” with commutators. Low performance and network capacity of commutators and routers can lead to significant restrictions in the work of wireless devices.
The increase in wireless traffic can also influence the company’s WAN links, but by implementing various technologies for caching, compressing and prioritizing of content and traffic, the company may be able to decrease the load on both the external access channels and the wireless network itself.
The modern approach to wireless networks can significantly reduce total cost of ownership thanks to the use of equipment that combines the functionality of commutators, access controllers and security management and control systems.
To sum up, employee and client mobility brings new exciting opportunities for both businesses and their clients, but also demands significant evolutionary changes to the basic requirements of IT infrastructures everywhere.
Maxim Sovetkin has been working at Itransition as a system engineer for the last six years. He has a profound knowledge of hardware and software, as well as networking technologies to provide a powerful combination of analysis, implementation and support. He has a wide experience in system and network administration and engineering, hardware evaluation, internal project management, systems and network security, incident analysis and recovery. His technical interests are in automation, hardware, *nix, networking, SAN, security, system integration, planning and design, virtualization, VoIP, wireless technologies, Windows and workforce management. Sovetkin graduated from Belarusian State University with a degree in mathematics, system analysis and IT systems modeling. In his free time, he likes to enjoy good literature, active sports, cute pets and good company.
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