Roger Howorth
Roger Howorth is a journalist and IT contractor working for various clients operating in financial services.
Monday 19 November 2007, 2:03 PM
HP network lab tour
HP has been showing off some of the latest networking kit at its training facility near Reading recently. Although I've worked in several datacentres that used HP's ProCurve switches, things have certainly moved on a bit since I last looked at the HP range.
I was pleased to see so much 10Gbit kit up and running over both fibre and copper links. The other two highlights were related to security and wireless LANs. Looking at security, many switches now implement an open standard for network monitoring called sFlow. In HP's case, most ProCurve switches can be set to monitor traffic flows and make that data available to IT staff running the ProCurve management software on their PC.
I’m also eager to test the management of large wireless LANs using the XL Light Wireless blade controller and wireless LAN access points, launched in Sept. This blade plugs into an HP switch and allows all WiFi configuration to be done on one central controller. Access points automatically retrieve policy etc. from the blade when they are booted. I expect reviews of some of these products to be published on ZDnet in the coming weeks.
I was pleased to see so much 10Gbit kit up and running over both fibre and copper links. The other two highlights were related to security and wireless LANs. Looking at security, many switches now implement an open standard for network monitoring called sFlow. In HP's case, most ProCurve switches can be set to monitor traffic flows and make that data available to IT staff running the ProCurve management software on their PC.
I’m also eager to test the management of large wireless LANs using the XL Light Wireless blade controller and wireless LAN access points, launched in Sept. This blade plugs into an HP switch and allows all WiFi configuration to be done on one central controller. Access points automatically retrieve policy etc. from the blade when they are booted. I expect reviews of some of these products to be published on ZDnet in the coming weeks.
