Networking

Before the coronavirus pandemic began a little over a year ago, educational leaders’ chief objectives for home connectivity were to establish a way to provide equal opportunities to students, allow them to complete their homework and participate in “flipped” learning models that require online access after school hours.

Fast-forward to today: Home connectivity has become essential for simply delivering instruction to students, many of whom are still learning in either remote or hybrid environments. While there are some encouraging signs that many students will be returning to their physical classroom spaces in the relatively near future, schools across the country will likely seek paths to keep students connected from home even after the end of the pandemic. That will require continued attention to security issues.

COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdowns altered the course of history. Children looked to their parents to provide advice on how to persevere in trying times. I told my children that something good can come from something bad. The same is true when it comes to security. The dramatic shift to a remote workforce was effectively leveraged by many organizations to enhance their security posture.

We recently received a call from the CISO of a large organization, who asked for CDW’s help. He explained that one of his organization’s competitors had experienced a significant security breach that shut down its operations for several days. An employee in an administrative office had clicked a link on a malicious email that opened the door for a devastating ransomware outbreak.

The pandemic has added momentum to several aspects of IT, and wireless networking is no exception. For many organizations, the massive expansion of Voice and Video over IP is hastening the move to Wi-Fi 6. (Wi-Fi 6 is the common name for IEEE 802.11ax, the latest wireless networking standard.) Other drivers include the growing Internet of Things, Software as a Service adoptions and the general increase in on-network devices that every industry is experiencing.

If you’re making the leap to Wi-Fi 6, a few key pointers will help you get the results you need.

The pandemic has touched just about every aspect of our lives. Its influence has been keenly felt in K-12 education. With many schools now moving to a hybrid approach to learning, classroom instructors are faced with a new challenge – how to stay connected to their students amid the back and forth between classroom instruction and remote learning.

Cisco customers have a choice between Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Ethernet VPN (EVPN) for building their data center network fabrics. Since these technologies are thought to be interchangeable, the choice often falls to cultural, political or other “Layer 8” decision-making. But the fabric technologies are, in fact, different in ways both subtle and significant, and one’s choice has a profound impact on fabric orchestration, operations, and staffing.

I hope you’ll join me all the way through this three-part blog series as I compare and contrast these technologies and provide a foundation for deciding on the best choice for your organization’s needs.

Cisco customers have a choice between Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Ethernet VPN (EVPN) for building their data center network fabrics. Since these technologies are thought to be interchangeable, the choice often falls to cultural, political or other “Layer 8” decision-making. But the fabric technologies are different in ways both subtle and significant, and one’s choice has a profound impact on fabric orchestration, operations, and staffing.

I hope you’ll join me all the way through this three-part blog series as I compare and contrast these technologies and provide a foundation for deciding on the best choice for your organization’s needs.