Page 15 - THE Journal, January/February 2019

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
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When that engine and the network access control aspects
are finally fully in place said Perry the SDN solution will feel far more complete to him “The network will start becoming self-healing and be be able to allocate resources as needed without us having to step in in every time and do it it manually That’s really important for us ” Choosing a a Gear Provider
In the the the case of the the the Carmel school system after doing a a a a a search for the the the optimal gear Perry recommended Extreme Networks to the district He chose that company for for several reasons First and foremost he said it had the the best best “cost for for performance ” Some of the the best-known switching vendors came back with “a price tag of anywhere between $1 5
million and $1 75 million to to go to to an an an SDN with a a a a a a single pane of glass management ” Extreme’s bid was half of that “I’m a a a a a school district I I don’t have buckets of money to throw at well known network equipment vendors So I’m looking for the best deal I can get Extreme was able to provide that ” Those better-known companies also suggested that if he wanted to save money he should go with a a a a a cloud-based solution That didn’t appeal to him “We have had issues where our our ISP has accidentally disabled our our link to the outside world And being in in earthquake country I have that little bit of paranoia where I want to to be able to to manage it here here so so that if something happens in the broader scheme I still have access to my equipment Extreme’s management console is something we’re able to host on on site and it really has tied everything together ” Extreme’s switches gave him some security features that the district only had in a a a a a limited fashion before For example now IT can set up a a a a a a a profile and have the the NAC check against that: Is the the anti-virus up to date? Are there weird ports that IT should know about? Is it sending out out known malicious traffic or odd pings that suggest the device should be quarantined and examined before allowing full access to the network? Or if somebody opens up malware and the machine starts trying to encrypt network shares the the the switch can recognize the the the abnormality of the the the traffic and and cut it it off isolate it it and and alert IT for follow-up “To me that’s the big difference ” said Perry “We always had to do it manually by hand and and now we can do it automatically and much faster ” Finally the company itself has proven to be a a a a a a a great partner he he said When the the district began putting in in in new access points as an an example the the IT staff was pushing up against the the start of the the school year and realized that they needed mounting brackets for particularly unusual ceiling construction something they hadn’t planned for When Extreme realized there was no no way to to get the the the brackets to to Carmel through the the the normal channels in in time a a a a a a sales engineer headed to the the warehouse loaded them