Ruckus Wireless introduces FlexConnect

Ruckus
Wireless announced FlexConnect, a collection of patented technologies that
streamline the provisioning and security of a wide range of smart mobile
devices to better enable corporations to deal with the barrage of new
Wi-Fi-enabled devices hitting enterprise networks.

 

Ruckus Wireless also detailed future plans to support the automatic identification and
classification (so called device fingerprinting) of new smart mobile devices,
opening the door to device-specific policy enforcement, visibility, management
and self-registration.

 

“We are
experiencing device usage growth like we’ve never seen before and the impact
on computer networks is profound and permanent,” said Selina Lo, president
and CEO of Ruckus Wireless.

 

Smartphones
will outsell personal computers by 2012, according to a recent report by Morgan
Stanley. And new research from In-Stat forecasts that spending on
non-handset 3G and 4G services will exceed $5 billion by 2014.

 

According to
the report, enterprise spending made up over 62 percent of business spending on
non-handset data services amounting to over $1.9 billion in 2010.

 

Providing
easy and secure Wi-Fi access to support users bringing their own smart devices
to enterprise and carrier networks has quickly become a major issue for network
IT staff.  The traditional 802.1X/EAP enterprise security is secure but
very configuration intensive for both the IT staff and end user.

 

FlexConnect
leverages patented Ruckus Zero IT, Dynamic PSK (pre-shared key) and SpeedFlex
technologies to eliminate tedious user complexity while simplifying the
administration and troubleshooting of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones and tablet
devices.

 

Zero IT
provides ease-of-use device provisioning for configuration parameters while
Dynamic PSK automates the creation of per-user encryption keys that can be
easily distributed using the Zero IT framework.

 

With
FlexConnect, IT staff can now automatically provision wireless device settings
(such as SSIDs and unique pre-shared keys) on mobile devices while also
provisioning other wireless authentication and security parameters (such as
802.1X supplicants and certificates).

 

Having
deployed the Ruckus ZoneFlex system across 43 K-12 schools, NEBO School
District in Utah is using FlexConnect to configure devices and provide
automatic role-based access and security to the network for various user
groups.

 

When users
are authenticated via its Active Directory domain server, the ZoneDirector
automatically places them into a pre-defined role, based on the group policy
within Active Directory. The system then downloads and installs the wireless
LAN profile and permission on each device without manual intervention from IT
staff.

 

“FlexConnect
has been a huge OPEX saver for us With everyone bringing their own devices onto
school campuses, we now have a scalable model for securely provisioning these
devices with little or no IT support.  Integrating this type of
intelligence into the Wi-Fi network is essential with the amount of devices we
are expected to support,” said Dale Bills, director of technology for NEBO
School District.

 

Instead of
manually configuring individual devices with encryption keys, 802.1X
supplicants and wireless configuration information, Dynamic PSK automates and
centralizes this process within the network.  

 

Once enabled
for the entire system through a simple check box within the ZoneDirector WLAN
controller, a new user simply connects to the wireless network through a
provisioning SSID and authenticates via a captive portal.

 

This
information is checked against any standard back-end authentication system such
as Active Directory, RADIUS or an internal user database on the ZoneDirector.

 

Once
authenticated, a unique encryption key is generated for each user. Zero IT then
pushes a configuration applet with the unique user key and other Wi-Fi
configuration information to each device.

 

This applet
automatically configures the user’s device without human intervention. Once
associated to the requisite WLAN, the Dynamic PSK (with a configurable
lifetime) is bound to the user and the end device.

 

Ruckus
Dynamic PSK and Zero IT facilities are supported across a wide range of smart
devices including Apple iPads, iPhones, Android OS, Windows Mobile, and Windows
CE platforms.  

 

FlexConnect
also provides the unique ability to better remotely troubleshoot wireless-only
handheld smart devices through SpeedFlex. SpeedFlex is a custom performance
test tool that generates uplink and downlink throughput capacity and packet
loss test results for each client device.  This testing can also be
performed for each hop within a multi-hop mesh node network.

 

SpeedFlex
allows administrators to easily measure the Wi-Fi throughput of associated WLAN
devices and quickly identify and isolate network bottlenecks.

 

With
SpeedFlex, administrators can better plan, troubleshoot, monitor and measure
WLAN performance, eliminating the need for Internet-based measurement tools or
costly performance tools that often provide accurate results of the local Wi-Fi
environment.

 

From any
centralized ZoneDirector WLAN system, administrators remotely invoke a speed
test for a specific user thereby isolating client issues. SpeedFlex differs from
existing test tools because it was developed specifically for Wi-Fi and focuses
on characterizing performance at the wireless link layer.

 

By
Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]