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Integrating disparate technologies has delivered dividends throughout recent history. In fact, convergence has been a vital cog of innovation for decades—from the linking of radio technology with film for modern cinema and television to the interconnection of telecommunications, optical scanning and printing technology for the advent of fax machines.
Today, convergence is nearly omnipresent. Consumer devices now incorporate phone, camera and personal computing capabilities. Enterprise networks increasingly merge voice, video and data over a single infrastructure to simplify and streamline communications systems. These converged networks are commonly used to support business environments where employees and customers are demanding access to advanced applications and exploring new ways of collaboration.
However, for convergence to be successful on a large scale, disparate technologies must be able to work together seamlessly. This requires a fervent focus on the development of and ongoing improvement to open industry standards. For network convergence, the discussion is now centering on LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol) and the newer LLDP-MED (LLDP-Media Endpoint Discovery).
ProCurve's Adaptive EDGE Architecture™ offers an affordable way to streamline a network by running all traffic over an Ethernet/IP infrastructure, and our advanced, industry standards-based technology eliminates expensive and complex proprietary requirements and upgrades. In our bid to provide converged networks that are industry based, easy to use and cost effective, we often find that the way to do this is to drive the standards ourselves. That is just what we have done with LLDP and LLDP-MED.
The network is changing and migrating to a single, converged entity—moving the network "edge" closer to users' desktops. Although this delivers significant business benefits, such as improved productivity and enhanced collaboration, it also causes several security challenges:
- How are secure access control policies for an IP phone and a PC on the same network port to be deployed?
- How does the administrator ensure the correct voice VLAN and QoS settings are used?
- How are E-911 locations of phone moves, adds and changes updated?
- How do you address these things without the proprietary Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) lock in?
Paul Congdon, ProCurve CTO and HP Fellow, drove the IETF effort to standardize the IEEE 802.1AB "Link Layer Discovery Protocol," a non-proprietary answer to link layer discovery. The standard is now completed, and support has been announced by many vendors—including ProCurve, Mitel, Avaya, Extreme and Nortel, with many others soon to follow.
The benefits of LLDP are extensive, but can essentially be broken down into three areas:
- Network Management
- Network Inventory Data
- Network Troubleshooting
With LLDP, your management tools are greatly simplified and enhanced—especially in multi-vendor environments. The standard also enables discovery of accurate physical network topologies, including those with multiple VLANs where all subnets may not be known. LLDP also ensures proper aging, so that only valid network device data is presented. Inventory management is simplified—with most implementations expected to support optional system name, description, capabilities and management address. Having accurate topologies is an excellent ease-of-use feature on its own. It greatly simplifies troubleshooting of the network and the ability to discover devices that are misconfigured or unreachable.
LLDP provides exceptional base capabilities, but on its own, it is not sufficient to satisfy the entire requirements for IP telephony and video. ProCurve and several other key vendors once again formed an initiative to address the specific requirements for truly converged networks with LLDP-MED, which we will highlight in next month's issue of Network Pro News.
Stay tuned...
Barbra Stuter is a Solutions Marketing Manager at ProCurve Networking by HP. She is responsible for defining and driving ProCurve's mobility and convergence solutions portfolio.
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