By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
How do you stand out as a vendor in an increasingly competitive enterprise Wi-Fi landscape? Zyxel Networks has already been attacking the emerging Wi-Fi 7 market with affordable, high-performance APs and is now backing this up with intelligent Cloud-based features for QoE and security. Zyxel Networks’ strategy is to position itself as a strong and intelligent alternative to larger and more costly vendors, the company says.
Offering the right Wi-Fi 7 access points is important but as Wi-Fi 7 technology rolls out across the enterprise world, the focus will soon shift to what specific vendors can offer beyond standardised network nodes. Zyxel Networks says it is an excellent position to deliver more QoE and security value based on a suite of features now incorporated into Zyxel’s ‘Nebula’ Cloud management platform.
“Our approach is for our network nodes to interact over the Cloud so that security threat detection is pushed from Cloud to edge. In this way threats can be stopped and contained at the AP before entering the core network. This is important everywhere but perhaps especially for smaller network locations that don’t have a full security infrastructure,” says Kevin Drinkall, Director Marketing & GTM Strategy EMEA at Zyxel Networks.
Zyxel calls this Collaborative Detection and Response (CDR): The feature allows firewalls to report a threat to the Cloud, after which the device can be contained at the edge by the AP and moved to a separate VLAN as needed.
Zyxel’s security solution also incorporates IP reputation-based filtering, DNS filtering, and even application-level awareness with bandwidth throttling to make sure business-critical applications (such point-of-sale apps) are fully operational, Zyxel says.
Once services are secure the next critical step is to make sure the network is capable of delivering the right Wi-Fi quality of experience. Since early this year the Zyxel’s Nebula management platform has included professional features ‘Wireless Health’ and ‘WiFi Aid’ to optimise connectivity quality and aid in troubleshooting. Connectivity QoE optimisation can be automated using Wireless Health, while WiFi Aid drills down into client connectivity issues, Kevin Drinkall says.
“Wireless Health monitors network health and can be set to allow dynamic channel selection, steer clients to better signals, and change channel bandwidths, all of which can improve connectivity quality substantially. WiFi Aid intelligently detects and analyses the entire client onboarding process in real time, including issues with DHCP, DNS, wrong credentials, and more. The purpose of course is for IT administrators to be able to resolve issues quickly,” he says. For more also read here.
Nebula-compatible hardware includes Zyxel Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 access points, cybersecurity appliances, switches, and 4G/5G routers. The platform supports ‘zero-touch’ provisioning meaning that network device QR-codes – for example on AP packaging – can be scanned for automatic onboarding and configuration. As one of very few on the market, Zyxel Networks high-end Wi-Fi 7 AP includes smart (adaptive) antennas to boost performance in complex, high-density radio environments.
Zyxel Networks is a 2024 Wi-Fi NOW partner. Finally: Don’t miss Zyxel Networks at Wi-Fi World Congress Europe 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland, on September 23-25. Get your tickets here.
/Claus.
