Enterprise Networking
Network is a critical component of any organization, it provides required connectivity between users and applications, it must be designed carefully to account for modern threats.
The threats to the network are no longer from external sources, it has exposure from internal actors too.
Well designed network should account for performance, reliability and security
- Network Access control
- Macro segmentation
- Micro segmentation
- Private and public cloud access
- Performant wireless access
There are six major building blocks of enterprise networking
- LAN
- WAN
- DataCenter
- Networking
- Wireless LAN
- Cloud
- Connectivity
- Security
- LAN
Local Area network is no longer just network switches, it means secure and fast access to applications hosted on prem or in the cloud, Network Access control with device posture and segmentation has become a norm for organizations that are security focused. Products such as Cisco ISE and Aruba clearpass are great examples of products available to create profiles and policies to secure your LAN, they can also pave the path towards Zero Trust Network Access.
- WAN
Wide area network has evolved over the years from point to point connectivity to MPLS based and now with SD-WAN, SD-WAN coupled with SSE can provide end to end secure, performant and reliable connectivity to applications hosted on-prem in a centralized datacenter or in the public cloud, such as, AWS, Azure.
- Data Center Networking
Segmented networks to protect workloads from east-west exposure should be a key consideration along with providing a fast LAN access that doesn’t rely on old protocols such as spanning tree, fabric path and VPLS. Data Center technologies have evolved to use newer control planes such as EVPN to take advantage of all available network bandwidth within a leaf/spine architecture.
- Cloud Connectivity
Microsoft Azure Expressroute , AWS direct connect are preferred as a fast method for server to server traffic while client connectivity can still use MPLS or SD-WAN based access to cloud.
