I know I’m a little late getting this post out but Networking Field Day 23 was a jam-packed event with lots of things to digest. I wanted to share some quick thoughts about it here that should create some discussion amongst the community, hopefully.

• If you don’t believe that wireless is the new access edge, go look at Juniper. Their campus networking division is basically EX switching and Mist. That’s it. Remember how HPE called Aruba a “reverse acquisition” years ago? And how Aruba essentially took over the networking portion of HPE? Don’t be surprised to see Juniper getting more misty sooner rather than later. And that’s a good thing for everything that isn’t a carrier or service provider router.
• Network monitoring became telemetry and is now transforming into digital experience. What is the difference to me? Monitoring devices tells you point-in-time information. Telemetry gives you the story of those point-in-time measurements over the course of days or weeks and can help you find issues. Experience is all about how that looks to your users. Problems don’t always affect them the same way it might appear on a dashboard. Likewise, things you don’t always see in your alerts can affect users in unforeseen ways. Honestly, you’re going to have to have all three going forward if you want your employees and your customers to be happy.
• SD-WAN is moving away from being connectivity only. It’s starting to be focused on application experience and enablement. Sure, that means there’s some connectivity pieces under the hood. But, just like your mobile phone, you don’t care how your favorite app is communicating with the cloud as long as you can get there. Likewise, we are soon going to care less about our connectivity (as long as it works) and more about how quickly we can get our users to their favorite locations. Simplification indeed.
• Whether we realize it or not, enterprise networking is going to change as we know it. Forget about your home networking connection. You’re going to have to get your home network inside the router to be more like an enterprise than a home. You need switches and enterprise APs to ensure your employees have the best connectivity. Yes, this means you’re going to have spend more money on your remote workers. And yes, this also means there’s a good chance the equipment is going to be used for non-business related traffic. But the alternative is to hamper your workers with substandard connectivity because not everyone can afford 802.11ax APs and gigabit switches on a remote worker budget.

Tom’s Take

Stay tuned for more coverage from Networking Field Day as well as some more networking thoughts!