Aruba Introduces Wi-Fi 6 for Small Businesses

Wi-Fi 6 wireless network provides rich capabilities and security for customers of customer services, as well as increases the efficiency of business processes. As you know, the main problem of small businesses is the lack of IT experience and appropriate specialists for the implementation of new technologies. But today, things are changing - Aruba is introducing a new Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) access point designed specifically for the needs of this business segment. New Aruba Instant On AP22 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6TM Access PointIt delivers lightning-fast wireless speeds, reduced risk of interruptions, and advanced Wi-Fi 6 security features. All of this combined with the reliability, ease of implementation and management that users are accustomed to receiving from Aruba. The new Instant On AP22 access point provides small businesses and organizations with a simple, secure and intelligent wireless solution that empowers SMBs to deliver the best quality service to their customers without the cost and complexity.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA): simultaneous operation of a large number of clients with Wi-Fi 6 support on each channel - regardless of the type of device or traffic, multi-user, multiple I / O (MU-MIMO) and simultaneous service of different clients (Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6), which provides improved performance per user.

Target Wake Time (TWT) allows you to set a schedule for clients to communicate with the access point. This reduces power consumption and extends the battery life of client devices. Aruba's Advanced Cellular Coexistence (ACC) capabilities maximize Wi-Fi performance by minimizing interference from 3G / 4G / LTE cellular networks and other distributed antenna systems. Wi-Fi speeds up to 1.7Gbps: lightning-fast Wi-Fi connectivity, seamless video streaming, seamless online gaming on a wide variety of devices.

Fully compatible with legacy (802.11b / g / n / ac) and all Wi-Fi devices, so you don't have to swap out your smartphones and tablets. IDC predicts more than 316 million Wi-Fi 6E devices will hit the market in 2021, making the latest addition to the Instant On family a great choice for small and medium businesses. The solution gives business owners the opportunity not only to get the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 today, but also to prepare for the future.

Key features and benefits: Become aruba certified design expert

Offering four times the bandwidth of 802.11ac access points, the AP22 delivers exceptional usability in any environment, be it remote offices, multipurpose classrooms, or modern retail and hospitality facilities. For those companies that have had to rebuild or change their business model as a result of the global pandemic - from predominantly personal contact with customers to online interaction, or from office work of all employees to working remotely from home - the increased bandwidth of the wireless network gives confidence that that the execution of all operations will proceed smoothly and without hiccups.

Like the rest of Aruba's Instant On APs, the AP22 integrates seamlessly with existing Instant On APs (both indoor and outdoor) and the recently introduced 1930 series switches. They can also be configured and centrally managed using the Instant On mobile app. and / or cloud-based web portal. In fact, Instant On is so quick and easy to set up that it takes less time than preparing and drinking a cup of coffee.

Ideal solutions for different types of small businesses

Small businesses can be very diverse. Aruba Instant On provides ideal solutions for a multitude of small businesses.

Retail Stores and Cafes: Network connectivity and security are critical to the operation of retail chains. And growing businesses simply need flexible PoS (Point-of-Sale) systems for take-out trading, issuing payment documents, managing inventory and providing guest access to the network. Aruba Instant On AP11 and AP22 provide small business owners with a cost-effective, easy-to-manage, high-speed Wi-Fi solution designed to meet the mobility, security, and Internet of Things (IoT) requirements of today's business environment.

Hospitality: Whether it's a small business hotel or the city's most popular boutique hotel, fast, secure and reliable internet access is key to providing guests and employees with an exceptional hotel experience. Aruba Instant On AP11D, AP12, AP22, and AP17 are great for spaces that require uninterrupted indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi coverage with seamless transitions to the network in rooms.

Professional offices: High-performance laptops, data-intensive business applications, interactive voice and video collaboration tools need wireless networks to handle this data flow. Aruba Instant On AP15 and AP22 Access Points and Instant On 1930 24- or 48-Port Switches meet the needs of professional offices to keep visitors connected and employees productive.

HOW THE INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS

But how does it work? Have you ever wondered how an image of a cat gets to your London computer from an Oregon server? We are not just talking about the wonders of TCP / IP or the ubiquitous Wi-Fi hotspots, although all of these are important. No, we are talking about a large infrastructure: huge submarine cables, vast data centers with all their redundancy of power systems and gigantic, labyrinthine networks that connect billions of people directly to the Internet.

Perhaps more importantly, as we rely more and more on ubiquitous Internet connectivity, the number of connected devices increases, and our thirst for traffic knows no bounds. How do we make the internet work? How do Verizon and Virgin (the largest Internet service providers in the US - approx. New) manage to constantly transfer one hundred million bytes of data home every second, non-stop, every day?

Well, after reading the next seven thousand words, you will know about it.

British Telecom (BT) can attract customers with the promise of fiber to every home (FTTH) for higher speeds, and Virgin Media has a good quality of service - up to 200 Mbps for individuals thanks to its hybrid coaxial fiber network ( GVC)… But, as the name suggests, the World Wide Web is truly a global network. Internet insurance exceeds the power of a single provider on our island or, indeed, anywhere in the world.

First, we will take a look at one of the most unusual and interesting cables that carry data and how it reaches the British coast. We are not talking about any common thread between the data centers on the ground a hundred miles away, but about a contact station in a mysterious place on the west coast of England, where, after a journey of 6500 kilometers from New Jersey American, the Atlantic Tata submarine cable ends.

An American connection is essential for any major international communications company, and the Tata Global Network (TGN) is the only single-owner fiber network on the planet. It is about 700 thousand kilometers of submarine and terrestrial cables with over 400 communications nodes worldwide.

However, Dad is willing to share. Not only can the director's children play Call of Duty without delay, but a select group can watch Game of Thrones online without delay. The Tata Tier 1 network accounts for 24% of the world's internet traffic every second, so the chance to meet TGN-A (Atlantic), TGN-WER (Western Europe) and their cable friends is not to be missed.

The station itself - a fairly classic data center in appearance, gray and indescribable - may generally seem like a place where, for example, cabbage is grown. But inside everything is different: to move around the building you need RFID cards, to enter the data center - give the impression, but first - a cup of tea and a conversation in a conference room. This is not your usual data center, and some things need to be explained. In particular, submarine cable systems require a lot of energy, which is provided by many waiting units.

Protected submarine cables: Benefits of Dark Fiber

Carl Osborne, Tata's Vice President of World Networks, joined us on tour to share our thoughts. Before Dad, Osborne worked on the ship himself, laying the cable and overseeing the process. He showed us samples of submarine cables, demonstrating how their design changes with depth. The closer you are to the surface, the more insulation you need to withstand potential transport damage. The ditches are dug in shallow water where the cables are laid. However, at greater depths, as in the Western European Basin with a depth of almost five and a half kilometers, no protection is required - commercial transport does not threaten the cables from the bottom.

At this depth, the cable diameter is only 17 mm, it is like a felt pen in a thick polyethylene insulating sheath. The copper conductor is surrounded by a lot of steel wires that protect the optical fiber core, which is embedded in a steel tube with a diameter of less than three millimeters in soft thixotropic jelly. The shielded cables are the same inside, but in addition they are covered with one or more layers of galvanized steel wire wrapped around the entire cable.

Without a copper conductor, there would be no submarine cable. Fiber optic technology is fast and can carry almost unlimited amounts of data, but fiber cannot run long distances without a little help. To improve the transmission of light along the entire length of a fiber optic cable, repeaters are needed - in fact, signal amplifiers. On land, this is easily done with local electricity, but at the bottom of the ocean, the amplifiers draw direct current from the copper conductor of the cable. Where does this current come from? From the stations at both ends of the cable.

Although consumers do not know this, the TGN-A is actually two cables that cross the ocean in different ways. If one is damaged, the other will ensure continuity of communication. The TGN-A alternative lands 110 kilometers (and three ground amplifiers) from the main and takes its energy from there. One of these transatlantic cables has 148 amplifiers, while the other, longer, has 149.

Station leaders are trying to avoid publicity, so I'll call our station guide John. John explains how the system works:

"To power the cable, there is a positive voltage at our end, but in New Jersey it is negative. We try to maintain the current: the voltage can easily hit the resistance of the cable. A voltage of about 9 thousand volts is divided between the two ends. This is called bipolar feeding. So at about 4,500 volts at each end. Under normal circumstances, we could keep the entire cable working without any help from the United States. "

Needless to say, the amplifiers are built to last 25 years without interruption, as no one will send divers down to change contact. But looking at the test of the cable itself, inside which there are only eight optical fibers, it is impossible not to think that, with all these efforts, there must be something more.

"Everything is limited by the size of the amplifiers. Eight fiber pairs require amplifiers twice the size, ”explains John. And the more amplifiers there are, the more energy is needed.

At the station, the eight wires that make up TGN-A form four pairs, each containing a receiving fiber and a transmitting fiber. Each wire is painted in a different color, so that in the event of a breakdown and the need for repairs at sea, technicians can understand how to reassemble everything in its original state. Likewise, onshore workers can figure out what to enter when connected to a submarine line terminal (SLTE).

F5 Networks and BAKOTECH Group held a case conference

This year, the BAKOTEK group of companies and the leader in the field of application delivery and protection, F5 Networks, crossed the line of partnership for a period of 5 years and held a joint event in honor of the anniversary, telling about real cases and successful projects of companies in our region and the CIS.

 “ Today you will not hear any marketing presentations, or stories about new products, or about how spaceships ply the vastness of the universe. We will tell you the use cases, implementations, cases in which we have participated over these 5 years. All stories will relate directly to our markets. There will be many speakers not from BAKOTEK, but from technology partners and direct customers, which is very pleasant , ”said Alexey Yasinsky, department director of the BAKOTEK group of companies, during his welcoming speech. 

“ Ukraine is one of the fastest growing countries for F5 in Eastern Europe. And if earlier many things were of a theoretical nature, now business in Ukraine has reached such a level that we will talk about specific cases and projects that we, together with our partners, have implemented for our customers ”, - confirmed the regional director of F5 Networks for Eastern Europe Sergey Pozdnyakov.

He also highlighted one of the most important trends in the movement of companies around the world to the cloud and, in this context, the importance of the deal to buy the well-known market player - NGINX - and integrate its technologies into F5 products.

Note that the event took place in the format of two streams. During the Business Session, participants, among other things, learned how they managed to set up fast application delivery in distributed data centers of a bank with a large amount of data, listened to cases of replacing TMG with F5 Networks in Georgian Indastrial Group and Fozzy Group, learned the best practices for solving most problems on the network with the help of Enriched Netflow, about WAF and Kredobank's path from “historically” to application specific configurations, as well as many other solutions to non-trivial problems.

In turn, at the Technical Session, the guests of the event learned about the nuances of implementing balancing of different types of applications in a large international bank, about the migration of the distributed data center infrastructure to the F5 BIG-IP i2600 platform from the mouth of a network architect from IBM Ukraine, about the practice of using the F5 Automation Toolcain settings to accelerate daily tasks of large F5 installations, Access Policy Manager and all company services on one web page in ZeoAlliance, and much more.

The rich program of cases from the F5 TECH SHOW 2019 conference naturally touched upon the main directions of F5 Networks, namely: What is f5

securing web applications

centralized application management

optimization of the transition to cloud infrastructures

managing policies of access rights to applications.

The session of the “Open Microphone” summed up and finished the event with high quality, the main purpose of which was traditionally to solve a specific problem in 5 minutes or answer a difficult question of the guest of the conference - with the help of experts, speakers and colleagues in the hall.

Linux administrator, analysis of the profession: from skills to salary

The demand for the profession

With the growth of technologization and computerization of commercial and non-commercial companies, there is a need for qualified personnel able to establish the operation of computers and networks. Nowadays, the profession of a Linux system administrator is in high demand. The services of such specialists are used by IT companies, commercial organizations of various areas of activity, and state enterprises. Admins are needed wherever there are computers, and computers are in every organization.

Linux Administrator Responsibilities

The main tasks that the administrator solves: linux system

monitoring and troubleshooting Linux system software errors, knowledge of other operating systems is also required (Windows, Mac OS);

setting up and ensuring the security of the company's computer network;

backing up data, restoring information if it was lost;

technical support: help and support for users, training on the use of software;

service of office equipment. These are not only computers, but also office equipment;

reporting on the state of the computer network and the work done.

Sometimes the system administrators in the company are also entrusted with the task of purchasing computer hardware and software products.

Linux administrator requirements

Most often, employers require:

thorough knowledge of the principles of Linux;

skills in installing and configuring server software;

knowledge of common software products, for example, 1C;

knowledge of automation methods using scripting languages;

understanding the operation of the hardware of computers with the ability to diagnose and troubleshoot;

experience in setting up processes for remote work.

Your advantage in the fight for the Linux administrator seat will be:

technical English;

programming languages ​​and server languages: PHP, MySQL;

knowledge of server software: Nginx, HAProxy, ELK.

Linux System Administrator Salary

According to the job portal Trud.com, the profession is becoming more and more in demand from year to year. At the same time, salaries are also growing, and now the average income of Linux administrators is 90,000 rubles:

Average Linux Administrator Income

The hh.ru portal also offers statistics on salary growth. A lot of administrators are required, and they have a good income: from 60 to 270 thousand rubles:

Career prospects

The system administrator is a “multi-armed” specialist. Therefore, in addition to vertical career growth, he also has horizontal growth (transition to another, more advanced direction).

Vertical growth

Assistant System Administrator → Technical Support Specialist → System Administrator → Senior System Administrator → IT Director.

Horizontal career

Here, the specialist is usually more interested in the technical side of the work. Therefore, he goes into the hardware and becomes an architect of high-load systems.