Ruckus unveils new networking framework for BYOD

BANGALORE, INDIA: Networking company Ruckus Wireless unveiled a new framework for device agnostic networking (DAN) to manage explosion in mobile device usage.

The Ruckus DAN framework is a new approach to bring-your-own-device (BYOD) phenomenon that combines access management capabilities with capacity wireless LAN (WLAN) system, Ruckus ZoneFlex.

DAN introduces a number of software enhancements to Ruckus ZoneFlex system that automate these BYOD tasks, such as provisioning users and devices on the network (onboarding), applying policies based on device type, filtering select application traffic, and managing and controlling IT authorized and non-authorized user devices.

"The first order problem companies face with BYOD is simply dealing with the extraordinary increase in client capacities," said Rob Mustarde, VP, marketing for Ruckus Wireless. "Before worrying about BYOD, organizations must be able to reliably connect three times the number of concurrent devices that users now have in their pockets. You simply can not manage what you can not get on the network."

"Ruckus is bringing together the industry's highest capacity WLAN system with essential elements for addressing BYOD. DAN delivers a more simplified and integrated BYOD framework that enables device agnostic access management - automating everything from onboarding to device and application policy enforcement," added Mustarde.

To automate secure network access for sanctioned and unsanctioned devices, DAN introduces a consolidated BYOD portal for guest access and device registration using a single WLAN.

The DAN portal is a mobile friendly landing page provided by the Ruckus ZoneFlex operating system that gives mobile users easy and intuitive instructions to securely access the Wi-Fi network without manually configuring their wireless devices. Additionally, the BYOD onboarding portal provides a one-click operation to Ruckus Zero-IT registration.

Zero-IT is an onboarding technology that lets users self-provision devices without IT intervention. Users connect to a provisioning network, login with their domain credentials, and Zero-IT auto-configures their device with the right network profile and associated privileges.

DAN allows automatic enforcement of pre-defined device and application rules, eliminating burdensome policy management.

Within the DAN framework, administrators can automatically apply policies to allow, deny, rate limit, or assign devices to separate virtual LANs (VLANs) based on the operating system or device type.

DAN can deliver mobile device management (MDM) capabilities through partnerships with MDM vendors such as FileWave.

DAN MDM provides access to device information such as installed applications, application deployment status, available device capacity, IP address, UDID, serial number, OS version, device name, and MAC address. With cloud-hosted or on premises options, DAN mobile device management supports a variety of operating systems including Windows, MAC OS X, Linux, and iOS, giving customers a more reliable, powerful and scalable solution.