We are witnessing a massive transition in the post pandemic era of blurring the lines between the office, home, tele-worker in transit and users into elastic workspaces. Arista’s Cognitive campus as a service is based on a data driven architecture and offers consistent, unified management across the campus edge for wired and wireless networks as well as integrated security & proactive network assurance.

Featured Video: Arista Networks Cognitive Campus

Cognitive Campus Networking

Arista’s Cognitive Campus as a service is based on three pillars:

Universal Cloud Network (UCN) - Offered as an alternative to brittle, proprietary solutions from legacy vendors, Arista UCN is an open, standards-based design focusing on software-driven control principles. Arista’s collapsed SplineTM architecture, utilizing its spine switches, POE 720 Series and 750 Series leaf switches, and Wi-Fi platforms, consolidates campus layers into simpler topologies that reduce costs and improve reliability.

Cognitive Operations - The Cognitive management features built in the Arista CloudVision® rely on the NetDLTM network data lake that collects real time streaming telemetry from across the campus network and automates many critical IT functions. This provides real time visibility into the state of the network including traffic flows. CloudVision’s Autonomous Virtual Assist (AVATM) leverages better data from this data lake for AI/ML-driven outcomes, helping to detect anomalies in the network, identify root causes and offer recommendations for mitigation. The Wi-Fi access points in conjunction with CloudVision also provide proactive network assurance to monitor end user experience without the need for an overlay network.

Zero-trust Network Security - Securing the Campus spline requires a builtin approach to network segmentation, encryption, device compliance and auditing, as well as service integration with Arista’s security partners. Arista delivers these capabilities through EOS and CloudVision. Arista campus leaf switches have an integrated AVA sensor that enables the access layer to provide Arista NDR (Network Detection and Response) capability without the complexity and cost of additional network monitoring devices. Arista’s Macro Segmentation Service Group (MSS-G) provides a simpler, standards based approach to segmenting traffic in the campus that is more flexible than other proprietary solutions. Arista’s Wireless Intrusion Prevention Service (WIPS) provides foolproof security while eliminating false positives.

Arista Cognitive Unified Edge (CUE)

Commercial Business requirements are driving accelerated adoption of cloud based applications; this requires a highly adaptive networking edge, that is secure, mobile, compliant and ubiquitous whether in the office, working remote, or onboarding a myriad of IoT devices. Just as Data Centers have moved from rigid, highly structured infrastructures, to agile on demand infrastructures as a service, so has the need for Campus networks to move to Edge as a Service. Arista’s Cognitive Unified Edge (CUE) enables this market transition by encompassing a comprehensive portfolio of services that leverages Arista’s EOS Network Data Lake and advanced AI capabilities optimized for commercial and mid market customers to deliver an integrated management platform with built-in automation, visibility and security for wireless, wired and WAN network infrastructure.

Featured Video: Introducing Arista Cognitive Unified Edge

 

Featured Video: Arista Network CUE Solution Overview

 

 

 

CUE- The Next Evolution in Edge Communications

The next technology evolution in commercial campus networks whether small branches or large headquarter buildings stretches well beyond bandwidth capacity upgrades. Hardware is easily keeping pace with bandwidth needs, driven by Moore’s productivity law where high volume commodity chip technologies are quadrupling bandwidth speeds every 2-3 years.

Of bigger importance is designing these networks where they can be easily deployed, maintained, secured, and amortized especially as the number of services these networks offer continue to expand. Customers must look beyond gigabits per second, and the latest Wi-Fi access points offerings when choosing their edge networking solutions. They must take a cloud centric networking approach where many of the design principles that have transformed data centers to cloud infrastructures are similarly leveraged. At a high level this cloud centric approach views infrastructure as a combined set of services, where business outcomes are more easily mapped to a set of integrated IT technologies.

Automation, artificial data intelligence, pro-active remediation, advanced telemetry, virtualization, segmentation, video broadcasting, and simplified topology designs are just several of the technologies that embody a cloud centric network. All of these technologies are directly applicable to campus networks. The combination of these technologies, working together as a solution rich with a number of services, is what Arista defines as the Cognitive Unified Edge (CUE) and has many use cases from single site deployments to distributed branch and cloud:

 

CUE Hardware Portfolio

 

CUE Use Cases

CUE Literature

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Solution Briefs

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