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

To overcome the new security challenges and the explosion of clients in today’s perimeter-less enterprise networks, Arista delivers a novel AI-driven network Identity service, Arista Guardian for Network Identity or AGNI to connect the network, users, and devices across remote and geographically dispersed locations. Based on Arista’s flagship CloudVision, the new AGNI platform brings a revolutionary improvement to scale, simplicity, and security across users, their associated endpoints, and IoT devices.

Featured Video: Introducing Arista Guardian For Network Identity

Introducing Arista Guardian For Network Identity

 

CloudVision AGNI embraces modern design principles, Cloud native microservices architecture, and Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) technologies to significantly simplify administrative tasks and reduce complexities. It offers a comprehensive range of features to meet the requirements of modern networks.

CloudVision AGNI provides simple self-service onboarding using single sign-on (SSO) for wireless unique pre-shared keys and dot1x digital certificates, complete certificate life cycle management with cloud-native PKI infrastructure, authorization and segmentation, behavioral profiling, and visibility of all connected devices. AGNI integrates with all the leading Identity Providers including Okta, Google Workspace, Microsoft Azure, OneLogin, and Ping Identity. Devices are discovered, profiled, and classified into groups for single-pane-of-glass visibility and control.

 

 

 

CloudVision AGNI integrates with network infrastructure devices (wired switches and wireless access points) through a highly secure TLS-based RadSec tunnel. The highly secure and encrypted tunnel offers complete protection to the communications that happen in a distributed network environment. This mechanism offers much greater security to AAA workflows when compared with traditional RADIUS environment workflows, which are not encrypted. AGNI integrates with Arista products to enable the exchange of important user and client context, secure group segmentation (MSS-G), and authentication telemetry data. Additionally, AGNI can fetch consumer advanced profiling, posture, and network inventory data to provide comprehensive policy management and insights into network security. The platform’s API-first approach enables seamless integration with third-party solutions, allowing for the exchange of user and client context, authentication telemetry, and endpoint protection status. AGNI offers Arista’s Unique PSK (UPSK) solutions to enable secure authentication mechanisms for BYOD, IoT/IoMT, and gaming devices. AGNI extends its feature set to accommodate a wide range of client devices with its support for Captive Portal and MBA authentications.

AGNI integrates with Arista NDR and other third-party XDR and EDR solutions for post-admission control functionality.

Arista CUE for Distributed Enterprises

Connect and Secure Branch Offices

The way we work is evolving. Enterprises have adapted to new cloud-based technologies and applications that have increased employee efficiency and provided a scalable pathway to continued business growth. Work teams, now composed of employees working in headquarter offices, remotely or in branch offices have become spread across increasingly large distances with a growing number of branch offices. While these distributed enterprises realize a range of important benefits in this transformative era, managing these dispersed networks and their connected devices can bring new challenges of cost, complexity, and control. Network administrators cannot be in all locations at once, however at any time they could be required to provide network expertise to adjust network configurations or resolve issues to maintain the network.

Arista’s Cognitive Unified Edge (CUE) helps distributed enterprises optimize their networks with centralized management, while also safeguarding their data and devices. CUE redefines enterprise networks with enhanced management, security, connectivity, flexible PoE switching, and Wi-Fi 6/6E offerings that work together seamlessly to ensure connectivity, protection, monitoring, and control across the entire network from headquarters to the network edge.

Distributed Enterprise

CUE Benefits

Remote management - centralized cloud-based management makes it easy to deploy, configure and manage on-premises, cloud-hosted and remote office appliances from any browser. Centralized management streamlines configuration of intelligent traffic routing between headquarters, branch offices and the cloud. Alerting, reporting, and policy management across sites has never been easier.

Business reliability and continuity - ensure secure connectivity to business-critical, cloud-hosted applications like accounting and CRM systems, as well as internal network resources. Sites with less reliable Internet service can leverage LTE for backup connectivity. Access points provide full functionality even when access to the cloud is not available. When an AP detects the loss of connectivity to the cloud, it continues operating normally which gives unmatched network uptime.

Optimize connectivity - comprehensive VPN options that work seamlessly with complete bandwidth shaping and optimization, and WAN balancing and WAN failover for locations with multiple WAN connections.

Right size form factor - efficiently connect smaller sites or sites with Internet Service Provider bandwidth limitations. Easily scale as the number of users at locations increase and as more locations are brought online.

Protect the growing attack surface - Broad endpoint device coverage, including IoT device protection and automatic detection and blocking of wireless threats.

Flexible deployment - Layer products into an existing network, with standards based interoperability and many physical and software appliances to service locations with just a few users to locations with hundreds of users.

CUE Literature

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