Building a Secure Network for 40000 Users in Less Than 40 Days
Being selected as the official InteropNet 2008 Las Vegas backbone and security provider of the world’s largest part-time network out of the largest pool of applicants in the history of the program was just the beginning. Now came the real challenge: How to build a secure network for over 40,000 users in less than 40 days.
If only it was that simple. Enterasys needed to design and implement a simple, stable and secure network with a diverse set of volunteer engineers from around the world, none of whom were familiar with the products involved. We also needed to protect key infrastructure assets and remain highly available while allowing open access to show attendees…without the use of any firewalls.
So, how did we do? In a nutshell, Enterasys delivered 100% uptime for the 40,000+ connections throughout the show and thwarted over 1.4 million daily network attacks by providing a solution that holistically integrated security and availability throughout the entire network infrastructure.
Thanks to the Enterasys advantage we were able to not only meet, but exceed, the expectations of the InteropNet 2008 staff. Here are some of the facts that we are most proud of:
- Enterasys delivered a simple, stable and secure solution that exceeded cost, quality and speed expectations.
- By embedding identity-based priority and security for users and applications, InteropNet show volunteers had a network with a level of visibility and security - according to NOC staff - that has never before been achieved.
- Enterasys product advantages gave way to operational efficiencies and InteropNet was fully operational 2 days ahead of schedule (Enterasys was the first provider to achieve this goal in recent years).
- Enterasys’ broad adoption and implementation of industry standards throughout the product line made it possible for all of the Enterasys infrastructure products to be polled and managed by third-party management systems and trouble-shooting tools.
- Enterasys met the primary mandate to virtualize every application possible by leveraging a key feature of the Matrix® N-Series – multi-user role-based access control. Combined with centralized network access control (NAC), virtual machines consistently received the QoS and security services they required from the network.
- One of the largest measures of success was the ability of each user to get an IP address. No DHCP-related trouble tickets were issued thanks to Enterasys’ proactive prevention policies. (In past years, one of every three help desk trouble tickets was related to IP addressing problems.)
- Dragon® Security Command Console’s ability to summarize all the security event information into a single recommended action view helped the InteropNet help desk staff make critical decisions to either isolate the end-point or inform the device owner of security-related concerns.
We are proud of our performance as the official InteropNet 2008 backbone and security provider, delivering 100% availability with centralized visibility and control. We invite you to read our whitepaper to gain additional insight and details into Enterasys’ support for InteropNet 2008.