Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s Aruba networking subsidiary today announced enhancements to its Aruba Edge Services Platform that enable users to centralize the management of distributed networks.

It’s also releasing what it says are the industry’s first self-locating indoor access points with built-in GPS receivers, as well as Open Locate, a proposed standard for sharing location information from an access point to a device.

The new Aruba Central NetConductor component of the Aruba Central cloud-based network management platform centralizes the management of distributed networks with cloud-native services for policy provisioning and automated network configuration in wired, wireless and wide-area networks. It also enforces zero-trust and secure access service edge policies. Zero trust is an approach to cybersecurity that assumes no user or device can be trusted, while SASE adds identity management and WAN controls to zero-trust environments.

“As networks have grown, the idea of using virtual LANs to address connectivity problems has been overrun by the complex topologies customers have,” said Larry Lunetta, vice president of wireless local area network and security solutions marketing at Aruba. “We’re allowing customers to stitch together VLANs into a single unified view of the network and introducing assists to allow customers to virtualize without having to get into the guts of the network.”

Automated configuration

Traditional VLAN-based architectures require significant manual configuration and integration, making them slow to adapt to network changes and creating security gaps, Aruba said. “Central NetConductor defines networks and policies based on what the business wants,” Lunetta said. “It lets admins stitch together a graphical view of the network and then hit a button and it’s created.”

Built-in security uses cloud-native network access control and dynamic segmentation for fabric-wide enforcement. Both are key features of zero-trust security. “We authenticate both users and devices and use that information to enforce traffic segmentation so an organization can set up a policy where someone can talk to SAP, for example, but not to manufacturing systems,” Lunetta said. “It’s more granular and easier for businesses to understand.”

There is also a feature that enables administrators to define role-based access controls within the network itself. “The idea is that as you authenticate, the network understands what your role is and automatically defines access privileges,” Lunetta said.

Indoor GPS

The self-locating indoor access points support Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E and include built-in GPS receivers and software that enables administrators to pinpoint location within one meter, Aruba said. GPS signals are largely limited to outdoor use, but the signals “are accessible indoors and can be used at certain times of the day depending on the position of the satellites,” Lunetta said. “We triangulate the signals, and because access points don’t move, we get better over time.”

The access points provide zero-touch determination of AP location, continuously validate and update location and provide a set of universal coordinates that may be transposed on any floor map. They use Fine Time Measurement, a protocol that enables a pair of WiFi cards to estimate the distance between them. “This allows us to produce a map of where all the APs are placed,” Lunetta said. The devices also use Open Locate, a protocol Aruba is promoting as a possible industry-standard way of propagating WiFi location information.

Aruba Central NetConductor services are available for early access now and will be generally available in July as part of the core services provided to users with an advanced license. The Wi-Fi 6/6E access points are currently shipping.

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