From: Martin Momchilov, Marketing specialist, ISG Technology
Sir – This BYOD shift is showing up many housing providers’ wireless LANs which might not be designed to cope with the demands of so many additional devices. Thus, an important prerequisite for BYOD is careful wi-fi planning to ensure your network can accommodate all those data-hungry devices in a secure and stable manner.
The challenge for any organisation is keeping their wireless LAN quality up while supporting BYOD. One way forward could be the implementation of an additional network dedicated only to BYOD. With an enterprise wi-fi network for employees and a guest network for internet access, IT managers can resolve issues easily by building a third network dedicated to BYOD. Each access point can be configured to broadcast three virtual networks, allowing network administrators to give one network greater performance over another. Isolating the BYOD network would give users the same access as they would have from their work stations, while the encryption to protect the BYOD traffic won’t be necessary, leading to resource savings.
Balancing BYOD, your network load and its security is certainly not an easy task, but it can be achieved with reasonable management and monitoring. Some of the more effective tools developed in response to BYOD, such as mobile device management tools, provide centralised monitoring and management of those devices, enabling IT staff to monitor and control network capacity as well as other core functions such as remote data wiping in case devices get lost or stolen.
No matter which approach you choose, the most important aspect is careful planning – ad hoc solutions just won’t cut it.
