Accelerate Network Services with the Arista Cognitive Unified Edge

Commercial businesses face the same challenges as larger enterprises, including evolving security threats, segregated management solutions, and the need for agile problem identification and resolution. However, they are often short-staffed and have low budgets.

Therefore, they have requirements such as automation of problem resolution and network deployment to compensate for their limitations. Zero-touch provisioning and cloud-based management are excellent solutions for such businesses since it simplifies device deployment, network management, and troubleshooting.

Arista Networks rose to the occasion to meet the needs of commercial businesses by developing their Cognitive Unified Edge (CUE) solution that provides network-wide visibility, enhanced security, and plug-and-play management with built-in zero-touch provisioning.

In this article, we will:

• provide an overview of the Arista CUE solution,
• discuss its features and benefits, and
• list the available product offerings.

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Arista Cognitive Unified Edge Overview

The evolution of edge technologies has led to the development of a collaborative, mobile, highly secure, and borderless Unified Edge, commonly deployed as a service for commercial businesses.

Arista Networks describes its Cognitive Unified Edge as a collection of collaborative technologies that function as network services.

The CUE requires an understanding of all these services and the interdependences of their use cases. The following are some instances of these interdependences:

• Network access control requires location and content awareness.
• Reservation management is necessary for the seamless use of collaborative workspaces.
• Content control utilizes set policies for public and private website access.
• Flow tracking, which involves consistent monitoring of endpoint services, is necessary for rapid remediation.

Arista’s CUE possesses machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that provide the intelligence required to integrate these services to work together.

In addition, CUE has a cloud backend tasked with collecting, caching, scanning, and analyzing management data to ensure the seamless delivery of the functions mentioned above. Arista’s cloud backend has no single point of failure (defined as a controlless architecture).

Digitization has led to a surge in demand for more networking services such as Video on demand. However, an increase in the number of networking services leads to increased interdependent use case complexities.

Due to the increasing complexity, analyzing the data from the use cases to resolve network issues became cumbersome for IT operators. This is where the AI and ML functionalities of the Arista CUE come in.

Arista’s CUE design eliminates the need for a business enterprise to have an on-premises IT Administrator since it leverages its ML and AI capabilities to learn, analyze, and troubleshoot configuration challenges and interdependent service losses on the network.

The diagram below provides an overview of how Arista’s CUE edge as a service solution operates.

Arista CUE Features and Benefits

The following section highlights the main features and benefits of the Arista Cognitive Unified Edge solution.

• Power over Ethernet (PoE) Switches: These switches are flexible and can be scaled to serve offices of any size. In addition, they can leverage their adaptive power management functionality to accommodate more in-line power endpoints when plug-and-play is needed.
  
  
• Zero Trust Security: Arista CUE is integrated with Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), URL Filtering, Advanced Segmentation, and Wireless Intrusion Protection (WIP) to offer high-level network security.
  
  
• Client Journey: Also known as multi-services transaction checking, this process involves tracing and monitoring every connected device to ensure all services are functioning optimally. Domain Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), 802.1X, Domain Name System (DNS), Authentication, and URL access are examples of these services.
  
  
• Cognitive Edge Operations Management: This feature consists of zero-touch deployment, location tracing, dynamic Radio Frequency (RF) re-tuning, and proactive remediation management working together to identify issues within the network.
  
  
• Centralized Traffic Forwarding and Management: This is offered via Virtual Extensible LANs (VXLANs) for customers who want to put more stringent security and traffic control measures in place.
  
  
• Edge Threat Management Hardware and Software Appliances: Used to manage perimeter firewalls, wired and wireless WAN connectivity, and Edge Security.
  
  
• Application Performance Monitoring: Businesses have crucial operations that need optimal performance. Arista CUE provides predefined filters for monitoring business-critical applications.

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 Arista Product Offerings

Arista CloudVision Cognitive Unified Edge (Operations Management) – This is the management platform offered by Arista. It has AI and ML capabilities to detect, remediate, and report the most common network and performance issues. It also gives actionable insights that network operators can utilize to shorten resolution time.

Additionally, CloudVision CUE facilitates zero-touch deployment, which speeds up the network configuration process, eliminating the need for highly trained network operators on-site. It also provides a unified platform to manage wired and wireless edge networking deployments.

Finally, the platform provides a unified CloudVision database called DataLake for clients who want to combine their edge networks with other sections of their networks.

Arista’s Compact PoE Edge Switch Series (CCS 710) – Arista designed their CCS 710 switch series to form the core of small and medium offices. One of the main advantages of these switches is that they can be deployed in buildings with limitations such as the lack of equipment closets.

Another advantage is their adaptive power management, where they distribute power to connected in-line devices such as downstream switches, depending on their power needs.

Finally, the Arista CCS 710 series of switches are designed to be secure, manageable, redundant, easy to mount, and easy to wire.

The diagram below highlights the features and benefits of the Arista 710P compact switch.

Arista Wi-Fi Access Points – Arista includes their indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E access points in their CUE solution.

These APs are equipped with multi-radio offerings to deliver extensive coverage, zero-touch deployment, enterprise-grade intrusion protection, auto RF re-tuning, cloud manageability, and integrated wired/wireless CloudVision CUE operations management.

They are also based on Arista’s control-less architecture, characterized by central data management and local data and control planes, ensuring no single points of failure.

The table below compares the specifications of different Arista Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E access points.

Edge Threat Management – Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) – Arista’s NGFW provides enterprise-level network security with content filtering, advanced threat protection, and VPN connectivity.

It also provides a responsive interface that can be accessed using a browser to gain network traffic visibility. The enhanced visibility assists network operators in identifying and resolving problems on the network.

The NGFW is deployable as a hardware appliance or a virtual machine, either in the cloud with AWS or Azure or in the customer’s X86 devices.

Edge Threat Management – Micro Edge – The Micro Edge is an edge appliance that facilitates the secure edge connections of businesses using its advanced security and connectivity capabilities.

It leverages a central management platform and zero-touch deployment to connect and protect new branch networks quickly.

Micro Edge utilizes advanced cloud intelligence and predictive path selection technology to select the best paths for specific categories of network traffic based on path utilization, speed, and application throughput requirements.

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The Challenges Faced by Business Today

Small and medium-sized businesses, just like larger enterprises, face challenges such as evolving network security threats and multiple segregated management solutions that make network management difficult.

In addition, delayed problem identification and resolution could cripple business-critical activities. While larger enterprises can afford more expensive solutions on the market, these commercial businesses often have constrained budgets and are usually understaffed.

Arista Networks developed the cloud-centric Cognitive Unified Edge solution to meet the needs of such businesses. The solution provides enhanced security to protect against modern threats, plug-and-play management with built-in zero-touch provisioning for centralized management, and network-wide visibility.

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