15 New Networking Products To Watch For In 2016

Network Innovation Shining At Interop

A slew of new innovative network solutions were launched at Interop in Las Vegas this week from vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), EnGenius and NetGear. The networking buzz at Interop, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, was around new Wave 2 access points (APs), ruggedized routers for the Internet of Things (IoT) market and mobile-focused network devices.

New solutions around network monitoring and management were also unveiled from vendors like Extreme Networks and Pluribus Networks. More than 50 companies large and small announced or demonstrated new products and services at the expo that runs from May 4 to May 5. Here's a look at 15 of the hottest products launched at Interop thus far.

Extreme Networks ExtremeCloud

Extreme Networks unveiled its new cloud-managed networking platform, ExtremeCloud, designed for zero-touch provision and management simplicity. The platform is purpose-built to expand and contract dynamically as businesses transform, with benefits including increased performance of business applications.

"Extreme is entering the cloud-based network management market as a mature organization with years of experience in building and managing enterprise-class wired and wireless networks and addressing connectivity challenges throughout the world," said Extreme president and CEO Ed Meyercord said in a statement.

EnGenius EWS870-AP

EnGenius' new EWS870-AP 11ac Wave 2 was built specifically for outdoor environments. The AP features an IP67-rated enclosure that supports 2.5Gbps speeds while using Beamforming technology for maximum 802.11ac performance outdoors.

ALE Wave 2 Access Points

ALE unveiled three new versions of 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi access points supporting the growth in mobile device density and the need for faster throughput. The three new versions are the AP 334/335, IAP 324/325 and AP 314/315, which can either include internal or external antennas.

The new benefits from Wave 2 APs include reduced network congestion across wireless networks and lower Wi-Fi power consumption in mobile devices -- both of which bode well for the emerging IoT market.

Viptela vEdge-100

The software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) vendor Viptela announced its new LTE-enabled vEdge-100 router. The compact device supports any transport method including 3G/4G/LTE and wireless LANs to increase resiliency and extend the benefits of SD-WAN to smaller companies, remote officers, ATMs and other sites that don't require scalability.

Pluribus Networks VCF Insight Analytics

Pluribus released a new version of its network monitoring and business analytics solution, VCF Insight Analytics. VCF version 1.5 launched at Interop includes new automated metadata tagging that allows customers to get a contextualized view of their data center consumption. The new version is now available as a premier monitoring solution from Dell as part of its software-defined open networking portfolio.

EnGenius Wave 2 AP's ( EWS370-AP pictured)

EnGenius launched four new 802.11ac Wave 2 4x4 MU-MIMO access points for its Neutron Series APs. The new APs, which can operate in standalone or centrally-managed environments, deliver ultra-fast speeds and expanded user capabilities to meet the high bandwidth requirements of dense networking environments.

The EWS370AP 11ac Wave 2 4x4 AP (pictured) supports speeds of 2.5Gbps by leveraging Beamforming technology that enables improvements in performance, reliability, range and coverage.

ALE OmniSwitch 6860E

The OmniSwitch 6860E is a new multi-Gig stackable LAN access switch that offers 2.5G ports, high-power Power over Ethernet (PoE) and deep packet inspection capabilities to support the traffic increase from the new access points and provider Internet of Things traffic containment.

NetGear (XS708T pictured)

NetGear is adding three new switches to its second-generation ProSAFE 10-Gigabit Ethernet Smart Managed Switch portfolio. The switches are purposely designed to provide SMBs and other growing organizations with cost-effective connectivity, IPv6 (version 6) management and other advanced Layer 2-3 features.

The new XS708T (pictured) is an 8-port 10 gigabit connectivity, two of which are shared/combination copper Fiber ports for 10G fiber links.

Smartoptics DCP-101 Transponder

Fiber optic networking provider Smartoptics launched a modular 100G transponder, DCP-101, designed to simplify 100G networking. Smartopics touts it as the world's lowest 100G transponder and also one of the smallest in size.

EnGenius EWS871-AP

The EWS871AP 11ac Wave 2 comes with external detachable antennas specifically build for outdoor environments. It has IP67-rated enclosure that can reach speeds of 2.5Gbps with Beamforming technology.

ALE Ruggedized 6865 Switch

ALE also unveiled a new industrial grade, compact and ruggedized Gigabit Ethernet LAN access switch – the OmniSwitch 6865. The new switch was build to support the rising demand for IoT device connectivity in hard environments.

The switch was created for harsh environments such as transportation and traffic control systems, power utilizes and industrial factory floor installations where humidity, dust and severe temperature fluctuations come into play.

NetGear XS716T

NetGear's new ProSAFE 16-port 10-Gigbit -- the XS716T -- includes 16 copper ports, two of which are shared/combination copper Fiber ports for 10G fiber links.

Some of the main features for all of the three switches include advanced VLAN features such as protocol-based VLAN as well as advanced security.

ALE OmniSwitch 9900

The new, versatile chassis based LAN switch, OmniSwitch 9900, was created to meet the needs of the network traffic growth while delivering high performance and reliability from the edge to the core. The OS9900 supports virtual networking with multiple technologies including software-defined networking (SDN), OpenFlow, IoT endpoints and OpenStack.

EnGenius EWS371-AP

The new EWS371-AP 11ac Wave 2 comes with external detachable antennas. The managed wireless access point can reach speeds of 2.5Gbps that leverages Beamforming technology.

NetGear XS748T

The new XS748T offers 44 copper 10G BASE-T ports and four additional dedicated 1GbE/10GbE ports for 10G fiver links.

The network vendor says the new switches are meeting customers' current and future needs for virtualization, converged networks and mobility.