U.S. Department of Defense

Based in Arlington, Virginia, the Pentagon serves as the symbol of the U.S. military and is one of the worlds largest office buildings, spanning over 6.5 million square feet. In order to streamline network administration, training and support, the Pentagons modernization strategy included consolidating onto a single common platform for wired, wirel... ess and security solutions across all network classification levels. It also sought to gain software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities in a solution that could interoperate with other vendors and systems. In addition, the Pentagon is expanding and updating its wireless network by adding an additional 3,000 Aruba Access Points (APs). Previously, the Pentagon was using legacy Cisco wired switching infrastructure, which had reached end-of-life, across its networks. The Pentagon is replacing its legacy switches with Aruba access switches across all classification levels. When completed, the entire wired deployment will include over 150,000 wired ports. For SDN, the Pentagon is expanding its deployment of Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager, including the solutions colorless ports feature, for secure network access control across its networks. In the future, the Pentagon will consider using ClearPass to unify access control for wired and wireless access across all network classifications.Read More