Transforming the User Experience - What’s New in Nebula P15

Transforming the User Experience - What’s New in Nebula P15?

Designing with users in mind, Nebula has rolled out a few major developments in the latest P15 release. The streamlined licensing process, flexible firmware upgrade options, enhanced UI designs to identify, understand, and trial the licensing features, along with the new arrival of supporting devices and features aim to transform the user experience as well as providing continuous innovation for SMB networks.

e-commence one stop shop experience for license renewals

Starting from this P15 release, the steps to Nebula’s license calculation, purchase, and activation can all be done in NCC, following a streamlined licensing renewal process. Integrating with the Zyxel Marketplace e-commerce platform within the NCC platform, Nebula gives users a true one stop shop experience as they no longer need to juggle between different platforms to purchase and activate licenses, which helps them save time and effort on license renewals and management.

Image 1: Users can complete the license renewal and purchase within the NCC platform.

New functions & adjustments in NCC for continuous innovation

The Nebula P15 release sees the cloud networking solution now able to support more functions in NCC.

Switch

• IP source guard (IPSG): It is a security feature on switches that enables businesses to provide secure, reliable access to the company network in mitigating the effects of IP spoofing attacks by allowing only the authorized client traffic based on the DHCP snooping binding table or manually configured static IP binding table (Allowed client list). With Nebula, network administrators can easily apply the same level of security policy against unauthorized access to join the existing network involving spoofing/forging of source IP addresses or source MAC addresses. IPSG is a Nebula Pro Pack feature.

Image 2: With Nebula Pro Pack, users can utilize IPSG to configure authorized client traffic to prevent IP snooping attacks.

• Auto configuration recovery: When configuring a switch, if the switch for some reason is disconnected from NCC, this feature will protect the switch by pausing the operation to apply further switch settings until the issue is resolved. The switch will recover to the original switch settings prior to the disconnection. The feature provides network administrators with greater network stability, preventing loss connection with NCC by misconfiguration and reducing time and resources spent on troubleshooting.

Image 3: Auto configuration recovery protects the switch from misconfigurations.

The above two features are supported in these switch models: XS3800-28 and incoming XGS2220 series including XGS2220-30, XGS2220-30F, XGS2220-30HP, XGS2220-54, XGS2220-54FP, and XGS2220-54HP.

• License adjustments for switch features: To make our features more approachable as well as more affordable for the NCC users, we’ve broadened the free Nebula Base Back’s offerings by including more switch features: Extended Range for GS1350 series and Bandwidth Control; users can enjoy these features free of charge. And, for the Nebula Plus Pack, it has extended its offerings to include Auto PD Recovery and Vendor Based VLAN features, which were only available in the Nebula Pro Pack in the previous release.

Mobile Router

• Remote configurator: It will establish a connection from the NCC to the mobile router web GUI, giving users an ability to configure the mobile router while using Nebula. In remote configurator, users can hit the ‘establish’ button to generate a hyperlink that opens another window in the browser to access the mobile router web GUI to configure.

Image 4: Remote configurator connects the NCC to the mobile router web GUI, giving users an ability to configure while using Nebula.

More devices are added to the Nebula growing family

The P15 update also adds more members to the Nebula family to support more than 80 devices. The newly-added devices are as follow:

• WiFi 6E access points*: WAX640S-6E, WAX620D-6E, and NWA220AX-6E, allowing businesses to take advantage of the newly opened 6GHz radio spectrum. WAX640S-6E is a premium tri-band model with a smart antenna that provides the ultimate cure to interference woes; whereas, WA220AX-6E and WAX620D-6E, which both sport the BandFlex radio design that can be configured in either 5GHz or 6GHz to provide more flexibility for those looking to off-load WiFi traffic in congested areas to the newly opened 6GHz, or to those who would rather deploy 5GHz for now and switch to 6GHz when they are ready.
  *The product availability depends on your country/region regulations. Check here to see if it is available in your country.

Image 5: Nebula welcomes the new members, Zyxel WiFi 6E access points – WAX640S-6E(left), WAX610D-6E(middle), and NWA210AX-6E(right) into the family.

• Security Firewall: USG FLEX 50 is introduced to the Nebula family to provide the robust VPN connections across the branch offices and chain stores with a comprehensive content filter service pack (Web Filtering, Security Profile Sync, and SecuReporter) to perfectly fit small business requirements as well as gaining the essential security services needed to protect against cyberattacks.

• Mobile Router: Nebula LTE7461-M602* joins the Nebula family to enrich its cloud-managed mobile router product portfolio. It is an outdoor mobile router with IP68 for strong water-and-dust resistance, providing excellent 4G LTE connectivity with flexible routing modes including both bridge and router functions.
  *Due to regulations, Nebula LTE7461-M602 is an exclusive model available for the US market.

Image 6: Nebula new members, USG FLEX 50 (right) provides robust VPN connections with content filter service to protect against cyberattacks, and Nebula LTE-7451-M602 mobile router provides excellent 4G LTE connectivity with flexible routing modes.

* Based on the current NCC production schedule, the following three features are targeted to be available in the end of August, 2022. Please stay tuned.

• Firmware upgrade management enhancement*

  A big effort was put into redesigning the firmware upgrade management, making it more efficient and user-friendly for users with different needs. With the enhanced functionality, more options and granular settings are available for them to manage the firmware upgrade. Users can easily see the devices that are applicable for an upgrade and they can choose any of the following options for them to manage the upgrade by each device type:

  • Follow the auto upgrade recursive schedule
  • Upgrade with the specified date and time
  • Upgrade now
  • Ignore upgrade

Including both in the per device type and per device settings, users have the flexibility to choose the firmware upgrade version. They can choose to upgrade to the 'latest' or the 'stable' firmware version based on their requirements for the network performance and stability.

In addition, designed with keeping the network safety at the forefront, we’ve implemented a mechanism for critical upgrade to rectify the security vulnerabilities. An advanced notice will be given to users to make necessary arrangements prior to the critical upgrade enforcement.

Image 7: Users can easily see the firmware status and choose the upgrade options according to their needs.

We’ve implemented the designs to improve Nebula’s UX/UI. The tooltip design is implemented on the paid features (labeled with a diamond symbol) to help users quickly identify the paid features and their functions. And, the paywall design helps users understand what each license pack offers and the functions that will benefit their businesses.

• Tooltip and paywall designs to improve UX/UI to identify and understand the licensing features*

Image 8: A tooltip is added to help identify the paid feature and what it offers.

Image 9: A paywall design helps users understand each license pack and its functions.

• More flexibility in 30-day free trial on licenses*

  We’ve made a license trial reconstruction in this release. The 30-day free trials of NCC management and security licenses are unified into a consistent mechanism as the free trial-mode. Same as before, the use of trials is on a per organization basis, but more flexibility is given out to users for them to decide which license(s) they want to trial and when they want to trial according to their needs. The access to license trials is no longer limited to a newly-created organization as in the previous release; it is now open to any organization - new and existing organizations, users can freely choose the license(s) they want to trial at their preferable time as long as they didn’t use the license(s) before.

  Based on the trial-mode, NCC provides a 30-day free trial on the following licenses on a per organization basis:

  • Nebula Pro Pack
  • Nebula MSP Pack
  • Gold Security Pack
  • UTM Security Pack
  • Content Filter Pack
  • Secure WiFi
  • Connect & Protect (CNP)

Image 10: More flexibility is given out to users to decide what they want to trial and when they want to trial.