Exciting news! The latest Cisco IOS-XE 17.13.1 software release is here, packed with feature enhancements and hardware enablement. This update ensures a seamless networking experience within the Catalyst 9000 switching ecosystem.
With a commitment to delivering a seamless and consistent user experience across the Catalyst switching portfolio, BGP support has been introduced on the C9200CX. The addition provides customers with the flexibility to deploy C9200CX switches for both simple branch and campus-level BGP deployments. Furthermore, the utilization of SGTs in inline tagging, providing a more granular and context-aware approach to network security, is now available on our Silicon 1 platforms: C9500X and C9600X-SUP2.
Ensuring robust switch security is essential for safeguarding the entire IT infrastructure. In line with this commitment and the evolving network growth, the IPsec tunnel scale has been elevated to 480 IPv4 tunnels and 240 IPv6 tunnels per device for C9300X and C9400X. This enhancement enables a C9300X or C9400X to be placed as a centralized hub, accommodating a larger remote workforce while addressing security vulnerabilities.
Speaking of vulnerability mitigation, a secure mechanism has been introduced to control management traffic on a switch by specifying the local IP and user-defined physical interfaces to prevent unauthorized access. In addition to that, the monitoring of SGACL drops on a per-device basis using NetFlow has been enabled to gain granular insights into security incidents.
Overlay fabrics play a crucial role in providing agile scalability. Taking it a step further for MPLS fabric, multicast connectivity to MPLS VPN sites spanning multiple autonomous systems has been introduced in this release. This enhancement aims to expand multicast coverage for customers requiring multicast to extend across multiple sites in an MPLS Layer 3 VPN service. Additionally, the consolidation of an existing MVPN service with another MVPN service is facilitated.
Leaving no stone unturned in the development of BGP-EVPN fabric for Catalyst 9000, notable additions have been brought in that center on three pillars: scalability, with support for IPv6 Overlay Multicast; security, enabling customers to achieve a zero-trust architecture by inspecting all their traffic via a firewall through IPv6 neighbor-discovery proxy; and simplicity, achieved through CLI simplifications for L2/L3 Overlay provisioning.
To enhance streamlined network interactions within the same mDNS network (Bonjour), AirDrop on Apple devices can be seamlessly utilized by customers to send items to other devices within their Cisco mDNS Network without the need for Bluetooth. Furthermore, mDNS service caching has been expanded to the Wide Area Bonjour domain within SDG-Agent and Service-Peers, ensuring that the Wide Area mDNS protocol cache is locally present within the switches. This enhancement offers benefits such as rapid remote service discovery responses, eliminating the need for current timer-based discovery. Service types like AirPlay and AirPrint become instantly discoverable.
Lastly, to ensure a smooth transition to next-generation network management frameworks, a range of YANG Suite and SNMP mappings is available.
Upgrade to IOS-XE 17.13.1 now to unlock the power of Catalyst 9000 Switching!
For a comprehensive list of features, please consult the release notes and configuration guides for the IOS-XE 17.13.1 release provided below:
Catalyst 9600 Release Notes
IOS XE 17.13.1 Catalyst 9000 Switching Updates Video
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