Cisco instant access - why not in new 9k series ?

[carl_townshend]

Hi All

Do many people use Cisco instant access from there 6500/6800s?

How come Cisco don't provide this feature in the new 9k series etc?

Many thanks

[Leo Laohoo]

Everyone is jumping into the SD-WAN/SD-Access party and IA wasn't invited.  

[carl_townshend]

Hi

Why is this?

What does SD access bring that the instant access feature is no longer viable?

Do you know of many people using the IA setup?

cheers

[Scott Hodgdon]

carl_townshend,

Development of Instant Access was stopped many years before the Catalyst 9K development began. The Instant Access capability never existed in the IOS XE code, and there are no plans to add it given the direction toward SD-Access for the campus.

Cheers,
Scott Hodgdon

Senior Technical Marketing Engineer

Enterprise Networking Group

[carl_townshend]

Hi Scott

In a Nutshell, are these not 2 different requirements though?

Instant access negates the need for additional management / STP etc etc

How does SD access solve this?

Cheers

[Scott Hodgdon]

Carl,

With SD-Access the underlay is Layer 3, so no STP.

With SD-Access , the entire fabric is managed via GUI from DNA Center and is essentially treated as a single system in each site (and a site can even be spread geographically).

Cheers,
Scott Hodgdon

Senior Technical Marketing Engineer

Enterprise Networking Group

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Company I worked for several years ago did try some 6xxx IA - I didn't have a hand in it, but recall hearing some complaints it didn't seem to be fully baked.

As to why Cisco discontinued; possibly Cisco didn't see a market for it competing, somewhat, with Nexus FEXs.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@Joseph W. Doherty wrote:
possibly Cisco didn't see a market for it competing, somewhat, with Nexus FEXs.

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We did have a look at IA for a brand new building.  It was the price that killed IA.

[Scott Hodgdon]

Joseph,

Instant Access was introduced after Nexus FEX was introduced, so there was no competitive pressure there. Also, Nexus is targeted at Data Center with no PoE, while Instant Access was targeted at Campus where more user-based requirements were needed such as PoE and 802.1x with enhancements.

Cheers,
Scott Hodgdon

Senior Technical Marketing Engineer

Enterprise Networking Group

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Leo, ah, yes, it didn't seem pricey.

Thank you Scott, but I was aware that Instant Access did come on the market after Nexus FEX.

As far as competitive pressure, what if you didn't need PoE?

The company I worked for had considered both Nexus FEX and Instant Access for some of the same cases. We had both Nexus FEX and Instant Access installations, but the engineers working with the latter, weren't too much in love with the latter.

In any case, as you're a Cisco Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, what was Cisco's reason for stopping Instant Access development with later product lines?

[Scott Hodgdon]

Joseph,

I have not seen very many campus environments where PoE not needed. If anything, PoE requirements have only gone up over time with wireless APs, cameras, and now IOT devices. for those reasons, Nexus FEX in campus was never something that Cisco saw as solution that would address the needs of the vast majority of our customer base. 

Nexus FEX was a more mature solution, and it didn't have as many requirements. Instant Access, when deployed in lower scale environments with few features, was a good solution. However, when features like 802.1x and IP Device Tracking and TrustSec had to be used, we ran into some technical / scale challenges since all control plane operations happened on the parent. These technologies are some we need for our new secure software defined architectures, and scale had to be better than what we could achieve with Instant Access. We have achieved that scale with SD-Access by distributing the capabilities throughout the architecture while giving an automated / orchestrated / GUI-driven management capability for the solution.

Cheers,
Scott Hodgdon

Senior Technical Marketing Engineer

Enterprise Networking Group