With advances in wireless connectivity technologies and emerging new use cases such as VR, HD imaging and high performance work-stations that handle high volume data, network-access speeds are increasing from designed limits of 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) to 2.5 Gbps, 5 Gbps and potentially 10 Gbps! There is a need to support this speed acceleration in access layer with a scalable backbone network. Upgrading enterprise cable infrastructure to support this is not cost effective since in many cases cumulative costs can exceed millions of dollars, including time-intensive and invasive disruption to the physical infrastructure. Besides CapEx savings, backwards compatibility is a key consideration for Enterprises to ensure gradual migration without creating bottlenecks. With several pioneering innovations including Campus optimized dual rate optics, and Cisco Catalyst ® 9000 family switches that support 100GE and 25GE, Cisco will facilitate network speed and architecture transformations with investment protection. New Speeds transitions in Enterprise Recently, 40GE has gained momentum as a potential migration option for aggregation layer upgrades requiring scale beyond 10GE. 40GE is a great option for green-field deployments , but suffers from some challenges for brown-field environments. 40GE optics use QSFP+ form factor that require expensive adapters for backward compatibility with existing 10G SFP+ optics. Moreover, in deployments that use multimode fiber, 40GE can be quite restrictive since it supports only one-third the reach as that of 10GE based deployments. 25GE is a good alternative that provides a seamless migration path from 10GE with better price-to-value, avoiding cable upgrade expenses, and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). Emergence of SFP28 has changed the network speed upgrade path from 10GE->40GE to 10GE->25GE->100GE. SFP28 based 25GE optics use the same form factor as SFP+, while providing 2.5 times the bandwidth. Dell’Oro predicts that that Ethernet industry will be heading to 25GE/100GE technologies instead of 40GE; and 25GE is expected to outgrow 10GE by 2021. One of the main drivers for this phenomenon is availability of new optics with SFP28 technology that offers a better cost curve along with longer reach capabilities suitable for Campus deployments. Enterprises can significantly reduce the number of cables, power, and device footprint with SFP28 technology in aggregation layer. Considering the compelling economics of 25GE, core layer with 100GE in a three-tier architecture is a no brainer! Using four lanes of 25GE, 100GE backbone platforms require lesser cabling relative and thus benefit from reduced space requirements and cost savings. Further, 4x25GE breakout cable support provides Enterprises additional options for conveniently migrating to an extensible 100GE network with investment protection. Cisco leading the industry with 25GE Enterprise optimized Optics Progressive Enterprises that start evaluating options to embrace these new speeds face some key questions – how to maintain same supported distances as 10GE (300m/400m), how to stage seamless network upgrades, will cost/performance justify new investments? Designed to overcome the challenges of 40GE, Cisco’s SFP28 portfolio offers customers a wide variety of high-density and low-power options addressing these considerations. Some of the key benefits include – Longer Reach Cisco’s innovations, SFP10/25-CSR, to support high-density multi-rate optics enables Enterprises to drive up to 300m/400m over standard dual strand OM3/OM4 fiber. Ease of Adoption – Cisco’s dual rate optics, SFP10/25G-CSR for multi-mode fiber and SFP10/25G-LR for single-mode fiber provide seamless migration path with un-surpassed investment protection. Better Price-to-Performance  – Cisco’s single laser low cost optics consume less power and provide higher density relative to quad laser based 40GE optics, thus resulting in OpEx savings from power and cooling and lower TCO. Along with introduction of new optics, Cisco has continued to innovate with new generation of programmable ASIC that enables network upgrades to 25GE and 100GE in Enterprise possible now Cisco Catalyst 9500 – Industry’s first Enterprise optimized 100G, 40G and 25G Platform Cisco’s Catalyst switches are a foundation of a new era of intuitive networking with support for SD-Access. With introduction of 25GE and 100GE in Campus, a first in industry, we anticipate to lead a major shift in network architectures and product portfolios. Offering increased scale and flexibility, the new Catalyst 9500 platforms, powered by UADP3.0, deliver six times the performance of the existing platforms in that product family. Cisco Catalyst 9500 Platforms With this latest addition to the Catalyst 9000 series, Cisco now offers a comprehensive portfolio of 10GE, 25GE, 40GE and 100GE in Enterprise. For more details about Catalyst 9500 series, please refer to the latest datasheet or www.cisco.com/go/catalyst. ... View more

The proliferation of cloud applications continues to transform traditional architectures and traffic patterns, driving a need for organizations to re-architect their network. And now, with the emergence of applications at the edge for IoT control, firewalling, intrusion prevention, network monitoring, telemetry, and analytics, the network needs to be ready for applications hosted anywhere. The Catalyst 9000 series of switches running Open IOS-XE ushers in the new era of intent based networking that not only enables consistent secure access from edge to the cloud, but also enables hosted applications at the edge. The platform uses X86 based CPU with up to 1TB of local storage options to offer a container based application hosting environment. The initial software release on Catalyst 9000 switches uses the container environment to provide a sand-boxed (or decoupled) execution space called guest-shell for running on-box python. The application hosting capability could potentially enable a variety of new use cases across different verticals. These capabilities will be unlocked in future software releases. The nature of applications that can be hosted is flexible and varies from Cisco offered apps to partner apps to apps developed by customers. Here are some of the interesting use-cases that can be enabled: Analytics: Analytics is quickly gaining traction as a mechanism to deliver assurance and new business outcomes. Many of these outcomes rely on network and application telemetry. What better place to generate this telemetry than the network itself? A collector application running locally on the switch can collect end user/device telemetry data and TLS meta data. The collector can perform data pre-processing like filtering, aggregation and indexing before streaming the data securely to a data-platform. Processing data locally can significantly reduce the WAN bandwidth and optimize the storage thereby CAPEX required on data-platforms. Server-less compute: Edge compute helps non-stop operation and control of IoT devices connected to the cloud. It aids verticals like manufacturing where low and deterministic latency is required for real-time control loops. Moreover, IoT control centers hosted in Cloud environments benefit from an on-prem gateway function such as those offered by AWS Greengrass and Azure IoT Hub. These gateways can be hosted on the switch which removes the need for on-prem local compute in the enterprise environments. Security: With billions of unsophisticated IoT devices connecting to enterprise network, these devices must be classified and appropriate network posture implemented to maintain network security. A distributed micro-services based approach can create a scalable device profiling and firewalling solution. IT Operations: Every network admin relies on packet capture for monitoring and troubleshooting the network. Traditionally, operators have relied on span to troubleshoot end-user connectivity problems. Packet capture applications can now be hosted on the Catalyst 9000 switches with an API/UI based approach for selecting the desired traffic. Moreover, up to 1TB of local SSD storage is now available to save the resulting pcap files. This saves time and money for an operator troubleshooting real time network issues. Cisco will provide variety of tool sets that aid application development to promote these business outcomes and support the developer community.  Developers can use Dockers Software Defined Environment (SDE) for application development and seamlessly deploy it on the Catalyst 9000 switches. The application has full access to all the programmability capabilities already available on open IOS-XE including the rich model driven APIs, streaming telemetry, CLI and SNMP. Cisco will also provide developers with app hosting SDK to get API access to the switch data plane. Finally, Cisco DNA-Center will also offer the full lifecycle management for these hosted applications. The goal is to provide an intuitive UX for enterprise-wide provisioning and subsequent versioning of the application; including knobs for the administrator to secure the app hosting environment by limiting access to switch resources on a per application basis. We at Cisco are very excited about the wide range of possibilities that can now be harnessed by network operators, application developers and DevOps teams, who can leverage the strength of Open IOS-XE to run applications utilizing the underlying x86 CPU of Catalyst 9000 series switches. Sandra Rivera, SVP/GM of Network Platforms Group, Intel, rightly commented, "The Intel® Xeon® processor D family of System on a Chip and the Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches push the edge of ‘what is possible’ with the ecosystem for containers and application hosting on a common platform." This massive evolution of our switching products with Catalyst 9000 series, highlights the strength of Cisco innovation and openness of our platforms – it’s time to make the switch! Join me on July 11, 2017 from 8:00-9:39am PT, for a deep-dive into the Catalyst 9000 series.  Join the Enterprise Networks track of the Cisco Customer Connection program and then register for the briefing.  Looking forward to your attendance!  www.cisco.com/go/ccp ... View more

The proliferation of cloud applications continues to transform traditional architectures and traffic patterns, driving a need for organizations to re-architect their network. And now, with the emergence of applications at the edge for IoT control, firewalling, intrusion prevention, network monitoring, telemetry, and analytics, the network needs to be ready for applications hosted anywhere. The Catalyst 9000 series of switches running Open IOS-XE ushers in the new era of intent based networking that not only enables consistent secure access from edge to the cloud, but also enables hosted applications at the edge. The platform uses X86 based CPU with up to 1TB of local storage options to offer a container based application hosting environment. The initial software release on Catalyst 9000 switches uses the container environment to provide a sand-boxed (or decoupled) execution space called guest-shell for running on-box python. The application hosting capability could potentially enable a variety of new use cases across different verticals. These capabilities will be unlocked in future software releases. The nature of applications that can be hosted is flexible and varies from Cisco offered apps to partner apps to apps developed by customers. Here are some of the interesting use-cases that can be enabled: Analytics: Analytics is quickly gaining traction as a mechanism to deliver assurance and new business outcomes. Many of these outcomes rely on network and application telemetry. What better place to generate this telemetry than the network itself? A collector application running locally on the switch can collect end user/device telemetry data and TLS meta data. The collector can perform data pre-processing like filtering, aggregation and indexing before streaming the data securely to a data-platform. Processing data locally can significantly reduce the WAN bandwidth and optimize the storage thereby CAPEX required on data-platforms. Server-less compute: Edge compute helps non-stop operation and control of IoT devices connected to the cloud. It aids verticals like manufacturing where low and deterministic latency is required for real-time control loops. Moreover, IoT control centers hosted in Cloud environments benefit from an on-prem gateway function such as those offered by AWS Greengrass and Azure IoT Hub. These gateways can be hosted on the switch which removes the need for on-prem local compute in the enterprise environments. Security: With billions of unsophisticated IoT devices connecting to enterprise network, these devices must be classified and appropriate network posture implemented to maintain network security. A distributed micro-services based approach can create a scalable device profiling and firewalling solution. IT Operations: Every network admin relies on packet capture for monitoring and troubleshooting the network. Traditionally, operators have relied on span to troubleshoot end-user connectivity problems. Packet capture applications can now be hosted on the Catalyst 9000 switches with an API/UI based approach for selecting the desired traffic. Moreover, up to 1TB of local SSD storage is now available to save the resulting pcap files. This saves time and money for an operator troubleshooting real time network issues. Cisco will provide variety of tool sets that aid application development to promote these business outcomes and support the developer community.  Developers can use Dockers Software Defined Environment (SDE) for application development and seamlessly deploy it on the Catalyst 9000 switches. The application has full access to all the programmability capabilities already available on open IOS-XE including the rich model driven APIs, streaming telemetry, CLI and SNMP. Cisco will also provide developers with app hosting SDK to get API access to the switch data plane. Finally, Cisco DNA-Center will also offer the full lifecycle management for these hosted applications. The goal is to provide an intuitive UX for enterprise-wide provisioning and subsequent versioning of the application; including knobs for the administrator to secure the app hosting environment by limiting access to switch resources on a per application basis. We at Cisco are very excited about the wide range of possibilities that can now be harnessed by network operators, application developers and DevOps teams, who can leverage the strength of Open IOS-XE to run applications utilizing the underlying x86 CPU of Catalyst 9000 series switches. Sandra Rivera, SVP/GM of Network Platforms Group, Intel, rightly commented, "The Intel® Xeon® processor D family of System on a Chip and the Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches push the edge of ‘what is possible’ with the ecosystem for containers and application hosting on a common platform." This massive evolution of our switching products with Catalyst 9000 series, highlights the strength of Cisco innovation and openness of our platforms – it’s time to make the switch! Join me on July 11, 2017 from 8:00-9:39am PT, for a deep-dive into the Catalyst 9000 series.  Join the Enterprise Networks track of the Cisco Customer Connection program and then register for the briefing.  Looking forward to your attendance!  www.cisco.com/go/ccp ... View more

The recent launch of Cisco Catalyst 9000 series of switches revealed an interesting design feature capturing the interest of Cisco Live attendees. Pininfarnia, designers to the famed Ferrari auto dynasty, provided design insight to ensure the new Catalyst switches were as ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing as possible. During launch press activities, CNBC wrote the first story about the Pininfarnia Cisco collaboration and I am sharing some of the finer design details and unique usability of the Catalyst 9000 switches here. Building these switches from the ground up allowed us to make usability a central consideration. This led to new, creative thinking and innovative design choices on the Catalyst 9000 switches. But how much design change can we make in switches? Let us start with my favorite topic – the fan tray design on the Catalyst 9400 switch. Historically, front accessibility of all FRUable components has been an ante requirement for enterprise modular platforms. This is to accommodate for space constrained closet environments where the switch had to be placed flush against the wall. Front accessibility of the fan-tray came with the caveat that all the cables need to be routed to the opposite side of fan-tray to enable serviceability in case of a failure. Cable management gets tricky when you have to route 48 twisted pair Ethernet cables to the same side of the chassis and in many cases customers need special cable guides to make this work. The Catalyst 9400 chassis introduces user-configurable dual serviceable fan-tray design to overcome this specific challenge. This innovative design allows users to service the same fan-tray from the front and rear of the chassis. Cable management compromises are no more. On the topic of fans, these generate all the acoustic noise emitted by the switches. In environments where the closets do not have acoustic isolation, the noise can be disruptive and this is exactly what we attempted to minimize on the Catalyst 9000 switches. Historically, sensors measure ambient temperature and dynamically modulate the speed of fans as a mechanism to reduce noise. The Catalyst 9000 switches takes this a step further by deploying sensors to measure the barometric pressure that allows the fans to run at reduced RPMs to minimize acoustic noise at lower altitudes. Furthermore, an intricate network of sensors continuously monitors the Catalyst 9400 platform’s thermal health and increases the speed of selective fans within the fan-tray when alerted, minimizing the overall system generated noise. The same closed loop mechanism is also used to get N+1 redundancy for fans within the fan-tray where neighboring fans can compensate for a failed fan by increasing their RPM. Design choices on the Catalyst 9000 switches also aid day-today operations. Asset management enabled by RFID comes with added overhead of programming the RFID and tagging it to the component that requires tracking. Not anymore! Catalyst 9000 switches come with pre-programmed RFID tags with optional customizable fields making inventory management more convenient than ever before. While RFID tags are included at the switch level on the Catalyst 9300/9500; the Catalyst 9400 sports the RFID tag on all field replaceable units (FRU) -  supervisors, line-cards, fan-trays and power supplies. As a network operator, imagine sending a highly trained employee out ever time you had to touch a switch - be it to connect debug cables or service a failed FRU. The Catalyst 9000 series now includes blue beacons on all switches and FRUs. Anyone with access to the switch can do trivial tasks like replacing a failed power supply. The savings for remote sites maintenance can be significant – just pick up the phone and you can literally ask anyone to service the switch. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins called the Catalyst 9000 series “beautiful” and here are some of the design choices that make the Catalyst 9000 the industry’s most aesthetic switches. Rounded frame without sharp corners – “yes” you can keep touching! Ergonomic pullout handles on the Catalyst 9400 enable better weight distribution – you will not break your back lifting these switches! Innovative slide-out ejectors with latch on the uplink modules of Catalyst 9500 – no more screwdrivers! Molded plastic covers ejectors, screws and handles on field replaceable units – no gloves required! Industry standard icons now advertise the capabilities of the switch – a truly universal switch! The Catalyst 9000 series of switches redefines convenience and usability – it is time to make the switch. ... View more

The recent launch of Cisco Catalyst 9000 series of switches revealed an interesting design feature capturing the interest of Cisco Live attendees. Pininfarnia, designers to the famed Ferrari auto dynasty, provided design insight to ensure the new Catalyst switches were as ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing as possible. During launch press activities, CNBC wrote the first story about the Pininfarnia Cisco collaboration and I am sharing some of the finer design details and unique usability of the Catalyst 9000 switches here. Building these switches from the ground up allowed us to make usability a central consideration. This led to new, creative thinking and innovative design choices on the Catalyst 9000 switches. But how much design change can we make in switches? Let us start with my favorite topic – the fan tray design on the Catalyst 9400 switch. Historically, front accessibility of all FRUable components has been an ante requirement for enterprise modular platforms. This is to accommodate for space constrained closet environments where the switch had to be placed flush against the wall. Front accessibility of the fan-tray came with the caveat that all the cables need to be routed to the opposite side of fan-tray to enable serviceability in case of a failure. Cable management gets tricky when you have to route 48 twisted pair Ethernet cables to the same side of the chassis and in many cases customers need special cable guides to make this work. The Catalyst 9400 chassis introduces user-configurable dual serviceable fan-tray design to overcome this specific challenge. This innovative design allows users to service the same fan-tray from the front and rear of the chassis. Cable management compromises are no more. On the topic of fans, these generate all the acoustic noise emitted by the switches. In environments where the closets do not have acoustic isolation, the noise can be disruptive and this is exactly what we attempted to minimize on the Catalyst 9000 switches. Historically, sensors measure ambient temperature and dynamically modulate the speed of fans as a mechanism to reduce noise. The Catalyst 9000 switches takes this a step further by deploying sensors to measure the barometric pressure that allows the fans to run at reduced RPMs to minimize acoustic noise at lower altitudes. Furthermore, an intricate network of sensors continuously monitors the Catalyst 9400 platform’s thermal health and increases the speed of selective fans within the fan-tray when alerted, minimizing the overall system generated noise. The same closed loop mechanism is also used to get N+1 redundancy for fans within the fan-tray where neighboring fans can compensate for a failed fan by increasing their RPM. Design choices on the Catalyst 9000 switches also aid day-today operations. Asset management enabled by RFID comes with added overhead of programming the RFID and tagging it to the component that requires tracking. Not anymore! Catalyst 9000 switches come with pre-programmed RFID tags with optional customizable fields making inventory management more convenient than ever before. While RFID tags are included at the switch level on the Catalyst 9300/9500; the Catalyst 9400 sports the RFID tag on all field replaceable units (FRU) -  supervisors, line-cards, fan-trays and power supplies. As a network operator, imagine sending a highly trained employee out ever time you had to touch a switch - be it to connect debug cables or service a failed FRU. The Catalyst 9000 series now includes blue beacons on all switches and FRUs. Anyone with access to the switch can do trivial tasks like replacing a failed power supply. The savings for remote sites maintenance can be significant – just pick up the phone and you can literally ask anyone to service the switch. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins called the Catalyst 9000 series “beautiful” and here are some of the design choices that make the Catalyst 9000 the industry’s most aesthetic switches. Rounded frame without sharp corners – “yes” you can keep touching! Ergonomic pullout handles on the Catalyst 9400 enable better weight distribution – you will not break your back lifting these switches! Innovative slide-out ejectors with latch on the uplink modules of Catalyst 9500 – no more screwdrivers! Molded plastic covers ejectors, screws and handles on field replaceable units – no gloves required! Industry standard icons now advertise the capabilities of the switch – a truly universal switch! The Catalyst 9000 series of switches redefines convenience and usability – it is time to make the switch. ... View more

Maximize your Network Mileage! Enterprise network managers walk an unenviable tightrope. They must balance network users’ real need for adequate network resources against inevitable financial limitations. They make network bets on technology that will maximize both their financial investment and their network productivity. When it comes to investment protection, Cisco’s Catalyst Switches are unmatched. The Cisco Catalyst 6500-E and Catalyst 4500-E series of Switches are a testimonial of this where every new generation of supervisor provided backward compatibility with all previous generation line-cards. Similarly, the Catalyst 3K was the industry’s first stackable Switch to offer modularity of uplinks, which enable customers to continue using the same Switching platforms as they transition their uplink speed. Cisco’s introduction of the Catalyst 9000 series of Switches and Software Defined Access (SD-Access) is launching of a new era of networking and resetting the bar for investment protection for Enterprise Switching. Firstly, SD-Access customers are not required to upgrade their Switching infrastructure since most Cisco Switching platforms shipped since 2013 support this capability. It is the first time that a full-featured fabric technology has been delivered without requiring an upgrade of the Switches. The programmable pipeline architecture, supported by the Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) ASICs, make this possible. While the rest of the industry cycled through multiple generations of ASICs to support the VxLAN fabric evolution, the programmable pipeline of UADP allowed Cisco Catalyst Switches to adopt this technology by simply upgrading the ASIC mico-code. Looking into the future, we feel confident that we will be able support fabric enhancements like Network Services Header (NSH) and Group Policy Option (GPO) through micro-code upgrades as well. The Catalyst 9000 series of Switches are based on UADP 2.0 the second generation of UADP ASIC that comprises of 7.46 Billion transistors – one for every human being on this planet! In addition to programmability improvements of the ASIC pipeline, we have also introduced flexible tables on UADP 2.0 to enable universal deployments of the Catalyst 9000 Switches. UADP 2.0 turns Catalyst 9K into a Swiss Army Knife style Switch by customization of available table (SRAM/TCAM) resources based on customer deployment requirements. Cisco currently offers four fully tested templates to cover the all places in the network. Finally, if needed, all the pipeline programmability and table configuration capabilities of UADP 2.0 can also be exposed over customer consumable APIs like OpenFlow 1.3 and P4 (Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors). This can unlock unlimited possibilities for Enterprises as they look to adopt net new IoT and security use-cases. But the ASIC is only part of the futureproofing capabilities in the Cisco Catalyst 9000 Switches. The Catalyst 9400 platform is advancing modular investment protection into new territory by decoupling the bandwidth driven by line-card and supervisor. Separating this functionality allows us to test the line-cards for full bandwidth capacity even if the corresponding supervisor generation is not capable of supporting this bandwidth. To illustrate this using a real life example, the Multigigabit/10G line-cards on the Catalyst 9400 platform are roughly 3:1 oversubscribed when used with gen-1 supervisor. Future generations of supervisors can enable close to line-rate operation of these exact same line-cards thereby increasing the throughput of the system without the need to upgrade the line-cards. The Catalyst 9000 series of switches introduce significant enhancements in terms of PoE scale. To prevent power draw limits per line-card slot, we updated the power distribution of the Catalyst 9400 chassis.  This update enables the Catalyst 9400 platform to support UPOE (60W) on all ports simultaneously making it the industry’s most capable platform in terms of power over Ethernet (PoE) scale. It also ensures that the chassis is ready to adopt future PoE standards. The Catalyst 9500 introduces the first Enterprise optimized 40G core/aggregation Switches. The increased use of Multi-gigabit ports in the access necessitates greater than 10G uplink connectivity from the closet. While many Enterprise environments won’t need 40G in the aggregation/core layers today; the Catalyst 9500 platform provides the option to use standard 10G SFP+ optics on its 40G QSFP+ ports via the QSA adapter (CVR-QSFP-SFP10G). This allows customers to future-proof their aggregation/core Switches for 40G while continuing to use 10G optics until higher bandwidth is required. Finally, Catalyst 9300 continues as the industry’s only stackable Switch to support 480G of stacking bandwidth via StackWise-480 technology. As 25G and 100G Ethernet standards mature for the Enterprise market, StackWise-480 technology ensures that the stack itself never becomes the bottleneck for performance. Cisco’s Catalyst 9000’s Switches have been built with investment protection capabilities that can see Enterprises through the next decade – it’s time to make the Switch! For more information, visit the Network Architecture - Cisco DNA page. Want to learn more?  We have a great technical deep-dive briefing set up to chat about the Catalyst 9000 Series Switches on July 11, 2017 from 8:00-9:30am PT.  Join us via the Customer Connection program.  First join the program and then register for the briefing.  We'll see you there!  www.cisco.com/go/ccp ... View more

An explosive growth of network use is underway which has some estimating that that over half of the world’s population now has internet access and spends approximately 11 hours daily on line. And that number is growing. By 2020, we can expect 50 billion devices to be connecting by 2020 and internet usage will similarly grow. This growth coupled with the changing threat landscape introduces new set of security challenges. Enterprises must secure their assets from advanced persistent threats where perimeter security is proving to be insufficient. Cisco understands these trends and is leading the way with the Digital Network Architecture (DNA). Cisco is ushering into a new era of networking with the new Catalyst 9000 series of switches, Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) and Network Data Platform (NDP), which deliver the core principles of DNA. As we transition our network infrastructure closer to the software-defined networking architecture, it is imperative that we simplify our software licensing strategy. Therefore, with the launch of Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series we are moving to a more intuitive two-tier, software licensing model – Essentials and Advantage. Essentials tier provides baseline networking capabilities while Advantage tier focuses on Cisco value added differentiators. The Essentials tier offers an augmented Network OS license – ‘Network Essentials’ -- that provides Full L2 and Routed access capabilities on the Catalyst 9K platforms. It additionally provides a ‘DNA Essentials’ license that contains relevant Base Automation and Monitoring capabilities on the switch and DNA Center to simplify network management and troubleshooting through Plug n Play, On-box python, Client 360 and more. The Advantage tier is arguably the finest software tier available in the Enterprise Switching market today. It contains the best Network OS license – ‘Network Advantage’ providing Full L3, Segmentation and Resiliency capabilities on the Catalyst 9K platforms. It also provides a ‘DNA Advantage’ license containing Cisco’s lead Enterprise architectural solution – SD-Access, providing policy-based automation from edge to cloud, network security through micro-segmentation, encrypted traffic analytics (ETA) and proactive issue resolution through predictive analytics. Contents for each of the software package can be found in the respective datasheets for Catalyst 9300, 9400 and 9500. DNA licenses are inclusive of all the capabilities that are delivered by our DNA Center; no additional licenses are required with DNA-Center and the associated platforms APIC-EM and NDP. Cisco understands Enterprise customers have invested in products such as Catalyst 3K with a Lan Base, IP Base or an IP services in a perpetual buying motion in the past. Therefore, with Catalyst 9K we continue to offer our Network licenses – Network Essentials and Network Advantage as perpetual only. However, with DNA licenses we want to offer flexibility to our customers. Most of the capabilities in these licenses contain new path breaking innovations from Cisco that our customers would be using for the first time. Therefore, we are offering DNA licenses – DNA Essentials and DNA Advantage as term-based licenses with 3, 5 and 7-year term options as that would greatly encourage our customers to try out these new technologies and deploy them in their Enterprise networks. Additionally, DNA licenses being term based by design offers embedded software support and ongoing innovation promise to the end customers at no additional cost. This is immensely important because as Cisco transitions to a software-defined architecture, customers will expect significant, ongoing innovation from Cisco that would be covered under DNA licenses. Lastly, solution consumption is also made easy with Cisco One software. To know more, please visit – www.cisco.com/go/onedna. As we enter the new era of networking and introduce term-based licenses, we understand software license management will be important, as our customers now have to manage perpetual and term-based licenses across multiple campuses, branches and regions. Therefore, very soon within DNA Center, we will introduce a ‘DNA License Manager’ application to provide Enterprise customers a single pane of glass for visibility on all aspects of software licensing. This application will be a one-stop shop for all Enterprise customers as it would cover the entire portfolio of Enterprise networking that comprises of routing, Switching and wireless products. The value of Cisco’s new era of networking is here – it’s time to make the Switch! Want to hear more about this and other technical details from the announcement?  Join us on July 11, 2017 from 8:00-9:30am PT for a deep-dive session and Q&A.  Simply join the Cisco Customer Connection program and then register for the session.  www.cisco.com/go/ccp ... View more

An explosive growth of network use is underway which has some estimating that that over half of the world’s population now has internet access and spends approximately 11 hours daily on line. And that number is growing. By 2020, we can expect 50 billion devices to be connecting by 2020 and internet usage will similarly grow. This growth coupled with the changing threat landscape introduces new set of security challenges. Enterprises must secure their assets from advanced persistent threats where perimeter security is proving to be insufficient. Cisco understands these trends and is leading the way with the Digital Network Architecture (DNA). Cisco is ushering into a new era of networking with the new Catalyst 9000 series of switches, Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) and Network Data Platform (NDP), which deliver the core principles of DNA. As we transition our network infrastructure closer to the software-defined networking architecture, it is imperative that we simplify our software licensing strategy. Therefore, with the launch of Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series we are moving to a more intuitive two-tier, software licensing model – Essentials and Advantage. Essentials tier provides baseline networking capabilities while Advantage tier focuses on Cisco value added differentiators. The Essentials tier offers an augmented Network OS license – ‘Network Essentials’ -- that provides Full L2 and Routed access capabilities on the Catalyst 9K platforms. It additionally provides a ‘DNA Essentials’ license that contains relevant Base Automation and Monitoring capabilities on the switch and DNA Center to simplify network management and troubleshooting through Plug n Play, On-box python, Client 360 and more. The Advantage tier is arguably the finest software tier available in the Enterprise Switching market today. It contains the best Network OS license – ‘Network Advantage’ providing Full L3, Segmentation and Resiliency capabilities on the Catalyst 9K platforms. It also provides a ‘DNA Advantage’ license containing Cisco’s lead Enterprise architectural solution – SD-Access, providing policy-based automation from edge to cloud, network security through micro-segmentation, encrypted traffic analytics (ETA) and proactive issue resolution through predictive analytics. Contents for each of the software package can be found in the respective datasheets for Catalyst 9300, 9400 and 9500. DNA licenses are inclusive of all the capabilities that are delivered by our DNA Center; no additional licenses are required with DNA-Center and the associated platforms APIC-EM and NDP. Cisco understands Enterprise customers have invested in products such as Catalyst 3K with a Lan Base, IP Base or an IP services in a perpetual buying motion in the past. Therefore, with Catalyst 9K we continue to offer our Network licenses – Network Essentials and Network Advantage as perpetual only. However, with DNA licenses we want to offer flexibility to our customers. Most of the capabilities in these licenses contain new path breaking innovations from Cisco that our customers would be using for the first time. Therefore, we are offering DNA licenses – DNA Essentials and DNA Advantage as term-based licenses with 3, 5 and 7-year term options as that would greatly encourage our customers to try out these new technologies and deploy them in their Enterprise networks. Additionally, DNA licenses being term based by design offers embedded software support and ongoing innovation promise to the end customers at no additional cost. This is immensely important because as Cisco transitions to a software-defined architecture, customers will expect significant, ongoing innovation from Cisco that would be covered under DNA licenses. Lastly, solution consumption is also made easy with Cisco One software. To know more, please visit – www.cisco.com/go/onedna. As we enter the new era of networking and introduce term-based licenses, we understand software license management will be important, as our customers now have to manage perpetual and term-based licenses across multiple campuses, branches and regions. Therefore, very soon within DNA Center, we will introduce a ‘DNA License Manager’ application to provide Enterprise customers a single pane of glass for visibility on all aspects of software licensing. This application will be a one-stop shop for all Enterprise customers as it would cover the entire portfolio of Enterprise networking that comprises of routing, Switching and wireless products. The value of Cisco’s new era of networking is here – it’s time to make the Switch! Want to hear more about this and other technical details from the announcement?  Join us on July 11, 2017 from 8:00-9:30am PT for a deep-dive session and Q&A.  Simply join the Cisco Customer Connection program and then register for the session.  www.cisco.com/go/ccp ... View more

Maximize your Network Mileage! Enterprise network managers walk an unenviable tightrope. They must balance network users’ real need for adequate network resources against inevitable financial limitations. They make network bets on technology that will maximize both their financial investment and their network productivity. When it comes to investment protection, Cisco’s Catalyst Switches are unmatched. The Cisco Catalyst 6500-E and Catalyst 4500-E series of Switches are a testimonial of this where every new generation of supervisor provided backward compatibility with all previous generation line-cards. Similarly, the Catalyst 3K was the industry’s first stackable Switch to offer modularity of uplinks, which enable customers to continue using the same Switching platforms as they transition their uplink speed. Cisco’s introduction of the Catalyst 9000 series of Switches and Software Defined Access (SD-Access) is launching of a new era of networking and resetting the bar for investment protection for Enterprise Switching. Firstly, SD-Access customers are not required to upgrade their Switching infrastructure since most Cisco Switching platforms shipped since 2013 support this capability. It is the first time that a full-featured fabric technology has been delivered without requiring an upgrade of the Switches. The programmable pipeline architecture, supported by the Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) ASICs, make this possible. While the rest of the industry cycled through multiple generations of ASICs to support the VxLAN fabric evolution, the programmable pipeline of UADP allowed Cisco Catalyst Switches to adopt this technology by simply upgrading the ASIC mico-code. Looking into the future, we feel confident that we will be able support fabric enhancements like Network Services Header (NSH) and Group Policy Option (GPO) through micro-code upgrades as well. The Catalyst 9000 series of Switches are based on UADP 2.0 the second generation of UADP ASIC that comprises of 7.46 Billion transistors – one for every human being on this planet! In addition to programmability improvements of the ASIC pipeline, we have also introduced flexible tables on UADP 2.0 to enable universal deployments of the Catalyst 9000 Switches. UADP 2.0 turns Catalyst 9K into a Swiss Army Knife style Switch by customization of available table (SRAM/TCAM) resources based on customer deployment requirements. Cisco currently offers four fully tested templates to cover the all places in the network. Finally, if needed, all the pipeline programmability and table configuration capabilities of UADP 2.0 can also be exposed over customer consumable APIs like OpenFlow 1.3 and P4 (Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors). This can unlock unlimited possibilities for Enterprises as they look to adopt net new IoT and security use-cases. But the ASIC is only part of the futureproofing capabilities in the Cisco Catalyst 9000 Switches. The Catalyst 9400 platform is advancing modular investment protection into new territory by decoupling the bandwidth driven by line-card and supervisor. Separating this functionality allows us to test the line-cards for full bandwidth capacity even if the corresponding supervisor generation is not capable of supporting this bandwidth. To illustrate this using a real life example, the Multigigabit/10G line-cards on the Catalyst 9400 platform are roughly 3:1 oversubscribed when used with gen-1 supervisor. Future generations of supervisors can enable close to line-rate operation of these exact same line-cards thereby increasing the throughput of the system without the need to upgrade the line-cards. The Catalyst 9000 series of switches introduce significant enhancements in terms of PoE scale. To prevent power draw limits per line-card slot, we updated the power distribution of the Catalyst 9400 chassis.  This update enables the Catalyst 9400 platform to support UPOE (60W) on all ports simultaneously making it the industry’s most capable platform in terms of power over Ethernet (PoE) scale. It also ensures that the chassis is ready to adopt future PoE standards. The Catalyst 9500 introduces the first Enterprise optimized 40G core/aggregation Switches. The increased use of Multi-gigabit ports in the access necessitates greater than 10G uplink connectivity from the closet. While many Enterprise environments won’t need 40G in the aggregation/core layers today; the Catalyst 9500 platform provides the option to use standard 10G SFP+ optics on its 40G QSFP+ ports via the QSA adapter (CVR-QSFP-SFP10G). This allows customers to future-proof their aggregation/core Switches for 40G while continuing to use 10G optics until higher bandwidth is required. Finally, Catalyst 9300 continues as the industry’s only stackable Switch to support 480G of stacking bandwidth via StackWise-480 technology. As 25G and 100G Ethernet standards mature for the Enterprise market, StackWise-480 technology ensures that the stack itself never becomes the bottleneck for performance. Cisco’s Catalyst 9000’s Switches have been built with investment protection capabilities that can see Enterprises through the next decade – it’s time to make the Switch! For more information, visit the Network Architecture - Cisco DNA page. Want to learn more?  We have a great technical deep-dive briefing set up to chat about the Catalyst 9000 Series Switches on July 11, 2017 from 8:00-9:30am PT.  Join us via the Customer Connection program.  First join the program and then register for the briefing.  We'll see you there!  www.cisco.com/go/ccp ... View more