With technological advances, the networks are growing – more devices, more endpoints, more users! What if we were to ask some simple questions from the IT administrators of these new complex networks? How many connected devices exist in the network?   What is the overall health of the network? If there’s a network outage, where the problem is and when the problem originated?   While the answers can be provided, traditionally, it would take anywhere from several minutes to hours.   So, what does this mean to an enterprise?   This means that organizations spend more money and time on network monitoring and troubleshooting, hence increasing IT operational expenses.   Cisco DNA Center Assurance – taking network visibility to the next level! With Cisco DNA Center Assurance capabilities, the answers to the above-mentioned questions are obtained in seconds. The comprehensive wired and wireless visibility is provided by collecting streaming telemetry from endpoints, devices, users, and applications across every part of your network. An intelligent analytics engine is used to correlate this data with contextual information such as time, location, topology, and attributes, in order to derive deep insights, and is shown via intuitive dashboards.   Let’s take an example where a user is experiencing network delays. Troubleshooting such a network issue requires steps to be taken based on the layers of the OSI model where each layer has a certain functionality.   Here are the possible steps for issue analysis for this scenario: Check client connectivity (Physical Layer) Check physical connectivity and device configuration (Physical Layer) Check possible Layer2/Layer3 issues e.g. STP configuration, routing issues, etc. Application checks e.g. DNS verification These traditional troubleshooting steps are inefficient, and time-consuming as this often requires recreation of the original problem, hence reducing productivity.   Cisco DNA Center’s Assurance takes intent based networking further by bringing all these steps together.   The insights on client, device and application data brings efficiency in network monitoring and troubleshooting. I’d like to walk you through the Cisco DNA Center’s Assurance menu.   The figure below shows a pictorial view of the Cisco DNA Center Assurance menu: There are four main menus namely: Health – This is the most exciting part of the DNA Center Assurance! The navigation panel consists of the following menus: Overall Health This page provides a summary of the overall health of the network and wired and wireless client health along with a list of top ten issues being detected. Guided remediation provides steps to facilitate issue resolution. Network Health This page provides detailed report on the health of the network which includes all the wired and wireless devices. The time travel allows the user to find the network health at any given time within the seven-day range. Client Health Similar to the network health, this page provides detailed report on the wired and wireless clients that are connected to the network.   Once the clients are connected, you can see how the clients are performing and use time travel to find the state of a particular client at a given time. Application Health This page provides the health of the applications that run within your     network. The details include the number of bytes, throughput, packet loss and network latency associated with all running applications. Dashboard – This page allows the user to customize the dashboard and also look at the sensors configured by the user via the “Manage” menu.   The active sensor tests let a user test real-world client experiences, and lets you proactively validate client performance. Issues – This page shows the high-impact global issues and overall issues in the customer environment. For each issue, an issue description and the root-cause are shown. Manage – This page is for configuring and managing the sensor driven tests, the results of which can be seen the assurance dashboard mentioned above.   Cisco DNA Center Assurance ensures that you’re able to handle network transformation without having to worry about increasing your IT budget.   Now you can spend less time on network monitoring and troubleshooting and more time innovating! ... View more

The Catalyst 9000 family of switches is at the heart of Cisco’s Network Intuitive strategy.  The success of Catalyst 9000 Series Switches is inspiring! We are extending the success further by introducing our newest Cisco Catalyst 9200 Series Switches, which is an entry level enterprise class switch designed for simple branch and small-medium deployments enabling Intent-based networking everywhere.  Cisco Catalyst 9200 Series Switches bring in enterprise-class features leveraging the power of UADP ASIC technology and Open IOS XE software which includes support for model-driven programmability and streaming telemetry.   Understanding the business-intent of digital world   The new trends in the networking world and the digital growth is making the networks more complex and difficult to manage.  Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture (DNA Center) with SD-Access (SDA) revolutionized the way networks are configured and managed.  SD-Access simplifies network segmentation and provides end-to-end automation capabilities along with consistent secure policy-based automation.  User experience is further optimized via network assurance capabilities for predictable performance by proactively monitoring and troubleshooting the network.   Increasing network efficiency, but not the cost!   Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture with SD-Access support on Catalyst 9200 extends network intelligence on the switches, and delivers the business outcomes that customers want, all while increasing the time to revenue and lower operating costs. As an example, the figure below illustrates the “total cost of ownership” (TCO) analysis (with and without SD-Access) for a mid-enterprise customer.   In the TCO analysis specified above, the customer sees significant cost reduction to carry out tasks such as inventory management, provisioning and policy enforcement.  Simplified dashboard along with advanced network monitoring and troubleshooting delivered via DNA Center undoubtedly lowered the issue resolution cost.   Cisco continues to disrupt the network while understanding its customer’s complex needs, and delivering innovations for better business-outcomes; unlocking new opportunities for customers faster than ever before!     ... View more

Cisco is changing networking forever! 2017 was the start of a network revolution that will ushered in the dawn of The Network. Intuitive. beginning with Enterprise Switching. Cisco’s customers and partners were introduced to new and exciting hardware and software innovations that laid the foundation for a network revolution . Catalyst 9000 Series Switches While the industry has been buzzing about intent based networking, Cisco did it. In 2017, we unveiled a breakthrough in Enterprise Switching by introducing the Catalyst 9000 series switches which are built for evolving trends of ever-growing connected devices.  These switches deliver high performance and unmatched functionality with innovations in security, IoT convergence, cloud readiness and mobility. The boxes come ready to accept the software subscription updates that are so popular now . Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) SDA is the industry’s first intent-based networking solution for the Enterprise built on the principles of Cisco Digital Network Architecture.  The solution advances Cisco’s intent-based networking by providing policy-based automation from the Edge to the Cloud. This means IT managers can identify network policy and that intent will become automatically embedded within the network. Manual network set up was a hundred-hour effort. SDA makes bringing up a network, including the ever important policy implementation, something that takes a few hours. SDA is a gift to the IT departments doing box by box connections and knowing there has to be an easier way….well there is. Software Subscription Cisco transformed how network infrastructure software is bought and deployed by introducing subscription-based network software. The subscription-based software focuses on reducing cost of ownership over the software lifecycle. It also means software updates are available to customers immediately without requiring a hardware purchase. Encrypted Traffic Analysis (ETA) Given that the threat landscape is rapidly growing in the enterprises where data is being encrypted at a much faster rate, Cisco has solved the biggest cybersecurity challenge by finding a way to analyze threats without decrypting traffic.  Cisco altered enterprise security via ETA to enable malware detection through behavioral analytics on encrypted traffic. This tremendous advancement gives users of Cisco networks greater security as the network can apply analysis on ETA data to isolate security issues and prevent similar issues in the future. Additional Software Features and Releases Cisco maintains its lead in simplification of cloud-scale networking by delivering model-driven telemetry and adding new yang data-models. Cisco continues to show its commitment for increasing high-availability and reducing operational downtime for customer’s networks by providing new software features like Software Maintenance Updates (SMU), Graceful Insertion and Removal (GIR) and Stackwise Virtual. In terms of the releases, Cisco promotes the long-term stability in customer deployments -- t he recommended software releases for Catalyst 3850 and Catalyst 3650 was changed from IOS XE 3.6/3.7 to the new IOS XE 16.3.5b. These features help automate the customer’s network, maintain the network’s stability, improve reliability, and thus reduce operational expenses for customers. As Cisco Systems continues to drive disruptive innovation into the marketplace, our customers will see more features in support of The Network. Intuitive. In addition to the capabilities we introduced last year to help set up the physical network, the second wave is going to put more features on that network and ensure that network runs the way it is intended to. Stay tuned for more exciting news as Cisco unveils new innovations in 2018! ... View more

For Cisco, innovation never stops! Our new era of networking launched in June with the introduction of the Catalyst 9000 Series Switches. The Catalyst 9000 family of switches run a common software stack based on Cisco IOS XE 16.x and share the same binary image. While Cisco is establishing industry leading, intent based networking, we are keeping simplicity in mind for our customers. Industry leading software is of no use if our customers have difficulty choosing the correct software release. While we continue to evolve our software release process, this blog reviews the Cisco IOS XE 16.x release naming, model and strategy. First, look at the release naming.  Each release has a Major Number, a Minor Number and then a Maintenance Release Number along with a brand name.  For example, IOS XE Denali 16.3.1 has Major Number as ‘16’, Minor Number as ‘3’, Maintenance Number as ‘1’ and brand name as “Denali.”  The brand name changes after three releases.  For example, releases 16.1.x, 16.2.x, and 16.3.x, have the brand name as “Denali” while releases 16.4.x, 16.5.x, and 16.6.x, have the Brand Name as “Everest.” Next, we look at the release cadence.  There are three releases planned each year – two Standard Maintenance (SM) and one Extended Maintenance (EM).  What does this mean to our customers?  A standard support release has a sustaining support lifetime of 12 months from the first customer shipment (FCS) with two scheduled rebuilds.  An extended-support release provides a sustaining support lifetime of 48 months from FCS with ten scheduled rebuilds. The table below illustrates the naming convention and release cadence: Finally, we look at the posting of software releases.  Software releases are available for download at http://software.cisco.com.  Once a user selects a specific hardware SKU, the software information is populated on the left navigation panel at http://software.cisco.com.  In this navigation panel, you will find Suggested Release – This is the Cisco suggested release based on software quality, stability and longevity.  You may also see the " " icon  after the release name. Latest Release – The latest software release that has been posted. All Releases – All Releases that are available for a given hardware selection. Deferred Releases – These are the releases that have been deferred by Cisco and are not available for download and have an attached deferral notice. As an example (illustrated above) when a user chooses Catalyst 9300-48P-A hardware SKU, the Suggested and Latest Releases are shown as Everest-16.6.1, and Everest-16.5.1(a) is shown in the list of deferred releases.  For the Cisco standard end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-sale (EOS) notices for the deferred releases, you look at the EOL product bulletins for each platform and also look at the general policy information posted here . Creating industry leading products is important at Cisco but maintaining their ongoing customer value via software releases is also important.  We’re continuously improving and striving for the best in every aspect of software lifecycle – it’s all about constantly improving for our most valued customer – you! ... View more

Cisco is bringing intent-based networking to life. The industry leading Catalyst 9000 series of switches combined with the Software-Defined Access are changing networking forever. Cisco’s open, extensible and programmable IOS XE 16.6.1 supports Cisco Catalyst 9300, 9400, 9500, 3850 and 3650 Series Switches. Anoop Vetteth’s blog explains how Cisco simplified the software licensing strategy for all Catalyst 9000 Series Switches to continue their network transformation leadership via software-defined networking (SDN) architecture. As Cisco’s customers and partners familiarize themselves with the new hardware and software innovations, a few recurring questions arise: How do I know which feature belongs to which software license? How do I compare the software features amongst all these platforms? What’s new in a given software release? The answers lie in an existing web-based application called Cisco Feature Navigator (CFN). CFN enables users to match Cisco software releases to features and to Cisco hardware. CFN is available to any registered Cisco Connection Online (CCO) user and can be found at http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn. CFN is an often-overlooked tool but its valuable insights help Cisco partners research software releases, and save time for network administrators at customer sites. A few of the things the tool can do include: Research software based on feature names or technology Research software based on software, platform or software image Compare two software releases View end-of-life for software images As an example, let’s use CFN to compare the Cisco Catalyst 9300 with Network Advantage License and Cisco Catalyst 3850 with IP Services License for IOS XE 16.6.1 Software Release.  Use http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn to log into CFN. Choose the “Compare Images” option Input the First Image Parameters, which in this case are Cisco IOS 16.6.1, Catalyst 9300 and Network Advantage License Input the Second Image Parameters, which in this case are Cisco IOS 16.6.1, Catalyst 3850 and IP Services License The results appear at the bottom of the screen, which identify the features unique to each image and the features that are common to both images and platforms.  Results can be exported to an Excel file for further analysis.   The figure below shows the steps in a visual snapshot. Not only is Cisco committed to be the market leader in the networking industry but we are also dedicated to exceptional customer satisfaction. CFN is another example of how Cisco is making network management easier – and more successful - for Cisco customers. It’s time to make the Switch! ... View more

Cisco’s IOS XE 16.6.1 is a modern operating system that transforms the network by innovating the entire software stack. The combination of Cisco’s newly launched Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) and their ground breaking Catalyst 9000 series of switches is changing networking forever. Cisco Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) is available on the Cisco Catalyst 9300, 9400, 9500, 3850 and 3650 Series Switches. In addition to introducing SD-Access, Cisco IOS XE 16.6.1 also unveiled Cisco Catalyst® 9400 switches, which is the industry leading modular switching access platform in the industry built for enhanced security, and IoT. Cisco completely redesigned their operating system to ensure it delivered valuable capabilities now - and it the future. These revolutionary capabilities span security, reliability and innovation. State-of-the-art security is delivered via Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA) on the Cisco Catalyst 9000 Series switches. Unique to enterprise switches, ETA makes the Cat9K the industry’s only switch performing malware detection through behavioral and pattern-based analytics on encrypted traffic.  This approach detects threats before they invade the network and can more quickly isolate offenders. ETA exemplifies the opportunity presented by learning machines and solves network security challenge previously thought to be unsolvable! Cisco’s open, extensible and programmable IOS XE 16.6.1 provides Software Maintenance Updates, standards-based model driven telemetry, and third party Application hosting.  This intuitive network automates routine, low value activity, which consumes resources and allows network managers to refocus on higher value network creativity and design. This improves network reliability as well as reduces operational costs. Other software features delivered by IOS XE 16.6.1 include: Model-Driven Telemetry: The Cat9K series of switches are the first Campus Switching products to support standards-based telemetry. This feature allows the switch to continuously stream real time configuration and operating state information represented in YANG data models to subscribers, which makes it efficient to monitor customer networks. Trustworthy Systems: The Cat9K series of switches is the industry’s first to incorporate security innovations on the switch. This is an additional layer of security that IOS-XE provides to prevent malicious actors from compromising our customer’s systems. This results in end-to-end security for our customers. Increased Serviceability and High Availability capabilities: Boot-times on All Catalyst 9000 Series switches is reduced to 160 seconds on standalone systems, and 200 seconds on 8-member Cat 9300 stack. Feature like Graceful insertion and removal (GIR), NSF/SSO Support for IPv6 minimizes network downtime for our customers. MPLS Innovations: 6PE, 6VPE, Ethernet over MPLS, VPLS, and EiBGP Multipath. By expanding advanced MPLS capabilities on most widely deployed switching platforms, we have focused making customer deployments more flexible and reliable. IOS XE 16.6.1 is a groundbreaking operating system that brings the power of intent-based networking to our revolutionary Catalyst 9000 product line. Cisco Enterprise Networking is again raising the bar for software innovations! It’s time to make the Switch! Learn more at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/ios-nx-os-software/ios-xe/index.html For downloading software image and documentation, please visit IOS XE Everest 16.6.1 Software Release ... View more