Solved: Can somebody explain what was actually super bad with converged access

Aldo.zavala@gmail.com · ‎01-28-2022

Hi all, I posted this as a reply in another thread but I wanted to create a specific one for this question, so please apologize me for the duplicated question.

So my question is: Many knowledgeable people here (and I am thankful for that) mention the big troubles with converged access and how bad it was and that cisco stop using it. Yes I can see that new IOS dont support that and that latest gear goes in another direction but I want to know what specifically was wrong with that technology? What specific issues did the gear had, or the ios, or the deployements? what specifically went wrong?

But can please give me a real example of the actual problems with it? Is there a published document from cisco explaining that?

I asked that because I only had $500 to burn and I got a 3850, I am using it in my lab with three 3500 AP's, right now I am buying a small server to deploy Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL at home just for testing. Is there something wrong with the 3850 or is just the wireless portion of it?

Thanks!!!!

Leo Laohoo · ‎01-28-2022

Aldo.zavala@gmail.com wrote:

Is there something wrong with the 3850 or is just the wireless portion of it?

1. Not enough resources (CPU and memory) on the platform

2. Code was extra buggy - AireOS had progressed to 8.5.X.X but IOS-XE was still "stuck" behind 8.3.X.X because previous versions were extremely buggy (and every "fixed" released introduced more bugs) that we would open a wireless meeting with our Cisco SE with "How is the feature parity of IOS-XE" only to hear groaning as the response.

3. There are some corner cases where CA would work but it could not be scaled.

Do yourself a favour and dump the idea of learning CA with the 3850. The switch can still be used for something else, but, learning CA is not worth the hassle. CA left a very bad taste to a lot of customers. There is a lot of network admins out there who do not want to delve up the nightmare of CA without making the appointment to see their shrink later.

Now that Cisco has canned AireOS, and if IOS-XE is not another CA 2.0 fiasco, wireless with IOS-XE is currently the only direction.

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Leo Laohoo · ‎01-28-2022

Aldo.zavala@gmail.com wrote:

Is there something wrong with the 3850 or is just the wireless portion of it?

1. Not enough resources (CPU and memory) on the platform

2. Code was extra buggy - AireOS had progressed to 8.5.X.X but IOS-XE was still "stuck" behind 8.3.X.X because previous versions were extremely buggy (and every "fixed" released introduced more bugs) that we would open a wireless meeting with our Cisco SE with "How is the feature parity of IOS-XE" only to hear groaning as the response.

3. There are some corner cases where CA would work but it could not be scaled.

Do yourself a favour and dump the idea of learning CA with the 3850. The switch can still be used for something else, but, learning CA is not worth the hassle. CA left a very bad taste to a lot of customers. There is a lot of network admins out there who do not want to delve up the nightmare of CA without making the appointment to see their shrink later.

Now that Cisco has canned AireOS, and if IOS-XE is not another CA 2.0 fiasco, wireless with IOS-XE is currently the only direction.

Aldo.zavala@gmail.com · ‎01-28-2022

so the only bad thing in the 3850 is the converged access? or in general the whole 3850 is trash?

Leo Laohoo · ‎01-28-2022

Aldo.zavala@gmail.com wrote:

so the only bad thing in the 3850 is the converged access? or in general the whole 3850 is trash?

As a standalone and a pure layer 2 switch (no Dot1x or IPDT-related function), 3650/3850 is a solid platform. Combined with a good IOS-XE version, like 3.6.X or 16.3.X, one can expect a very long uptime (>2 years) without a reboot nor a crash.