Phil Gervasi is still haunted by memories of the Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller. So it was with that in mind that he looks at Cisco’s new WLCs they presented at Networking Field Day, the 9300 and 9800 series. Phil thinks these can be successful due to their IOS-XE programmability and their ability to be deployed in racks or in the cloud as virtual appliances. Phil doesn’t think Cisco is repeating the issues of the 5760, and wants to start building them out in a lab soon.
Cisco Catalyst Wifi, Take Two
In this post, notable Canadian and Networking Field Day delegate Rob Coote digs into the Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller from Cisco, positioned as their next-generation wireless platform. At Networking Field Day, Cisco highlighted three key improvements from previous Aironet products: Always-on, security, and the ability to deploy anywhere. Rob think the overall popularity of Catalyst 9k switches should provide a good basis for the success of the wireless platform.
What is Cisco ACI?
Gian Paolo Boarina heard a lot about Cisco ACI at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe this year. This has come in handy since he’s been migrating traditional switches to Cisco ACI fabric. In this post, he looks at what exactly is ACI from the perspective of a different roles, including networking, security, and DevOps. Overall in working with Cisco ACI, Gian has found he’s needed less time configuring switches, and more time focusing on business intent.
Cisco Aggressively Ups Its SD-WAN Game
Cisco spent the bulk of their Networking Field Day presentation discussing recent updates to SD-WAN. Pete Welcher digs into the presentation in this blog post. For Pete, the big news of the presentation was Cisco bringing improved security to SD-WAN, with firewalls and other security features now included with Viptela SD-WAN. Pete sees this as the key to broadening SD-WAN into more diverse designs and topologies.
Cisco Catalyst 9800 WLC – The Most Flexible WLC Yet
Kevin Blackburn breaks down the release of Cisco’s new Catalyst 9800 series wireless LAN controller. Kevin is impressed that this isn’t a single appliance, but a true platform that can run in the cloud, on a switch, or on an on-premises appliance. The Catalyst 9800 series WLC are all based on IOS-XE code, providing modularity and flexibility. Cisco presented on this at Networking Field Day earlier this month, so be sure to check out their full video for a deep dive.
My First Tech Field Day
It’s always great to hear the perspective of first time Tech Field Day delegates. Yusuf Emre Özensoy came to his first event last month, and shared a little bit about his experience. For him, what stood out not just being an attendee of the event, but being invited into a wider family as a part of it. He also enjoyed all the technical deep dives from DriveScale, Cisco, Oracle, Dell EMC, and Hammerspace.
Cisco ACI Cloud APIC: Fast, Cheap, Good. You Can’t Have All Three.
Inspired by Cisco’s presentation at Tech Field Day last month, Ethan Banks uses the classic “fast, cheap, good: pick 2” device for considering running Cisco ACI in the cloud. By moving this switching management plane from on-prem to Cloud APIC, Ethan doesn’t see a performance bottleneck since this will all be in cloud-native constructs. Ultimately cost may be the issue for some organizations.
Meraki Is Now In The “F’ACK” Game
Jim Palmer wants his readers to know that Meraki’s FAST-ACK as presented at Mobility Field Day last month isn’t the same as fracking. Instead, this patented technology designed to speed up content from a remote device. He digs into the use of ACK in a traditional Ethernet network, and how Meraki is innovating on this for wireless networks.
Bridging Enterprise Connectivity
In this post, Scott Lester considers some of the challenges with current connectivity approaches to the remote office. Cellular access is common, but makes it hard to maintain an enterprise security posture at all times. At Mobility Field Day last month, Cisco showed how the emergence of 5G might be the ideal solution.
Meraki’s LittleTable Isn’t So Little Anymore
Jennifer Huber heard from Cisco’s Meraki team at Mobility Field Day earlier this month. She was impressed with the responsiveness of their Wireless Heath dashboard. This allows her to view the massive LittleTable database and evaluate which client devices are behaving badly.
If Cisco Could Lower Their Marketing Hype, We Might Actually Be Able to Get to the Substance
Lee Badman wrote up about one of the major benefits of a Mobility Field Day presentation, cutting through marketing hype, and learning about the tech that matters to him as a potential customer. Lee recently had a bad experience watching recent Cisco ads, but seeing them present at Mobility Field Day earlier this year, he found their Cisco Analytics and Assurance presentation “mind-opening.”
Figuring Out What Bothers Me About Wi-Fi and “Analytics”
Lee Badman heard about a number of wireless analytics solutions at Mobility Field Day last week. But one thing stuck in his mind. Outside of the merits of any solution over another, the underlying assumption behind many was that an analytics solution was needed because the wireless network is in some way being managed poorly. For Lee, WLAN problems often come from problems in vendor code, not something an admin can really be proactive about. This isn’t to say that these analytics solutions aren’t needed, but Lee wants them put in the proper context of why WLAN problems most often arise.
Mark Your Calendars: Mobility Field Day 3
In this video, Rowell Dionicio discusses coming back for his third Mobility Field Day. He discusses what he expects to hear from each of the presenters, including Arista, who recently acquired previous presenter Mojo Networks. There are a lot of new faces on the delegate side, and Rowell is looking forward to the discussions and perspectives that they will bring.
Management Frame Detection?
Samuel Clements considers the acronym MFD. What could be better than Management Frame Detection? Mobility Field Day of course! He’s heading out to the event later this month. In this post, he reviews the announced presenters and what he expects to hear about from each. Remember, you can follow along with all presentations during the event on our live stream, and engage with the conversation on Twitter using #MFD3.
Cisco’s Container Journey to the Cloud
In this piece, Tom Hollingsworth looks at the announcements from Cisco Live US 2018. What stood out to him was the prominence of a non-networking specific topic, the cloud. He specifically examines how Cisco took pains to show how they are aligned with Google’s vision of the cloud, and integrate that across their product lines.
Tech Field Day Extra Cloud Sessions at Cisco Live US
Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US 2018 will have a number of presentations next week, including four by Cisco. In this post, Breana Jordan previews the sessions, which will look at Cisco solutions for hybrid cloud, multicloud, and containers.
Change Doesn’t Have To Be a Four Letter Word
Change to a network inherently exposes an organization to some risk of something going wrong. John Herbert looks at Cisco’s Network Assurance Engine, and how it helps admins do testing of a change state and extensive validation to help reduce that risk, and make change much more manageable.
Field Area Networking
Cisco’s Networking Field Day presentation on Field Area Networking definitely left an impression with delegate Nick Buraglio. He’s put together a Network Collective Short Take video on the subject, as well as writing up a blog post. He excited because what he saw would provide an alternative to LTE for low power remote IoT devices.