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White Paper

Cisco Unified Access Technology Overview:

Converged Access

Introduction

Today, less than 1 percent of things in the physical world are network connected. In the near future the growth of

the Internet of everything (IoE), which Cisco defines as the convergences of people, process, data, and things, will

make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before, creating unprecedented opportunities

for countries, businesses, and individuals. However, although the number of devices, applications, and bandwidth

demands are growing, the size of IT staff and budget remains static. IT organizations are struggling to manage the

bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend and growth of mobile devices and traffic. They face two main challenges:

●

Complexity of managing separate wired and wireless networks, multiple management systems, multiple

network operating systems, and chaotic device onboarding processes.

●

Inconsistency of wired and wireless architecture, policy, security, features, and operations. When compared

with wired networks, wireless also does not have the same level of granular quality of service (QoS), policy,

and security enforcement close to endpoint devices.

Cisco

Unified Access is an intelligent network platform for IoE to enable greater business agility, operational

efficiencies, and new connected experiences.

Cisco Unified Access Strategy

Based on “one policy, one management, one network,” the Cisco Unified Access solution delivers an integrated,

simplified, and intelligent network platform that enables IT to spend less time running the network and more time

collaborating and innovating with stakeholders to differentiate and transform the business.

Cisco One Policy provides a context-aware central policy platform across the entire network with systemwide

visibility on who and what are on the network: wired, wireless, or VPN. Cisco One Policy simplifies design and

implementation of policy and security. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) enables this centralized policy platform

for the enterprise.

Cisco One Management provides comprehensive lifecycle management, performance assurance, and compliance

for converged wired and wireless networks. Cisco One Management simplifies network management operations.

Cisco Prime

™

infrastructure provides a central platform for integrated lifecycle management and visibility of

applications and services across wireless, wired, campus, and branch network infrastructure.

Cisco One Network is the convergence of wired and wireless networks into a unified infrastructure with simplicity,

greater intelligence, operational consistency, scale, and open architecture. Cisco is also extending wired

infrastructure concepts, features, resiliency, and scalability to the wireless infrastructure. Cisco One Network is

composed of the following core products:

●

The new Cisco Catalyst

3850 Series Switch with integrated wired and wireless functionality through built-in

Cisco IOS

Software wireless LAN controller (WLC), the new Unified Access Data Plane (UADP)

application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), and enhanced hardware and operating system.

●

The new Cisco IOS Software-based Cisco 5760 WLC as appliance.

Summary of content (10 pages)

PAGE 1
White Paper Cisco Unified Access Technology Overview: Converged Access Introduction Today, less than 1 percent of things in the physical world are network connected. In the near future the growth of the Internet of everything (IoE), which Cisco defines as the convergences of people, process, data, and things, will make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before, creating unprecedented opportunities for countries, businesses, and individuals.
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● The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Wireless Services Module 2 (WiSM2) or Cisco 5508 WLC with a software upgrade. Cisco One Network uniquely delivers ultimate business agility through networkwide intelligence and analytics, scale, faster service rollout, and better change management. Cisco One Network also delivers greater business efficiency with simplicity, greater network consistency, better data analytics, and smarter network designs and operations.
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● Distributed intelligent services with Flexible NetFlow on all ports, hardware capability for TrustSec and MediaNet, and ease of operations using Cisco® Catalyst® Smart Operations. ● Foundation for Cisco Open Network Environment enabled by the new ASIC with programmability and investment protection.
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● FlexConnect: This deployment mode supports wireless access points in a branch or remote office from the corporate office through a wide area network (WAN) link without requiring a controller in each branch office. Access points in this deployment mode can switch client data traffic locally and perform client authentication locally if desired. Traffic can also be sent back to the centrally located wireless controller on a dynamic basis based on the business requirements.
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● Networkwide visibility: Wireless data traffic is now converted to wired traffic at the network edge, so that all the tools and technologies for the wired network can be used for wireless as well. In addition, since wireless data traffic is no longer encapsulated in tunnels, IT administrators can gain visibility everywhere on the network at each hop along the data path.
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● Mobility controller: A mobility controller provides mobility management tasks including interswitch peer group roaming, RRM, and guest access. One mobility controller is required for each mobility subdomain. A Cisco Catalyst 3850 switch can serve as a mobility controller for small to medium-sized deployments. For large deployments, a dedicated WLC such as the 5760 WLC or WiSM2/5508 WLC with a software update is required.
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Figure 3. Comparison of Existing QoS and New QoS Architectures The new QoS architecture also provides enhanced wireless bandwidth management, which uses the Cisco approximate fair drop technology to make sure of bandwidth fairness for non-real time traffic. Primary benefits of granular, multilevel QoS intelligence for wireless are better user experience and fair-share bandwidth management for wireless.
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● Features: Advanced QoS, NetFlow, other services for wireless and wired traffic, Layer 3 visibility, and WAN efficiency. ● Benefits: Management simplicity, good availability due to mobility agent/mobility controller redundancy within the Cisco Catalyst 3850 switch stack, optimized multicast, mobile device onboarding, BYOD and wireless continuity with either WAN outage or switch failure within the stack. These benefits are also shared with environments describe next.
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Figure 5. Illustration of Large Branch Deployment Use Case Main Campus Environment This is typically a large environment with multiple buildings in one campus location. Scalability and the ability to deploy timely services based on business needs become top priorities. Converged access for a main campus environment can be implemented by multiple stacks of Cisco Catalyst 3850 switches to support wired and wireless networking needs with separate 5760/5508/WiSM2 as dedicated WLCs.
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Universities or enterprise campus environments are examples of customers that might consider this deployment model. (See Figure 6.) Figure 6. Illustration of Main Campus Deployment Use Case Summary Cisco Unified Access with “one policy, one management, one network” provides customers with a business platform for the Internet of everything. Cisco One Network redefines the concept “the network is the platform,” making it more agile, consistent, efficient, and simple.