CTS 184: Cisco @ Mobility Field Day 4

Cisco decided to join the party and also present something at Mobility Field Day 4 this year. They talked about their new wireless Catalyst line of product, IoT and OpenRoaming. If you want to catch back with the presentations and watch them, here are the links you need: * Cisco Catalyst Access Expansion to Wireless: https://vimeo.com/353900415* Cisco IoT with Next-Gen Wireless Stack: https://vimeo.com/353901671* Cisco OpenRoaming to Better Bridge Between Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks: https://vimeo.com/353902434 In this episode, we give our point of views on the different topics Cisco presented on. For more insights from the other delegates, please read the following articles: * The Network is Code: Cisco at MFD 4 by Lee Badman: https://wirednot.wordpress.com/2019/08/21/the-network-is-code-cisco-at-mfd4/* Decoupling the WLAN by Scott Lester: https://blog.theitrebel.com/2019/08/21/decoupling-the-wlan/* A New Way to Onboard by Scott Lester: https://blog.theitrebel.com/2019/08/15/a-new-way-to-onboard/ The Wireless Catalyst Offering Cisco has decided to build a new line of wireless products based on their IOS-XE code instead of updating their legacy AireOS platform. We first heard about it late last year. Since then, we have seen a new series of WLC and Access Points being announced by Cisco. At Mobility Field Day, they talked about all the wireless Catalyst product they have released yet. On the AP side, they talked about the Wi-Fi 6 access points: * Catalyst 9115* Catalyst 9117* Catalyst 9120 On the WLC side, they talked about the following options: * Catalyst 9800-80* Catalyst 9800-40* Catalyst 9800-L (The new member of the family)* Catalyst 9800-CL The Catalyst 9800-L has been announced at the beginning of August 2019. It is a smaller controller aim to target environment with a lower number of Access Points. It comes in 2 different form factors (one with copper interface for the uplink interface, and the other one comes with fiber modules for the uplink interface). For smaller sites, a customer can now have the option to install a controller on a VM or on a Cloud (Catalyst 9800-CL) or install an appliance on site if they want to (Catalyst 9800-L). I believe the cloud option is very attractive for smaller sites. However, it is nice to be able to offer the onsite solution when customers have special requirements. The IOS-XE platform is very flexible and future proof. Openconfig models can be found on all the Catalyst equipment. The latest version of the OS is 16.12 and Cisco told us that it will be the next MD release. This new version (16.12) is ready for WPA3, it supports both 802.11ac and 802.11ax APs, it talks to DNA Center (of course), ISE, Prime and CMX. On the AireOS side of things, version 8.10 will be the next MD release. IoT is making it to the enterprise space I personally really enjoyed the IoT discussion this year at Mobility Field Day. I wasn’t expecting much of it and was happy to see what the vendors are doing to face our upcoming challenges. IoT devices are being installed in the enterprise space.