The Catalyst 6500 Speaks on Unified Access

Hey everyone, the latest component of Cisco Unified Access was announced at Cisco Live Londonat the tail-end of January. The architecture brings policy, management and network together to tackle mobility, BYOD and collaboration needs in the enterprise for today and tomorrow. I want to give you all a quick summary of how I play a pivotal role in this architecture.  I’ve also got a new whitepaper to share.

The influx of mobile devices, both corporate and personally owned, into the corporate campus network has forced IT departments to re-examine their network infrastructure. Many networks weren’t built to handle the explosion in network workload and management complexity resulting from all these mobile devices. Cisco Unified Access squarely addresses these issues through . This is all built on a strong Catalyst 6500 foundation. The picture below shows a high level view of the architecture. As you can see, as the network core switch, I am the backbone connecting the various components of the solution.

With the influx of mobile devices, there is an increase in activity on the network. UA solution enables seamless wired and wireless experience to the end user and using Supervisor Engine 2T I provide the resiliency to sustain the seamless experience. I am capable of supporting up to 4 terabits per second of data forwarding in a virtual switching system (VSS) configuration while maintaining 99.999 percent uptime (5 nines availability). My VS4O technology (Quad-Supervisor SSO) will keep your backbone up and running even with three Supervisor failures. This is necessary to ensure business continuity in spite of heavy BYOD and collaboration demands. Wireless service module (WISM-2) can be used to scale the seamless experience to large number of users. You can even integrate remote access to Cisco Unified Access using the ASA service module. It supports Cisco AnyConnect and IPsec VPN sessions to unify remote worker access in the same network.

The single access policy aspect of Cisco Unified Access is built on TrustSec/SGA technology. The policy administration requires the entire network to understand the TrustSec/SGA technology (context aware tagging (SGT), tag transport and governance using SGACLs) and I have been supporting this technology for quite some time with full integration with Cisco ISE.  Hence, it becomes easier to implement single access policy across the network.

Unified wired and wireless management is supported by NAM-3 service module which can look inside both wireless and wired traffic and can send information to Cisco Prime. All of these services are done in hardware. So you can be sure to get high performance even in peak conditions. I have full integration with Cisco Prime and furthermore my Smart Install feature simplifies access switch management.

Read the details of all these in Cisco Catalyst 6500-E Series Switch as the Backbone of a Unified Access Campus Architecture