Converged Access Drives Cisco Live Cancun

Cisco Live Cancun took place in the beautiful Moon Palace Golf & Spa Resort from November 3rd – 6th 2014.   The event provided a great opportunity for customers and partners to discuss Cisco’s Products and Solution’s vision.   And what better way to showcase these latest innovative solutions than with running the event itself with its very own innovation.  That is exactly what had been done, as Converged Access supported Cisco Live from beginning to end.

Converged Access enables one common set of network capabilities and context-aware intelligence as it brings IOS excellence to wireless by extending wired infrastructure features like, resiliency, granular QoS and scalability to wireless clients.  Converged Access was deployed at Cisco Live Cancun with 5 Catalyst 3850 Switches and 34 APs to support a peak of 450 concurrent users and a total of over 2,000 unique wired-wireless users. Converged Access supported various areas of Cisco Live including the hotel reception, guest services, lounge, analyst and press booths, keynote stage and multiple executive briefing conference rooms.   Even Rob Lloyd’s appearance via TelePresence was located on the very same network as all of the wireless clients roaming throughout Cisco Live.  Converged Access has the capability to support several users and device types without interruption.

Cisco Live Network Architect, Javier Liendo, stated that “the Converged Access solution provided an unparalleled visibility through Flexible NetFlow for the wireless traffic, as well as the critical performance and reliability necessary for a high density deployment. The converged architecture additionally simplified deployment by allowing for a single policy and network for all wired and wireless clients.”  The integrated wired and wireless network helped the Network Administrators bring out the entire network up in less than eight hours. The Converged Access also provided network wide visibility for wired as well as wireless traffic using Flexible NetFlow.

Converged Access Network was fully managed via Prime 2.0 with Cisco ISE driving the Network Policy. Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Cisco ISE provided the single pane of glass and unified policy for both the wired and wireless networks.  The image below shows the associated count for wired and wireless devices connected through Converged Access via Prime.

Showcasing Cisco solutions to customers and partners demand a network that can support thousands of clients, support the latest Cisco solution products and demonstrations, and provide the reliability to make it a successful event.  Cisco Live Cancun demonstrated another high density use case for Converged Access.  During the entire week of Cisco Live, there were absolutely zero issues reported with the network.  Converged Access eases deployment for wired and wireless, enables feature rich applications, and has proven to be a resilient model for high density use cases.