What is an Intuitive Network?

It can be easy to get lost in all the superlatives of these recent announcements…they can border on hyperbole.  It is important to remember that much of the recent Intuitive Network, New Era of Networking announcement is purposefully taking the long view.  DO NOT miss the fact that there is a lot of very real technology being announced and you can start playing with most of it immediately.

I love what has been accomplished here and I really excited about what we can do with it now and in the future. We created five whole TechWiseTV episodes to breakdown what you can do right now.  I know that these will help you understand what is happening in a much clearer fashion because we worked with the engineers who have been heads down on this stuff over the last few years.

These were done with a specific order in mind…not required but can be helpful…especially if you get distracted once in awhile and have to come back and forth to get through them all.

If you were to only watch one show about these announcements…I recommend ‘Introduction to Software Defined Access.’

This will set you up well to see how we are able to move towards Intent Based Networking.  In a nutshell, it reminds me of the old maxim: Begin with the End in Mind. For your network, this would be the allure of being able to state your policy requirements in plain english.

You will learn from both Carl Solder and Shawn Wargo.  Veterans of both Cisco and TechWiseTV.  We share the specific network issues that have plagued us all for so many years you may have assumed they would never go away: user mobility, segmentation for both users and devices, insights into all activity, policy consistency and the ability to easily spin up new services.

You will also see how DNA Center has become the easy to use, central console for interaction and control of design, provisioning, policy and assurance.

To be clear, start with: ‘Introduction to Software Defined Access.’

What to watch next?

Watch in or out of order…but just watch.

In the ‘not quite a flow chart’ above, you can see that there are two different paths to take as far as what to watch next.  If the SD-Access talk got you excited, stay with it as we take the same engineers through a deeper look at the technologies that make up the network fabric:

Control Plane based on LISP

Data Plane based on VXLAN

Policy Plane based on TrustSec

Sound interesting?  Then watch ‘A Deeper Look at Software Defined Access’

The other huge topic however would be this new family of switches with the Catalyst 9000. This is the biggest all in one release of a new switch hardware we have ever done.   As great as these are…you don’t have to get them to take advantage of this New Era of Networking.  But I highly recommend it!   Watch “Catalyst 9000 Series: Programmability and Software Defined Access“.   (this is the one where we look closely through the hardware)

Now there are just two shows left to choose from on our journey through the big announcements.

You can get more into the new software available with “Catalyst 9000 Series and Open IOS-XE: The New Era of Programmability.” There is a whole new foundation of software now laid out for this switch family that actually speaks volumes as to how we are making it easier to roll out new versions on the future.  Programmability and access to internal functions are key for automation and your attempts to work this hardware into your existing workflows…you will enjoy learning how much more you can do.

The UADP ASIC has been with us for awhile and the stuff I have learned from Peter Jones and Dave Zacks has had me itching to cover this for awhile.  That time has finally come and it coincided with the release of the UADP 2.0 ASIC that can be found in this new Catalyst series.   The big questions we go after in this one:  do you have any idea how hard these things are to make?  It takes forever…and it costs a ton!  We do get a lot more specific….but make make sure you know just how ground breaking and valuable our investments into programmable silicon have become. Watch “Programmable ASICS: Flexibility at Wire Speed“

Let me know if you get to watch through some or all of these.  What did you like?  What could we have done better?  Do you agree there is real and valuable progress being made?

Let me know in the comments below or send me a tweet: @robbboyd

Robb