Cisco Makes Good On Promises: MediaNet, EnergyWise, TrustSec And New Products

Cisco has big plans for IT, and when the company launches initiatives like EnergyWise or TrustSec, the industry listens. But at some point, Cisco has to start delivering on those promises. Cisco has started the next phase of their Borderless Networks initiative, the purpose of which is to make computing seamless regardless of location or platform, with new product and feature announcements for Medianet, Energywise and Trustsec. Supporting the initiative enhancements are new switches and Integrated Services Routers. Love or hate Cisco, the company has a plan, articulates it well and delivers. Any infrastructure vendor that wants to compete with Cisco is going to have to step up.

It's no secret that Cisco is getting into real-time media in a big way from streaming video and video-conferencing to unified communications and VoIP. Part of the difficulty for IT is building and managing the network to support real-time services that ride along with all the other data. One pain point is identifying end devices and setting QoS parameters needed to deliver real-time media end-to-end.

Cisco is expanding Medianet to support the discovery of endpoint devices whether they are VoIP phones, cameras or displays. The discovery mechanism not only identifies the media endpoint, but the media properties, like video or audio resolution, and relates that to bandwidth, delay and jitter requirements. Based on the discovery, Medianet can set QoS parameters through the network, ensuring that the device can receive and display media properly. It's automated management that goes beyond what standards-based discovery mechanisms like the IEEE Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) and Link Layer Discovery Protocol-Media Endpoint Detection (LLDP-MED), which Eric Krapf describes in LLDP-MED: Learning About the Endpoint, currently offer. At present, Medianet only discovers the display and media details from Cisco devices, but the company says it will release an API for third-party vendors to support the discovery capabilities in the other devices.

Of course, many end-users use their desktops and laptops to both generate and receive multi-media, and Medianet doesn't have a view into a computer's display capabilities, but Medianet can also discover the multi-media requirements based on the initial exchange setting up the real-time stream. While this is more dyanamic and as such, less predictable than discovering devices as they come on line, real-time discovery and automated network grooming should ease configuration burdens.

Energywise 2.0 means more product announcements in the next phase of Cisco's power management program.  Energywise 1.0 offered basic, automated power management features such as powering on and off PoE ports, discovering and powering on and off IP phones, and integrated with Verdiem for desktop management. Phase 2, originally planned for the summer of 2009, brings Cisco's newest power management software, Orchestrator, which centralizes power management for a range of Cisco products including policy development and deployment, troubleshooting tools and a reporting engine to track energy usage over time. Cisco is also providing an API so that third parties can integrate with Orchestrator.Supporting these initiatives, as well as enhanced security features of TrustSec, are new products. In the switching line, there are new switch products: the Catalyst 3750-X, 3760-X and 2960-S. In the routing line, the new platforms are the ISR G2 3900E, 887, 887V, 888E, and 1921 routers. The Catalyst 3750-X and 3760-X bring a wealth of new features (the difference between the two model is that the 3760-X is non-stackable). The new switches now feature an Integrated Mobility Services Engine similar to what is offered in Cisco's wireless controllers so that location can be discovered as devices move about the network. Using the same engine as the wireless controllers simplifies the management process. Location information is entered into the switch and provides better asset tracking. The 3750-X and 3760-X also support Medianet on the switch, with extra processing power for media management as well as the first switches to natively support 802.1ae (described in New Protocols Secure Layer 2), aka MACsec, which provides link level encryption, as well as the MACsec Key Agreement (MKA) defined in 802.1X-REV. This is an important move for Cisco since 802.1ae requires hardware support.

More importantly, the 3750-X switches can be stacked nine units high sharing a common data backplane. With the 3750-X,  PoE and PoE+ power can be stacked up to four units high. Rather than using external power supplies, power supplies can be distributed across the stack and extra wattage can be delivered to any port in the stack regardless of the local power supply capacity. Power stacking makes cabling simpler because there is less need to manage individual switch power budgets. In addition, you get automatic power supply fail-over across the power stack. Should one power supply fail, the power budget can be picked up from the remaining switches. Obviously, you will need to play your power budget across the stack to take advantage of the additional resiliency. You could, in practicality, power an entire 3750-X stack with two 1100 watt power supplies in one switch, but Cisco recommends against doing so because of the heat build-up and the loss of resiliency across the stack.

In a move to beat HP at price, the new Catalyst 2960-S switches are stackable switches up to nine units high and offer a 20Gbps back plane. Power is not stacked. The new switches come with an Extended Limited Lifetime warranty which has a next-business-day replacement and 90 days of TAC support. HP Procurve limited lifetime warranty is still better with unlimited technical email support and is applied across more of the Procurve's switch line.

Finally, the new ISR 3900 E products extend the product line to new form factors and IOS-XE Release 2.6, which has adds high-availability in the kernel, as well as additional processing capabilities for muti-media. In addition, the 3900 support PoE and offers three times the network bandwidth over previous ISR models, according to the company.

Slowly but surely, Cisco is delivering on its big initiatives. The new product offerings are interesting, but we don't expect to see quick uptake. Replacing access switches is expensive simply due to the number of switches that have to be replaced, and frankly, the access layer doesn't change much. In addition, taking advantage of the new features like power management and Medianet require buying into the Cisco ecosystem--something a lot of enterprises are loathe to do due to fears of vendor lock-in. We'd like to see Cisco take the protocols and APIs they are developing to standards bodies first rather than developing proprietary methods and then, when or if they decide to do so, taking them to standards works, so that the industry can settle on a set of agreed upon standards. Granted, it might slow down product development, but is also opens the market to a wider audience.