Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Cisco Unified Access Switches Leverages New ASIC for SDN Programmability

Cisco introduced two Unified Access networking products featuring a new Unified Access Data Plane (UADP) ASIC designed to terminate wired and wireless traffic.  The UADP ASIC features a programmable data plane specifically for software-defined networking services.  Cisco said its new ASIC also provides a foundation for converged APIs across wired and wireless.

The new products are:

  • Cisco Catalyst 3850 Unified Access Switch with built-in wireless LAN (WLAN) controller functionality.   The Catalyst 3850 offers 24/48 GE switch ports, 480 Gbps of stacking, Power over Ethernet Plus, Energy Efficient Ethernet, 10G uplinks, and Flexible NetFlow on all ports.   It provides built-in wireless controller capabilities with 40 G wireless throughput, support for 50 access points and 2000 wireless clients per switch or stack, and support for 802.11ac.  Cisco said the programmable features of the ASIC make the Catalyst 3850 the foundation of converged wired/wireless SDN deployments.
  • Cisco 5760 Unified Access WLAN Controller appliance featuring IOS-based software and 60 Gbps performance. It is designed for 802.11a in mid-to-large campus deployments. It can support up to 1000 access points and 12,000 clients per controller. Other features include Flexible NetFlow, Advanced QoS, and downloadable access control lists.

Cisco said its strategy for Unified Access is to bring wired, wireless and virtual private networks (VPNs) into a single, highly secure network infrastructure based on one policy source and one management solution for the entire campus network. The company is releasing onePK,  a developer toolkit that allows applications to receive information from Cisco switches and routers with a programmable data plane.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1132715