Experience the Future with Cisco and the Internet of Things

It’s the year 1950, and I’m asking you what you imagine technology would be in 70 years; what would you say? My guess is you proceed to list out some science-fiction-like answers such as the existence of space exploration programs, maybe artificial intelligent robots, or perhaps the invention of some all-knowing neural network that enlightens humankind through accessible information. While such ideas may have been on the cusp of science-fiction at the time, it’s incredible to realize that we are in the generation where many of these innovations not only exist but are customer-ready today!

Oh, and by the way, remember that “all-knowing neural network” you had mentioned? This is what we presently refer to as the internet and, of course, is what you are using to access this blog at this very moment. Despite how much of a technological breakthrough the internet was during its invention in 1983, it has become such an everyday tool, and it just doesn’t spark the same excitement as it once did.

Let me be that unwarranted catalyst and re-ignite that internet excitement by introducing a new generation of internet-powered technology. A generation of technology that can harness the limitless knowledge of the internet and engrain it into inanimate objects connecting us in a way never thought possible. I am referring to the Internet-of-Things (IoT), a technological innovation spearheaded by Cisco and its state-of-the-art Application Hosting on the Catalyst Access Points (AP) platform.

What is the Internet of Things?

The Internet-of-Things is a concept where a wireless network is leveraged for communication with smart devices to accomplish tasks in a more simplified, efficient, and often automated manner. In fact, many IoT products probably have already found their way into your home already. These products come in all shapes and sizes, but some examples could be a voice-activated speaker such as an Amazon Alexa, a mobile application-controlled thermostat such as a Nest Thermostat, a motion-activated doorbell camera such as the August Doorbell Cam, or more excitingly, a voice triggered music playing salt dispenser such as the SMALT!

Other than the salt-dispenser (which actually exists), these are all products that, due to their simplicity and usefulness, have become seamlessly integrated into many of our lives.

Figure 1: Modern Internet-of-Things products leveraging a wireless network.

So, if IoT already exists, what is Cisco’s role in this field?

Think about how IoT products work, and you’ll realize it requires a robust wireless network to connect the IoT endpoints to the information it needs to operate. While a single wireless router can easily accomplish this for a typical household size deployment, the challenge is how we can execute this at an enterprise level, where hundreds to thousands of IoT devices must work together to form a single solution. Without a proper management infrastructure to provide visibility, serviceability, and security, IoT at scale can be a complete nightmare to deploy and manage.

Cisco’s Internet of Things Solution

Application Hosting on the Catalyst Access Points and Cisco’s intent-based networking platform, Cisco DNA Center is the solution that solves this problem. This integration allows users to leverage Cisco DNA Center to deploy custom IoT applications directly onto docker containers within Cisco’s Catalyst Wi-Fi 6 access points. This integration with Cisco DNA Center solves the problem of visibility and serviceability at scale by taking on the applications’ life cycle manager’s role and allowing users to take advantage of their existing Cisco wireless infrastructure for IoT communication.

During Day 0, a user simply uploads the IoT application onto Cisco DNA Center, and from there, can choose what locations to deploy the application. From Day 1, applications throughout an entire network can now be easily monitored and maintained through a GUI and even upgraded by simply uploading then deploying a newer version of the IoT application. With this integration with Cisco DNA Center, IoT application management has never been easier!

Figure 2: Cisco DNA Center’s simplistic IoT application deployment workflow.

 

After deploying the IoT application onto the access points, the application then begins communication with its application server, leveraging each access point as an IoT gateway to communicate with surrounding IoT devices. This communication with surrounding IoT devices happens through an IoT USB connector inserted into the Cisco Catalyst access point, which can broadcast anything from Zigbee to BLE to vendor-specific proprietary RF protocols, providing true versatility to IoT solutions possible.

Figure 3: Application Hosting on the Catalyst Access Points IoT Topology.

What about the IoT Application itself?

This is where things get exciting! Cisco is now open for partnerships with third-party IoT development companies, providing them with the opportunity to integrate their IoT solutions with Catalyst access points. While the development of IoT applications may not be a simple feat, Cisco has streamlined the process by creating an entire website, DevNet, with the sole purpose of supporting third-party application development. With DevNet, you now have an intuitive step-by-step guide that will teach you how to go from writing a basic “Hello World” application to creating an innovative end-to-end IoT solution capable of solving real-world problems!

The marketplace of IoT Technology

Once the application has been developed, as a partner, you can then join the Solution Partner Program, which allows you to post your IoT solution directly onto DevNet. Essentially, Cisco aims to create a whole marketplace of ready-for-deployment IoT solutions, providing customers with a one-stop-shop to browse, discover, then deploy IoT solutions that best fit their niche business needs.

Figure 4: Cisco Solution Partner Program.

Together, Application Hosting, Cisco DNA Center, and DevNet form a truly seamless IoT experience that allows partners to materialize, and customers deploy any IoT envisioned solution through Cisco’s powerful yet simplistic wireless infrastructure. And that is something that anyone could have predicted!

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Optics: Fundamental to Build the Internet for the Future

The internet. Who knew what an impact it would have on our world? Two decades ago, the phrase “being connected” in the way we think of it today barely existed. Now, not only are our computers connected to the internet, but new inhabitants including phones, clothes, cars, homes – the list goes on – are connected. And more is coming, faster. In fact, in 2022, more internet traffic will be created than in the entire 30+ years since the internet started. [Source – Cisco VNI report]

At Cisco, when we think about those numbers, we think about what they mean to our customers and how we can help them navigate the internet of the future. The higher speeds required of the new internet won’t be achievable if the optics connecting the routers and switches can’t keep pace with the silicon that drives them. Therefore, as internet traffic and speeds continue to increase, optics has a critical role in driving architectural transitions.

Today, there are two distinct worlds where optics plays a role:

◉ Inside the data center, where fiber is plentiful and distances are short (<10km). Every router or switch port has its own dedicated fiber. If a new switch or router is added, additional fiber is added to terminate the new ports. We use pluggable “direct detect” technology for this.

◉ Outside the data center, where fiber is scarce and distances are long (>80km). Challenges in transmitting high bit-rate signals over long distances require Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) coherent transmission technology.
There are trends, both inside and outside the data center, that are taking place.

Trends Inside the Data Center

The growth in within data center traffic accelerates the need for next-generation networking equipment to support higher port densities and faster bit rates. This in turn drives the requirements for large scale deployment of high-speed optics to connect the various layers of the networking equipment. As router/switch port speeds have increased, the cost/bit has steadily decreased from advances in silicon (ASICs). However, while the cost/bit for pluggable optics has also decreased, it has not come down quite as fast as the router/switch port cost.

The result is that as the bit rate increases, pluggable optics represent a larger fraction of the total hardware cost. For example, at 10G, optics represented about 10% of the total hardware cost of a data center network. As we progress to 400G and beyond, that equation flips, and optics will represent more than half of the total hardware cost. In order to break this imbalance between optics cost curves and silicon cost curves, Cisco is investing in technologies like silicon photonics, via the Luxtera and Lightwire acquisitions.

Trends Outside the Data Center – in the DCI, Metro, Long Haul and Subsea Distances

The primary challenges for cloud and service providers in Data Center Interconnect (DCI), Metro, Long Haul and Subsea networks are to:

◉ Increase the capacity on the “existing” fiber infrastructure

◉ Drive down the cost per bit

◉ Automate to lower opex and eliminate human error

The key trend that we see in this segment is a migration from chassis-based solutions to pluggables.

Functions that were traditionally delivered in separate chassis-based transponder solutions will now be available in a pluggable form factor. This has potentially significant benefits for network operators in terms of operational simplicity. The key tipping point for this transition is that the pluggable coherent optics impose no density penalty for the router/switches. Over time, with continued improvements in silicon and optics, we have no reason to believe this won’t extend to cover a wider range of applications.

Our customers increasingly want to consume technology in different ways – some want to consume fully integrated systems (for coherent applications in metro/long haul as an example). As this technology becomes available in pluggable form with things like 400G ZR/ZR+, customers will consider architectural shifts relying on pluggables. These transitions are on the horizon, and Cisco is investing to make sure we have the right technologies to support our diverse customer needs – both for those who continue to deploy chassis-based solutions, as well as those who migrate to pluggables to collapse layers and reduce operations complexity.

And, finally, we want to increase our relevance for customers purchasing pluggables today for short reach applications – even for non-Cisco hosts.  We are confident that we bring unique value to our customers who want to procure optics and can provide them with confidence that Cisco optics will work in any third-party host.

With the ownership of silicon and optics, Cisco is poised like no other in the industry to offer our customers solutions in the form they want to consume – whether that means discrete components or fully integrated solutions – for the new internet.

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Time to Get Serious About Edge Computing

If a heart monitor can’t keep a consistent connection to the nurses’ station, is the patient stable or in distress? If a WAN link to a retail chain store goes down, can the point of sale still process charge cards?  If gas wellheads are leaking methane and the LTE connection is unavailable, how much pollution goes untracked? These critical applications are candidates for edge processing. As organizations design new applications incorporating remote devices that cumulatively feed time-critical data to analytics back in the data center or cloud, it becomes necessary to push some of the processing to the edge to decrease network loads while increasing responsiveness. While it is possible to use public clouds to provide processing power for analyzing edge data, there is a real need to treat edge device connectivity and processing differently to minimize time to value for digital transformation projects.

Edge Computing Workloads Are Uniquely Demanding

There are three attributes in particular that need careful consideration when networking edge applications.

Very High Bandwidth

Video surveillance and facial recognition are probably the most visible of edge implementations. HD cameras operate at the edge and generate copious volumes of data, most of which is not useful. A local process on the camera can trigger the transmission of a notable segment (movement, lights) without feeding the entire stream back to the data center. But add facial recognition and the processing complexity increases exponentially, requiring much faster and more frequent communication with the facial analytics at the cloud or data center. For example, with no local processing at the edge, a facial recognition camera at a branch office would need access to costly bandwidth to communicate with the analytic applications in the cloud. Pushing recognition processing to the edge devices, or their access points, instead of streaming all the data to the cloud for processing decreased the need for high bandwidth while increasing response times.

Latency and Jitter

Sophisticated mobile experience apps will grow in importance on devices operating at the edge. Apps for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) require high bandwidth and very low (sub-10 millisecond) latency. VoIP and telepresence also need superior Quality of Service (QoS) to provide the right experience. Expecting satisfactory levels of service from cloud-based applications over the internet is wishful thinking. While some of these applications run smoothly in campus environments, it’s cost prohibitive in most branch and distributed retail organizations using traditional WAN links. Edge processing can provide the necessary levels of service for AR and VR applications.

High Availability and Reliability

Many use cases for IoT edge computing will be in the industrial sector with devices such as temperature/humidity/chemical sensors operating in harsh environments, making it difficult to maintain reliable cloud connectivity. Far out-on-the-edge, devices such as gas field pressure sensors may not need real-time connections, but reliable burst communications to warn of potential failures. Conversely, patient monitors in hospitals and field clinics need consistent connectivity to ensure alerts are received when patients experience distress. Retail stores need high availability and low latency for Point of Sale payment processing and to cache rich media content for better customer experiences.

Building Hybrid Edge Solutions for Business Transformation

Cisco helps organizations create hybrid edge-cloud or edge-data center systems to move processing closer to where the work is being done—indoor and outdoor venues, branch offices and retail stores, factory floor and far in the field. For devices that focus on collecting data, the closest network connection—wired or wireless—can provide additional compute resources for many tasks such as filtering for significant events and statistical inferencing using Machine Learning (ML). Organizations with many branches or distributed store fronts designed for people interactions, can take advantage of edge processing to avoid depending on connectivity to corporate data centers for every customer transaction.

An example of an edge computing implementation is one for a national quick serve restaurant chain that wanted to streamline the necessary IT components at each store to save space while adding bandwidth for employee and guest Wi-Fi access, enable POS credit card transactions even when an external network connection is down, and connect with the restaurant’s mobile app to route orders to the nearest pickup location. Having all the locally-generated traffic traverse a WAN or flow through the internet back to the corporate data center is unnecessary, especially when faster response times enable individual stores to run more efficiently, thus improving customer satisfaction. In this particular case, most of the mission-critical apps run on a compact in-store Cisco UCS E-series with an ISR4000 router, freeing up expensive real estate for the core business—preparing food and serving customers—and improving in-store application experience. The Cisco components also provide local edge processing for an in-store kiosk touch screen menu interface to speed order management and tracking.

The Cisco Aironet Access Point (AP) platform adds another dimension to edge processing with distributed wireless sensors. APs, like the Cisco 3800, can run applications at the edge. The capability enables IT to design custom apps that process data from edge devices locally and send results to cloud services for further analysis. For example, an edge application that monitors the passing of railway cars and track conditions. Over a rail route, sensors at each milepost collect data on train passages, rail conditions, temperature, traffic loads, and real-time video. Each edge sensor attaches to an AP that aggregates, filters, and transmits the results to the central control room. The self-healing network minimizes service calls along the tracks while maintaining security of railroad assets via sensing and video feeds.

Bring IT to the Edge

There are thousands of ways to transform business operations with IoT and edge applications. Pushing an appropriate balance of compute power to the edge of the cloud or enterprise network to work more closely with distributed applications improves performance, reduces data communication costs, and increases the responsiveness of the entire network. Building on a foundation of an intent-based network with intelligent access points and IOS-XE smart routers and Access Points, you can link together edge sensors, devices, and applications to provide a secure foundation for digital transformation. Let us hear about your “edgy” network challenges.

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Security Threats – The New Reality for Utilities

Security experts agree: Cyberattacks are the new reality for utility companies.

A major power outage hits the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Las Vegas. For nearly two hours, participants were reminded that without electricity, the digital economy would not survive very well. In 2016, 3.85 trillion kilowatthours (kWh) [EIA] was consumed in the U.S., enabling consumers, transportations, commercial and industrials business to perform their daily activities.  No doubt that over the world, national and regional power grids are critical infrastructures requiring adequate protections such as the North-American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) plan.

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