New Addition to Cisco SMB Switch Family

We made another big step in completing our full vision of next generation SMB switches. The Cisco Small Business Team is pleased to announce 19 new models in the successful 550X and 350X series switching product line. These new models provide Gigabit or Fast Ethernet with 10-Gigabit uplinks and advanced features to deliver unmatched value for Small and Midsize businesses.

Together with the full 10-Gigabit 550XG and 350XG models already available on the market, we now have a comprehensive portfolio to help customers upgrade to 10 Gigabit and ride the wave of digital economy at an affordable price.

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Segment Routing IPv6 – Interoperability demo is already there!

Who would have bet on a SRv6 interoperability demonstration at SIGCOMM 2017 conference this summer?

Very few of us actually… For those who are not familiar with the SIGCOMM 2017 conference, this is a highly respected conference where key networking innovations and orientations are being discussed every year by leading vendors, major web and service providers, and academic researchers.

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Prevent an Encryption Bottleneck on High-Speed Links

What if you had a car with a powerful, turbo-charged engine that could fly along at 130 mph —until you turned on the air conditioner and watched the max speed drop to 50? Pick up two friends, and it struggles to maintain 30 mph.

This would be depressing for you as a driver, but it does make a good analogy for IT managers trying to leverage Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) for high speed link encryption requirements. In this approach, the routers’ throughput capabilities are restricted to the IPSec encryption engine limits, rather than using an encryption solution that can leverage the maximum aggregate throughput capabilities of the router.

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Operators Can Bridge the Gap for New IoT Revenues

The market for Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks, particularly NB-IoT and CAT-M1, is heating up. More and more Mobile Network Operators are engaged in trials or have already launched commercial services. Manufacturers are adding NB-IoT and CAT-M1 support to their sensors, modules, and devices. To date, Operators have taken a “horses for courses” approach by deploying a range of LPWA network standards for varying IoT application needs. However, many are predicting that the market momentum will swing from the first-to-market unlicensed LPWA standards (e.g., LoRa, Sigfox) to the emerging licensed LPWA standards (e.g., NB-IoT, CAT-M1), which are forecasted to capture over two-thirds of the LPWA market by 2020, according to ABI Research.

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Stay Connected Wherever You Go with MTX Connect

So how many of you go on a business trip to another country only to find upon your return the shock of a lifetime, your phone bill? I know that I have and instead of the promises of lower prices from the big operators, you get hit with roaming surcharges and the like? C’mon you know that you have.

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Network Slicing in Action

One particular aspect of mobile network evolution that deserves attention is the idea of reducing round-trip time (RTT) between consumers of a service and the service source itself. So much so that in 5G, this concept has acquired its own unique 3GPP term: URLLC which is an acronym for Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications. Cisco envisions, as does AT&T among other leading carriers that low latency communications will enable a new class of network services characterized by tight control loops involving Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual reality (VR) and even haptic communications triggered by the immediate network response to a touch event. Cisco is excited about these possibilities and is pursuing an aggressive mobile network evolution strategy designed to deliver an end-to-end system architecture enabling low latency capabilities. But amidst all of this, it is probably worth unpacking the basics so that we can develop an understanding of what is truly needed and how we can help carriers realize the end-game.

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Cisco Accelerates Cloud Native vDRA and Scoops up Two North America Wins

People today use their mobile devices anytime, any place, and anywhere and According to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) today there are still more than 800 mobile operators investing in LTE. There are also close to 600 additional LTE networks that have been commercially launched and another 60 are still being built out. Growth in LTE is being driven by all types of intelligent devices such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, and IoT Devices are some of the big growth drivers. Adoption of Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and Voice-over-Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) is also extremely high and growing. This growth has caused a tremendous amount of new signaling traffic that needs to also be addressed with a new signaling architecture.

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