Cisco rolled out some natty networking technology under its Cisco Unified Access banner. The system claims to be a unified switch which can simplify network design by converging wired and wireless networks. Software-defined networking (SDN) open interfaces are part of the cunning plan.
Wireless networks have so far been built as overlays to the wired network which means two logical networks have to cope with disparate features and services, and with increased complexity. Now that users want to bring their own devices onto the network it has created a headache for network managers. Cisco claims that its Unified Access allows customers to move away from individual vertical stacks of toward a single architecture for an intelligent network.
The Cisco Unified Access network architecture places the processing of wired and wireless traffic into a single data plane by using an application-specific integrated circuit. This new ASIC terminates wired and wireless traffic and enables services to be applied to both wired and wireless. There are two new Cisco Unified Access networking products featuring the UADP ASIC.
The Catalyst 3850 Unified Access Switch with built-in wireless LAN controller functionality and the 5760 Unified Access WLAN Controller appliance featuring Cisco IOS-based software and 60-Gbps performance.