Cisco FlexVPN
FlexVPN is a way to combine multiple frameworks (crypto maps, ezvpn, DMVPN) into single, comprehendible set of CLI and bind it together with something offering more flexibility and means to extend functionality in future.
My Thoughts?
I’m familiar with the plethora of options were available to Cisco users. I’m utilizing a competing vendor for branch office and end-user VPN tunnels – and it’s been working pretty well! ;)
Cisco is simplifying the deployment of VPNs with FlexVPN and IKEv2. Since Flex is based on IKEv2, there a restriction currently in place on what platforms support FlexVPN: ISR G2s (19xx,29xx,39xx platforms), 7200, ASR 1000.
Alexandre Moraes has a great write up on his blog.
Cisco Unified Border Element
Video
by Pashmeen Mistry
The Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) is Cisco’s enterprise-focused session border controller (SBC), providing voice and video connectivity from the enterprise IP network to Service Provider SIP trunks. Using CUBE with SIP trunking, enterprises can lower costs, simplify their voice network and extend rich collaboration services.
My Thoughts?
Those of us in IP telephony known all about the need to have secure border session controllers. With the surge in public SIP trunking more and more organizations will be looking to deploy SIP to the street in place of their legacy PSTN.
AppNav for High Performance and Enterprise-Wide Scalability
Video
by Jim Sandgathe
New Cisco® AppNav virtualization technology provides network-integrated WAN optimization in the data center that allows elastic pooling of resources in a manner that is policy based and on demand, with the best scalability, performance, and resiliency available today. The Cisco AppNav solution is available as part of Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Software Release 5.0.
My Thoughts?
While the Chicago Bears are currently 4-1 I really don’t think they’ll be in the Super Bowl, sorry Jim.
I would have loved to have the time to ask how AppNav and even WAAS differentiates itself from traditional DWDM solutions. Perhaps the other delegates were WAAS savy but I’ll honestly admit I really didn’t understand (still don’t after a few hours of reading) how this technology works “under the hood” and how it’s any different than a traditional WAN accelerator. Unfortunately we didn’t have the time to educate me.
Why a company like Cisco, the biggest technology company in the world, couldn’t get a simple live remote presentation working reliably is beyond me. Sometimes you need to put away all that technology and just pickup a PSTN line.
Unified Communications Survivable Remote Branch
Tech Field Day Video
by Kishnan Ramaswamy
SRST and E-SRST take full advantage of the remote site’s existing network to provide multi-feature redundancy for centralized Cisco call-processing deployments during WAN link failures. SRST and E-SRST work with Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Business Edition 6000. Also, SRST now provides survivability for businesses deploying service provider cloud telephony services on Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution.
My Thoughts?
While I personally work with a competing product I’m excited to see all the vendors providing more and more features in their survivable branch office solutions.