On March 12th, Cisco announced the ISR-AX and how Cisco is changing the game, reducing complexity and making it simpler for enterprises to deliver and manage application delivery to users. Cisco is expanding the role of our Integrated Service Routers (ISRs) to deliver application-centric networks that provide granular visibility, control, and optimization without additional devices or bandwidth upgrades -- Cisco® Application Experience (AX) Router family is now a part of the ISR family of routers! The Cisco ISR-AX Routers directly integrate Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), Application Visibility and Control (AVC), Data/IPBase and Security services into a platform that is simple to order, configure, and deploy for secure, optimized cloud connectivity and branch-office routing. The Cisco ISR G2 and ISR-AX Routers are based on the same hardware and software that you know and love and are deploying today. Today I wanted to go into the technical details of each of the components. Read More »
I have been working for Cisco for over 15 years, much of that time as a Consulting Engineer for Routing and Switching.
I understand strengths and weakness of routing, the value of a good hierarchical design…. But what’s worse than having an end-user having problems with one of his business application and being unable to provide an answer? Yes we have traceroute, ping and other fancy networking tools but nowadays we have to deal with applications and user experience. We have to move forward and take into account the performance of an application rather than just forwarding packets based on static cost metrics. It’s not just about connectivity anymore.
Therefore I’ve moved to the Application Visibility and Control (AVC) group in Engineering. It’s like jumping from standard L3 to advanced L4-L7 kind of routing.
I know what you may be thinking when you read these lines … yet another new acronym. We have the good old routing protocols, why should I care about this new AVC? Read More »
Today, marks an important milestone in the history of routing, as Cisco introduces ISR-AX (Integration Services Router Generation 2 with Application Experience) and redefines the role of the router as the application delivery platform.
Quintiles – a biopharmaceutical in Durham, North Carolina – has experienced, first-hand, the benefits of an application aware router. They have successful rolled out VDI to thousands of users globally with key services of ISR-AX, namely Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS). With this solution, they have been able to onboard new acquisition employees within days instead of months, and dramatically increase productivity.
HDR – an Omaha, Nebraska-based architecture and construction firm – also relies on application services integrated on the router to guarantee application performance. HDR runs several mission-critical engineering applications worldwide, which are latency sensitive and transport over 10 terabyte files. They depend on the Cisco Application and Visibility (AVC) services available on the ISR-AX to provide a high quality of experience and resolve issues in a matter of minutes and minimize downtime. Read More »
With an ever growing mobile and distributed workforce, application developers are being tasked to develop applications that can also be remotely accessed by this global workforce. Application developers, with a very basic understanding of networking, assume the network has no boundaries and applications perform optimally regardless of the mode of access. At the same time, cloud computing is enabling applications to be consolidated into centralized and virtualized data centers, further increasing the distance from where the applications are being accessed. Network architects are also being challenged with current network designs for this application deployment and delivery model. The available bandwidth is being taxed as the ever growing applications portfolio competes for network resources to provide a satisfying user experience across the network without boundaries. This application delivery model also demands capabilities for better visibility and control, WAN optimization, and agility of the network to rapidly deploy and manage enterprise applications.
The Cisco Application Velocity solution addresses all the challenges associated with the delivery and consumption of enterprise applications over the network without boundaries. It is one of the five services in Cisco’s Borderless Network Architecture and is composed of innovative Cisco technologies that help IT professionals meet or exceed business SLAs, maximize user experience, optimize resource utilization, and increase reliability and user expectations.
