Two years ago Cisco introduced the Catalyst 9000 series switches as the next generation of campus switches.  Every Catalyst switch family had an equivalent 9K to replace it; the 3800s were replaced with the 9300, the 4500s were replaced with the 9500, and the long standing 6500 chassis switches were replaced with the 9400.  Cisco was consolidating all Catalyst switches into the 9000 series, well all but one.  It seemed, at the time, that the wildly successful Catalyst 2000 series switch was spared from the chopping block as there was no comparable 9K.  Enter the 9200!

As IT consultants in the Bay Area, we see a lot of startups.  Small businesses with bold ideas filled with hard working people focused on achieving a specific goal.  Usually in their infancy, these businesses focus all their time and money on the goal they are trying to achieve and usually don’t have the dedicated staff needed to support enterprise IT solutions.  The employees are extremely sharp and very tech savvy, able to quickly piece together solutions to fit their needs that actually work pretty well.  Ran out of ports on a switch?  Order an inexpensive PoE switch and start daisy chaining them!  More ports = problem solved.  Same goes for wireless, if you have a dead spot, just get another AP.  If you want video in a conference room, get some 3^rd party camera to work with Google Hangouts. 

Cisco Spark Call was able offer customers ready to move their PBX to the cloud a simple, easy, all cloud offer including PSTN connectivity. While it was and continues to be a great option for a number  customers, those shops that were either locked in to carrier PSTN agreements or only wanted to move a portion of their users but didn’t want to compromise with a fractured dial plan have been without a clear path of migration to cloud, until now. With Webex Teams Calling, customers have the capability of moving their entire user base or just a subset of users to a cloud first PBX all while retaining their existing PSTN circuits.

IOS XE supported switches such as the 3850 and 3650 support two modes, Bundle mode and Install mode.   New switches, by default, are shipped with install mode.   If you never paid attention during an IOS XE upgrade on a switch you may have just copy the IOS XE image to flash and set the system boot variable to boot from the new IOS using the command below:

In our previous entries to this series, we’ve deployed ISE, integrated it with Microsoft AD, and configured the ISE server-side certificates.  All of that being completed, we are now ready to configure our Policy Set for 802.1X and test it out.

Hello loyal blog readers. Over the last few weeks I have been busy working on a network assessment for one of our fantastic customers. One of the areas we look at when assessing a customer’s network is how they are protecting/restricting access to the management plane of their network infrastructure.

Have you ever found yourself in a position where throughput between devices, either local or across a WAN, seemed lower than expected? You may start by checking the configuration and logs on the network devices along the path, hoping to identify something out of the ordinary or unusual. Often a smoking gun isn’t immediately identifiable which then requires a coordinated approach to troubleshooting and narrowing down the potential causes. This write-up aims to provide some of the practices and tools I’ve used in similar situations.

Why a Network Infrastructure MSP?

Businesses are always looking for ways to save time and money while advancing their goals. A common way to do that is to outsource business tasks that are not at the core of the business. Making use of a network infrastructure managed service provider (MSP) is an excellent example of hiring out tasks that are not central to a business. There are five primary reasons to hire out the management of your company’s network infrastructure.

Designed for today’s IT teams, Catalyst 9200 switches combine programmable ASIC and software innovations to deliver the industry’s highest performance and functionality plus breakthrough advancements in security, IoT, mobility and cloud to all enterprise customer sites, regardless of size

Cisco VP of Collaboration, Amy Chang, just gave her keynote at Enterprise Connect 2019 and we’re excited for the amazing new features and integrations Cisco has lined up for their collaboration platforms.