Taking Your WLAN from Best-Effort to Mission-Critical on TechWiseTV
As. Our. Dependence, on wireless access continues, to grow quite, a few things must change the. Wireless is important, to our mission we all expect it to work no matter where we are what we do or how we move and for the most part it does, however. Most, of us understand that Wireless, has always been designed as best-effort mission-critical. Expectations. That rely on best effort designs force, the need for better instrumentation. I mean, something is always going wrong somewhere. In the wireless network that could be small some part of the onboarding, process gets a hiccup or two and a user, struggles, for a moment to get onto the network they may not even notice or, they may just a little, delayed for a moment as they manually attempt, to reconnect, and then really, Kate but, it could also be something large we. Know why these things happen, but we have never had specific, insight, into why that particular. Thing happened, so we can prevent it from happening again. It. Is impossible to accurately recreate. A past event from an RF environment, that is never, static I mean, it would be ideal if we could if we could somehow watch, the device from the very first point at attempts to connect if, we could see the packets, being exchanged, what happened with the protocol handshakes, what is the RF environment, like at that moment perhaps. Other access points have additional, viewpoints I mean, why can't we do that kind, of analysis well. As of today we, can Cisco. Intelligent capture, provides real-time, wireless. Network, performance information, with forensic, data from before Dearing and even after, the event but, before we get to the details on how it works let's pull back and understand where this fits within, Cisco's, intent-based networking. CDNA. Center remains front, and center for how everything comes together under four big pillars simple. Design secure. Policy, automated. Provisioning and, what, we are continuing, with today, proactive. Assurance. Assurance. Has had a lot of fascinating, development, we've never had more, integrated. Network tools they're providing, us the confidence, that everything is operating as intended. Those confidence, is just another word for assurance. Well. The surance for Wireless has never been more important and there were two specific, shows we did prior to this one that make for some good context, here Wireless, assurance, in depth which, kicked off the specifics, of this new set of capabilities much, improve visibility to, the wireless, network, so, if with that we can drill down to from, the network health we can go right into the client health itself right so we here, we can look at this particular building, while we're getting a lot of clients. I mean insurance is able to do this across the all, the different sites and be able to correlate them and give us an idea of what, are the problem devices. We. Even spent an entire episode on the new flagship. Access point the 4,800, it's both the micro macro dual, five and everything and the location, and the packet sniffing and the monitoring, everything, we possibly could, put in like the kitchen sink this is the last dot 11 AC ap before, we go to dot 11 ax or something right so, we wanted to make sure this ap was the last one you ever need today. We move from visibility, to insights, with, Cisco's, intelligent. Capture, all. Right well thank you so much for joining us I'm excited, to get into these details as. We were talking earlier you mentioned and. We kind of arrived at this notion of there being kind of three categories to, start grouping, all this new stuff into so we could walk away with with, something simple and the first thing we came up with here just correct me if I'm wrong automated. Anomaly. Driven, forensics. What. Do we mean by that, oh absolutely. Rob. This is actually the best part of, intelligent. Capture where, we, are acknowledging the state of a client at, all times and it's pervasive, across the network so any client at, any point in time is getting monitored, and we are, tracking close to to 40-plus different anomalies, or events a client can possibly go through from. An onboarding, and roaming perspective, and as and when that failure is happening, the, access point has the intelligence to. Capture, packets, and forensics, both before on, and. After, the failure and that really provides the power to. The network user to go and do proactive, troubleshooting, on DNS. Enter assurance, so, I know so obviously when we talk about packet, capture I think of key cap and it's a tool that we would use a lot but I think the challenge in a wireless is always that if you were trying to chase down an event that happened in the past.
You, Could kind of do a you. Kind of do a recreation, of it but the RF environment never be exactly the same so, you're never gonna be able to determine exactly what happened and you may not. Be able to trace down assuming, you spend all that time to do it anyway you're saying that this is an automated, way to do. The full packet capture and, is that just from the one access point that, is seeing its Tribble as strongly or is it multiple access points how does that work oh absolutely, Sid there are there are several assets at play here the first is this. Is all automated, so we don't require any user intervention to. Go and remotely, create, a scenario, or replicate, a scenario, and capture. Those packets as and. When there is fail it happening to any client anywhere, in the network the, system, the access point has the intelligence built-in to, acknowledge, that failure and capture. Those forensics, the. Second thing that we are doing here is we are stitching these packets, as and when the client is moving across the network so. From one access point to the other access point from one building to another building as and. When they're these transient. Failures happening to the client which, are very hard to replicate if, you want to do it later yeah, we are doing that and we are stitching that and providing. Your full picture on DNA Center assurance, that's amazing because first of all I think that's a ton of data and so, when you say stitching it together this is part of the DNA Center tie-in then really because you need some type of analysis, to then say okay, of course we're matching up with timestamps and everything else but if we're seeing this you. Know multiple views, to the kill so to speak what, happened here's, how everybody saw it as it moved over time and in presenting that and some type of consolidated, manner so you can go well here's where the problem happened, or here's that could, be probably two three four things that had a cascading, effect you're saying all that becomes visible now absolutely, that's the power of the analytics platform, on the DNA Center where all these different, sources of truth, are coming together I can, say this has never been done before in any fashion I mean cuz this is really a system, oriented, type of thing yes yeah, you need an intelligence, on the access point that's that's where the fun starts so, intelligent. Capture, agent that sits on the access point is providing. That intelligence. To the, DNA center assurance, as. And when their feel is happening it's providing, those forensics, and when, DNA Center analytics from gets all those forensics, from different. Access points for the same client it, bent stitches it all together to. Provide a meaningful information to the end user when, it wants to proactively, follow, a client, or troubleshoot. A VIP, client, wow so network engineer comes in all that's waiting for them it's all packaged together they don't have to go out and do anything you're not walking around with a packet sniffer you're, not doing any of that stuff it's already ready for you to do your analysis, because half the analysis has already been done it's not absolutely, and and you know it better than anybody they spend about forty five percent of their time just doing this you know there are a lot of studies that have been done in the market, that most of the network users just, spend a ton, of time collecting. Data and replicating, issues all that. Is ready to bed with intelligent capture let me ask you about this second item here we talk about real-time, RF. Analysis, and telemetry. Real-time. I think is a very important term here yes, oh absolutely, so, the, the way we are able to do this is we, now have a direct elementary, path between. The access point and the NS Center assurance, okay so think of like a direct transport, channel, which, is bi-directional between. DNS Center assurance, where, the network user sits and the network, infrastructure, which is my access point so, at any time you, need real-time RF. Perspective, which includes all your client. Experience matrix like our. Society. I. Find sites like channel, utilization. Retransmit. Rates all that. Is going to be available on a real-time basis, through, this direct telemetry, channel that we have between, the access point and the, DNS Center assurance and so that's really a secondary, category because before we talk about storing. Failure, information, with a full capture analysis, and the packet, capture now, we're talking about the ability to look with spectrum, analysis, now and be able to see that kind of a full color picture, of what's happening at any given moment in time and all that data and then this this last category where we threw some other stuff in here that foundation app performance analytics, what, are we including in that oh absolutely.
This Is absolutely, you need to Cisco you know what we are doing here is we are leveraging. The power of access, point 4,800, and the, third radio that it brings along and really, capturing the full packets, with data payloads, and once, the dns enter assurance gets that information. It's able to translate, that into application. Performance matrix like packet. Loss latency. And jitter and really, the use case that they're going after here. Is providing. Our network, users a perspective. On how the Wi-Fi, network is doing from, an application experience perspective, because, if you ask all the net for users when, there is a poor application experience use case the, problems, are essentially at two points either it said the Wi-Fi network or it's, with the application, server with. Intelligent, capture we're solving one side of the problem if the problem is not with the Wi-Fi network in all likelihood it's with the application, server yeah absolutely makes sense okay so you mentioned I want to ask a little bit about use cases before we run out of time so, just to bring up a couple you mentioned, this one kind of VIP client. Troubleshooting. So this is a VIP client could be a CEO or someone. You've defined as important, either for that moment or maybe all the time we. Can actually see some more unique things with, people we've defined and make sure their experience, is always good oh yeah absolutely so, think about you following, a client, I mean you were a network user you're setting 2,000 miles away you. Have a critical site where your CX or said or any, other critical, client. Or mission-critical clients, that you have you. Can actually pre. Program, and pre schedule, a lot. Of things on DNS enter assurance, to follow that client, you, you follow the client onboarding state, machine or that client on a real-time basis, so, as and when there is any failure happening, to that client you. Actually. Get those forensics. On the fly from the network infrastructure, on DNS enter assurance, and the, beauty of DNS entered assurances, because. We are getting these multiple, sources of truth you're getting these packet captures, they're, getting these real-time RF matrix, we are also getting real-time client location, yeah available, to provide a full picture on the. On the VIP client, in terms of whether they choose with client onboarding or, is, the issue with the poor RF network on. The DNS Center assurance, so it really sounds like we could tweak the design of the network and find issues, so much faster even though you do a site survey and you put your network up as best you can the actual operation, of it doesn't, have to be as best-effort and such as it may have been in the past you really can't tweak the heck out of it because you've got that increased visibility I think, you mentioned this one before as well but also had issue correlation, with automated. PK oh yeah, this is essentially where you're tying in all the different pcaps that come about, so the different eyewitnesses on an individual issue and being able to stitch those together is that the oh yes absolutely so you know that on DNA Center assurance, we have close to 65, to 70 plus wireless. Issues or insights that you're generating right now for. The network user to truly believe in those issues or truly take actions, on those issues they. Need enough forensics, so, with intelligent, capture, the power that you're bringing in is as and, when they're these issues or failures that are being, presented on DNA Center assurance, we, are also correlating. And providing. These packet, capture forensics, on those, issues and now network. User knows what, the problem was but, more importantly, it also now knows why. That problem happened and that, really, provides. Enough. Power, to the network user to go and troubleshoot, those issues this is really a lot more data based decision making now really when it comes to Wireless whereas before we're kind of shooting in the dark and kind, of things kind of work and they kind of work okay we're not exactly sure why things slowed down all, that mystery goes away we've got the data to support why we're doing what we're doing or why we didn't do something or whose fault it really was that's, good information I have yes you could run a business like that oh absolutely yeah, and and and I, think you touched upon this point that Wi-Fi is so, transient, in nature as, a, network rate it's always best, effort, and if you don't have a.
Deep. Forensic. Model, like intelligent, capture there. Are a lot of times when, you're gonna miss out on a lot of failures that are happening on client I mean think about it in 30 seconds, you, as a client can, move across five. Different access, points on a single floor and. If I'm not having a real-time. Analytics. Like, intelligent, capture I would, miss out on a lot of failures that might happen to you from a client. Onboarding and, connectivity perspective. And intelligent. Capture is not going to keep us honest and provide. Those deeper forensics, and perspective, that DNA Center assurance can leverage for. Truly providing, those actionable, in silence I say it personally if you don't track me as a VIP I I'm, gonna be after you thank you so much I'm gonna go check in with min say now and see what this really looks like all right I'm ready to go how are you good morning Rob good to see you so. The idea is that there's. A lot of promises or maybe you know what, be done yeah, what. Can you show us about, how this actually works, you guys been working hard at this absolutely yeah, let's, just saw let's have some fun here okay so we start from the DNA I showed on the screen so, here, I'm looking at the client, screen and then, there's a couple clients joined. Probably. For last couple days and then, let's say that there is a one client who reporter problems. So. Let. Me click the this client, who reports problem, like a last, night and, then, see, what's showing from the DNA assurance so, here what I can see is there are two charts. Like graph. Is going on and then. Top, line is. Showing their health score which is essentially, based on their RSSI. It's a signal strength but, on the other hand I'm seeing some different, color pattern, on the bottom part there's, some yellow I mean there's some red and green is going on and what. I mean by oldest year red and green, these, are the actually part of interred in the capture that, capturing. All of my, previous onboarding. Record and history oh well. So for the one client this, is the viewpoint from multiple, access, points correct oh yes. Yes, wherever, I'm going whatever, moving away moving to a second-floor assault, floor this, data is a keep stored and keep analyzed for, example I had a one failure condition, at 9:35. This morning saying, this is a because of their B authentication. Failure yeah, I think this guy might have some problem on the, it's, a roaming condition, so, if I click here then. Show, me that the, specific, sequence and, impact. Of the, onboarding, like likewise, I got the authenticated, due to EAP ID timeout right, now, this could this could be happening in the client could it automatically reconnect and, I may not really notice, that it happened necessarily, but you get to see that hey this is an issue we shouldn't around why this repeated, happens, is that it will eventually result, in some kind of user issue yeah yeah so now. I know, that what is a reasonable, failure, and once I, identify. The reasonable, failure and it could deep because, this is obviously. I need to find out that if this one is this problem, I the timeout, is caused by my clients, or my networks. Or my AP or DSP server that, part is the real fun part of the, troubleshooting, we need to assign blame that's. True. So, here's, the VIP, troubleshooting. Screen from, the internet to capture that, you see that there's some scrolling going on every, time user change, their status my. Event viewer get, updated and this, is out of view over the last 24 hours I, can more clearly see that how, often that I had that this connection, Wow because I see also well, you have the ability to get your packet, capture if you want to do that but this is a real-time view including, location, exactly so, we will have a location, the. For, one information this system, is a still on, the development, there's an engineering building build. We will release the final product in next couple months this yeah so uh we. Will have a more. Beautiful diagram, over here on the real-time tracking and, here's. A more interesting, stat, going on once, I identify my, book my blue dot I need, to know that what is their actual, signal, level over, time in deal time do you mean location, map. Blue. That is a knowledge about my location and look, at this, haraysa information. Look at this granularity. Every. 30 seconds it, can update it and it stood and I, can get my signal. To noise ratio, and, IR SSI so I can clearly see that my RSSI, and SNR which is my signal, level is a stable, this. Is very good and I don't wanna see yeah kind of level of consistency mmm-hmm. And then I can go down to the next level of granularity which. Is a data rate what, is my speed if, I look at here Oh speed. For last night, wasn't, really great speed. About 12 max certain Meg it's, not it's, not really I mean the expected.
Performance Maybe this is a reason, I don't know what happened, on that I, mean on this sky for the last night but, obviously. Is since 9:00 a.m. then. He speeds recovered, right so now I don't see any errors, over here everything is green and and. Because. Of that I'm seeing the more packet, since 9:00 a.m. yeah, he, wasn't able to use her packet probably if it had some, backup, process, going on going on it might get impacted okay same way I can get re try this on. Jewelle of information, I can, get the how how, often and how much packet, count has to be lit transmitted, all, the time, so. This, is real total, view of my RF. And performance, and on top of it I can, always go back to my previous, packet, capture hmm if, I had a second, failure that would bring, so you could manually get those if you wanted to any point in time but the system is doing an automated gathering, of those and then putting them together is, the thing that strikes me here it is when you look at this summary obviously. There's a ton of data behind each one of these things because there's a lot of exchanges, that happened to then be called a key exchange yeah and that all happens really fast that you've done some summarization to start making this simpler to digest exactly. To, be seen on Tom I sit on this screen all the time right, I mean system collect the data and provide my analytical, result yeah, so this. Is example that what tipi mentioned, as application. Analytics, so, if customer, have used any analytic. On the previous capture then it shows all the available. Application. And there, are QoS. Taggings. Packet, loss whole. Tones. The love of information, tone I mean whole lot of information is available as analytical. View and, this. Is a previous screen, that we went, over and the. Beauty of this part is now, it even offer the. Packet. Analyzer so. Let's go back to some of the failure condition, that. I had like a why, don't I click on normally. Only. Yeah. This is the failure. Condition that I had, so. Identification, done and. When. A 10th occasion must have failed due to event. And then here's, the packet that come, in between and then, I can see the only proving, obviously. This client, had been disconnected, even. Though I disconnected. From that network I can still collect the, informations, ok well, that's the beauty of a VIP tracking, yeah yeah this is the VIP, troubleshooting, so wherever they are we. Can keep continue to track the users and their. Location, their location, as well as their packet usages and all, these packets, is always. Downloadable. So, we can't really prove it if you really know your details and you want to really go in and also just, until people build their own level of confidence with what the system is summarizing for the the details are always available we're not hiding any of that simply making it easier, to get into this. Is a typical, way of doing a date probably need to spend a lot of time to, capture the data then, they reach to this screen, the. Wireshark. And yeah almost. The CCIE wall is required, at this moment but, I mean, not everybody need to obtain the certification, which is a wallet because the system provide, the analytical, view here I couldn't get it and. Then, this is not end of the demo once. I identify the detail, of a client, and I would know that how, what's the other client, who might be in the ended up similar condition of my region right so, and here's I'm singing, that this Richard is connected, on the AP. Three for. A hundred three so I go into device render sixty and again. There is a touch.
Of The capture. Buttons. Here so. This. In turn the capture from the AP perspective, okay yeah similar, level about individual. Ap yes. So. Individual, IP now I have about like a three client, and, these. Are the top client, who had a failure okay, yeah and. These. Are channel utilisation, look at the channel utilization so. Amazing, right this is very high yeah pretty, high intelligent, caused by non, my file this, is not. That's not good well this. Is a biggest problem, because of people thinking that my wife Isis slow because of my AP minor problem properly but if you check here my, SSID. My, AP only consume four percent whereas. More, than 60 to 70 percent of the usages, done, by non Wi-Fi, what does that mean well yeah so unfortunately today's. Wi-Fi network, is not immune from interferences. So it's so picking it up yeah interference, impacting. Their, emetics, pair be a bad design channel overlap, on the other a piece yeah not, really uh this, particular net took we have about 500, 100, ap oh so we're always gonna be love it around here okay so. Okay. And then once. I once, I identify the, utilization, the. Some of the real, Wi-Fi grew wants. To look like wanted, to see how it look like from the spectrum, point of view this. Is a spectrum analyzer view, every, seeker we've never had this especially, consolidated, in this view exactly okay everything, in there just single tip away right yeah like from the layer one spectrum view to, the older air to start from, the packet, and analytics. And location. And it's, all come down together in the automated, fashion right, yeah, I like. It and the fact that you guys have this fully integrated, and I know it's getting better and better because I think the key to this obviously is. We have all this rich data and. How well we consolidate, it make it easy to digest it, becomes the biggest thing here and so there's a lot more data that we've never had before so, it's not just a matter of how to taking the existing data that people always had really we've never had this kind of view before I can't wait there how far we can go with all this power of the data even.
The First, gen products, they give provider, I mean seven, 360. Degree of my client, point of view and which, never had before, usually, the normal Wi-Fi engineer the geek I have like a seven or eight different, devices for. The each proposed Monday, you probably, remember the bunch of a USB and Octopus, table then I can capture multiple, channel Y but if you've got events that's after the event ever happened, as well and you guys are doing an automated analysis, on top of all this real-time stuff so, I like that because that's exactly what we need to kind of expose if you will the. Issues that we're gonna have with Wireless is just the nature of the beast and now we've got it then say thank you so much for your time I appreciate that guys be, sure and look here for more information there's a lot of stuff to begin to hear this is just the engineering build this stuff gets more and more interesting, as it rolls out in release with the next DNA Center release this, is good stuff be sure and pay close attention thank, you so much for watching and we'll see you on the next one.
2018-06-27 09:51
