Cisco Adds DPI (NBAR2) to Wireless Access Products

Cisco joins some other vendors (Aruba, Xirrus) having DPI integrated with their wireless access products. A blog post by Nat Chidambaram (pictured) describers the features of Cisco Unified Wireless Network Software v7.4, which is offered with Cisco 5500 wireless controllers.

Among other things, the new version includes "Consistent Application Visibility and Control (AVC) for wireless and wired networks - With the Cisco AVC solution, the Cisco Wireless Controllers can identify 1000+ applications like Netflix, YouTube, Cisco Jabber with voice using deep packet inspection technology and mark the application flow with certain DSCP value or drop the packets based on the application level policy. For example, let’s assume a user is associated to a corporate’s SSID. He/she is attending a meeting through Cisco WebEx. While speaking during the meeting he/she had to send a file to the meeting participants over WebEx itself. With NBAR-2’s sub-classification, wireless controller can identify the audio, and file transfer traffic separately and mark the with appropriate DSCP value for these two different types of traffic for end-to-end prioritization".

See "Santa’s Gift for Wireless Admins This Holiday Season" - here.