Technology
The Cisco Digital Network Architecture Center (DNAC) platform assures businesses that their intentions translate directly to their enterprise networks. The platform provides a centralised GUI that clearly displays insightful analytical and telemetry data. This enables network operators to proactively monitor thousands of network devices from a single point, predict behaviour and performance, and troubleshoot issues.
Challenge
Our customer wanted to leverage Cisco DNAC to assure their wireless device and client operations across globally distributed sites. It was deemed unacceptable that wireless issues were taking longer to troubleshoot and resolve than wired issues.
Furthermore, with the proliferation of wireless devices in use by their workforce due to BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and IoT (Internet of Things), it was deemed important that wireless users should have the same connectivity and performance experience of their wired counterparts.
Solution
By using DNAC as a centralized assurance platform, Metsi was able to deliver several benefits to our customer. First, wireless LAN controllers (WLC) and all their associated Access Points (APs) were added to the global site dashboard, so it would be apparent exactly where any issues were occurring. Second, the Network Health assurance dashboard was used to proactively identify APs that were down or unable to communicate with a WLC, APs that were facing oversaturation from a high connected client count, and APs that were experiencing high interference.
Finally, the Global Issues section was consulted in order to focus on high priority wireless client onboarding issues due to: WLC or AAA server, security parameter mismatches, DHCP timeouts, client or radio frequency (RF) issues, client exclusion or roaming. The Client and Device 360 feature was employed to examine up to fourteen days of historical data for specific APs and Wi-Fi clients having issues. This gave insights into reasons for Wi-Fi onboarding or performance issues such as, high signal to noise ratios (SNR) or poor received signal strength indicators (RSSI) which could then be solved to improve client experience
Summary
Metsi provides network consultancy for the design and implementation of the Cisco DNAC platform, for Proof of Concepts (POC) and real-world rollouts, in both greenfield and brownfield deployments. Metsi DNAC engineers can facilitate the realization of all DNAC features for enterprise customers, including all areas of assurance. DNAC assurance provides new insights to ensure that business intent is directly transferred to the network.