Ever have one of those days where you’ve almost reached the office and you realize you left your laptop at home? Doubling back and refighting traffic is awful, frustrating, and completely inefficient. By the time you finally get to the office, it feels as if you’ve already put in a full day.
We’ve all had days like that, and Cisco wants to make sure that managing your network isn’t a grind. With that in mind, we present Cisco DNA Center release 2.3.3. Available right now, this release is full of features that will improve your efficiency, so managing your network doesn’t ever feel like doubling back to get your laptop.
What am I talking about? This release includes several new innovations and enhancements to streamline network operations, increase performance and reliability of the wireless and switching infrastructure, enhance network security, provide faster service delivery through API-based automation workflows, and deliver better end-user experience.
Let’s explore some of the key features of this release.
AI Enhanced RRM
- Better wireless performance
- Better end-user wireless experience
You are already familiar with Cisco’s Radio Resource Management (RRM) and rely on it to optimize your wireless networks. AI Enhanced RRM takes it to the next level. It evaluates past RF experiences, predicts future trends, and recommends configurations that result in improved performance and coverage, and consistent end-user experience. Click here to see AI Enhanced RRM in action.
We further enhanced this feature with the ability to preview the changes in Cisco DNA Center before you introduce them to your network. With the AI Enhanced RRM Simulator, you can visualize the response of RF environment to the recommended changes and analyze the impact during a particular time interval.
Intel Connectivity Analytics
- Gain visibility to end-user network experience without requiring any client agent
- Troubleshoot connectivity issues quickly
Cisco and Intel have a long history of collaboration and co-development. We extended our partnership to provide deep insights and advanced analytics for client devices using Intel Wi-Fi chipsets. Using Cisco DNA Center, you can gain insights into what OS is running, the driver versions, RF statistics, etc., for end-user devices based on Intel technology, and gain visibility to roaming, disconnect reason, and errors.
Intel Connectivity Analytics complements existing analytics for Samsung and Apple devices, to provide deep insights into a vast majority of your end-user devices. Read this blog for a detailed review of Intel Connectivity Analytics.
Integration with Cisco ThousandEyes
- Gain insights into end-users’ application experience from different locations within your network
- Diagnose application performance issues quickly
The root cause of poor application performance may lie with the end-user device, corporate network, Internet, or the application itself. Diagnosis is time-consuming and often inconclusive. Cisco DNA Center, integrated with Cisco ThousandEyes, provides additional insights into your end-user application experience – with business-critical corporate applications, SaaS applications, as well as Internet services. Cisco DNA Center uses information collected from ThousandEyes agents deployed on Cisco Catalyst switches across your network to provide contextual insights into end-user application experience and help you diagnose performance issues. For a deeper dive, please review ‘Better Together: Cisco DNA Center and ThousandEyes‘.
Learn Device Configuration Workflow Enhancements
- Provision Wireless LAN Controllers with existing configuration via Cisco DNA Center
- Reuse learned configurations across different controllers and sites
This release makes it easier than ever to onboard wireless network devices without risking changes to the devices’ existing configurations. A new guided workflow learns the intent of the configuration from Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs) and access points and creates reusable wireless design elements such as SSIDs, RF Profiles, and configuration templates. These learned configurations can be used across new WLCs and sites.
Enhanced Security Through Cisco Talos Integration
- Handle potential security threats before they manifest across the enterprise
End users may unwittingly access malicious websites, compromising their devices and exposing their entire network to security threats. Cisco DNA Center addresses this risk through integration with Cisco Talos IP and Domain Reputation Center. Cisco Talos makes the most comprehensive and up-to-date list of known malware and low-reputation sites available to Cisco DNA Center.
With this integration, Cisco DNA Center
- Generates alerts when endpoints access these sites
- Updates Trust Score for endpoints to reflect the severity of potential security risk
This allows you to respond quickly to potential security threats before they manifest across the enterprise. Better yet, you can automate your response with Cisco DNA Center automation and contain the potential threats instantly.
Integration with Splunk Enterprise
- Gain visibility to the domains managed by Cisco DNA Center in Splunk Enterprise
You may be using Splunk Enterprise for event correlation, visibility to logs across the enterprise, or security monitoring. In any case, you can take advantage of Cisco DNA Center Apps to gain the visibility you need in the domains managed by Cisco DNA Center. We created these Apps as open-source projects so that you can customize them to suit your needs. These Apps will be available on Splunkbase soon.
We built these Apps on Cisco DNA Center’s advanced API. You can build your own automation workflows and integrations using the API. Cisco DevNet has all the resources you need.
FIPS 140-2 Certification
- Does your organization require FIPS 140 compliance? Cisco DNA Center is ready for you!
Cisco DNA Center is now FIPS 140-2 certified. US federal and Canadian government agencies, private entities, and service providers that work with these agencies are required to implement FIPS 140 validated solutions when using cryptography to protect sensitive information. Governments of other countries, US state, and local governments, as well as private enterprises, adopted these standards to ensure the protection of sensitive information. If your organization requires FIPS 140 compliance, you can now take advantage of the business benefits Cisco DNA Center has to offer along with the complete Cisco ecosystem. Read this blog for more information.
Summary
Thanks to new innovations and enhancements in Cisco DNA Center release 2.3.3, managing your network has gotten a lot easier.
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