Cisco DNA has emerged as a leading solution for businesses looking to streamline their network operations and solve application challenges. To learn more we spoke to Erik Albritton, Senior Network Engineer at Logista Solutions. Erik shares his insights on how Cisco DNA can help businesses overcome network application challenges and improve overall network performance.
When it comes to network applications, what’s the most significant challenge that your customers typically encounter?
Erik’s response: Many customers face the issue of not knowing what applications are on their network. Of course, we all know what applications are supposed to be on the network, but that doesn’t always match up with reality. Cisco’s DNA center offers application visibility, which gives us a very clear look at exactly what applications are passing through the network – not just out to the internet, but between PC to PC, PC to server, pretty much everything. You also can add applications as needed. It’s also possible to add an application manually if Cisco DNA doesn’t dynamically pick it up. It uses machine learning or AI to look at the traffic and decide what application it thinks it’s in, and this works extremely well.
Cisco’s DNA center offers application visibility, which gives us a very clear look at exactly what applications are passing through the network – not just out to the internet, but between PC to PC, PC to server, pretty much everything.
– Erik Albritton, Senior Network Engineer, Logista Solutions
What insight can Cisco DNA provide?
Erik’s response: Cisco DNA dynamically picked up about 90 applications for my last customer; both business-related and non-business-related. It gives you the degree that applications are related to business, not related to business, and if things are a little bit sketchy. It gives you a really good view of what you’ve got on your network. Taking that one step further, knowing what applications are on your network then gives you the ability to create a quality-of-service profile. If there are sensitive applications on the network I want to make sure that we’ve got the bandwidth to provide those applications. I don’t want things like streaming video to step on top of that application and hurt performance.
How can Cisco DNA make application management easier?
Erik’s response: Using the applications that Cisco DNA has seen, it’s very easy then to create a policy for high-priority, mid-priority, and low-priority applications, and then with the click of a button, push that out to every device on the network; it’s very simple. The old way of doing it was sitting down with the command line configuration and trying to type out some kind of quality-of-service configuration that’s extremely convoluted to do via CLI; with DNA it’s all point and click, and everything is right in front of you. It’s a really good solution.
About Logista Solutions
Logista Solutions is a nationally recognized leader in a broad range of technology management solutions. As one of the largest technology support providers in the U.S., Logista provides innovative and holistic solutions to help companies take control of their IT infrastructure and achieve better business outcomes. Popular services include Managed IT as a Service, VoIP and Unified Communications, Managed Print, Cloud Services and Asset Disposition.
