As usual, time has gotten away from me, but I attended Cisco Live in Las Vegas this summer and wanted to share my experience through a blog post. This year’s event was very much about the people for me, and I was excited to get to go so I that could meet new and reconnect with old friends. This was my second Cisco Live, as I attended for the first time in 2017. The 2017 Cisco Live was a great experience, but I did not know very many people, and being my first Cisco Live, it was an overwhelming experience. Not in a bad way by any means, just due to the sheer size of the event and amount of people. I was also not plugged in to the community back in 2017. That is a big reason why I was so excited to attend this year. Life has changed a lot since the 2017 Cisco Live due to the AONE podcast and community involvement through avenues like the IAATJ Discord server. At this year’s event, I had the opportunity to meet and reconnect with people in various technology communities and it was amazing. I have said many times now that when I meet someone in person for the first time, who I have known from an online community for a while, it rarely feels like I am meeting them for the first time. It usually feels like it is just old friends catching up. That is a big draw to the community aspect. I have had very good experiences with IT related online communities, especially with the IAATJ Discord server. Like stated earlier, Cisco Live is a massive event. Let’s dig into the highlights of this year’s show.
Takeaways from Announcements
In the ‘new hotness’ category from Cisco Live 2023, two aspects that stood out to me were around Webex and security.
In regard Webex, first off, it has been very interesting to see the product line change and evolve over the years. It is not just a meeting platform. To me, an intriguing component of Webex is what Cisco has done with their telepresence endpoints in recent years. While they perform the primary function of connecting people virtually, across physically diverse areas, that this not all they can accomplish. For instance, they can be tied into the network as a smart building component and act as a sensor. One use case is dynamically handling airflow in a meeting room. The Webex video endpoint can detect how many people are in a room and adjust how much fresh air gets pumped into the room dynamically. Features like that are pretty cool, in my opinion. Now, onto the Cisco Live 2023 announcements around Webex. Check out this press release and this AONE episode to get some more context. The theme around the Webex announcements seemed to be that around gaining quick knowledge. They released new features around getting caught up on things you may have missed such as meetings and chats. Two new features that stuck out to me are the intelligent meeting summaries and summaries in Vidcast. These features have a goal of providing customers with highlights and key points of meetings. I can see these features as being beneficial for those with busy schedules who find it difficult to sit in on all the meetings they get invited to attend.
On the security side, Cisco has jumped into the Security Service Edge (SSE) space with their Cisco Secure Access solution. I will admit, the acronyms are plentiful, so I had to do some quick research to understand what SSE is in comparison to Secure Access Service Edge. As I now understand it, SSE is a component or subset of SASE that involves the individual security components. This solution is directed at customers leveraging diverse cloud applications with a remote workforce who may need to connect and use these applications from anywhere. From what I can tell this is a solution that steers client traffic to private and public cloud destinations through a unified policy enforcement engine. It does so using a client or agent based application running on end user devices to provide a secure application access solution that closes the door on the ability to bypass policy enforcement. With how work has evolved and concepts such as zero trust being introduced, the edge of the network really is wherever the client is and any network cannot necessarily be seen as trusted anymore. I am interested to see what adoption of this solution looks like over time as well as which industries are typical adopters. Check out the press release and this AONE episode for more information and analysis.
The Sessions
Much like acronyms in information technology, the sessions at Cisco Live are plentiful. There were two of which that I attended that I wanted to highlight. The first was 123 – Enterprise Campus Wired Design Fundamentals – BRKENS-1501 delivered by Shawn Wargo.
I have been very drawn to network design for some time now. In my opinion, all networks should start with a strong, well thought out design that can be built on over time. While continuing to seek out and learn new technologies can be fun and important, I also think it is good to go back and review what you have learned in the past from time to time. This specific session took us “back to basics” with enterprise campus wired design. It covered topics such as:
- The core, distribution, and access layers of the enterprise campus network.
- Redundancy options.
- Different ways to implement campus networks such as MPLS, EVPN, and Cisco’s SD-Access.
This was a fun and engaging session and great for anyone learning campus design basics as well as those wanting to review the fundamentals.
The next session I really enjoyed was called Cisco SD-Access Best Practices – Design and Deployment – BRKENS-2502 delivered by Mahesh Nagireddy. Much like design concepts, I also enjoy understading best practices of different solutions. As far as configuration goes, the default settings are not always the best settings to implement a new technology, so it is good to find, understand, and implement best practices if they make sense to do so. This session covered best practices of the Cisco’s campus fabric SD-Access solution. What I really enjoyed about this session was that it quickly covered terminology and high level design of the SD-Access solution before getting into the concepts of site and policy design. Another benefit of this session was that I received a physical copy of the Cisco Software-Defined Access for Industry Verticals book. Check out this link to download the PDF version.
People and Community
A huge highlight to Cisco Live was getting to meet and interact with so many amazing people. There are many connections to be made at this conference and I finally got to meet many people from the Cisco Insider Champion community, among many others. In fact, one of these conversations turned into an AONE episode idea that has already been recorded! Here are some pictures that I got to take with some amazing people.
Wrap Up
I really enjoyed the experience at Cisco Live US 2023. A lot of what was covered in this post was also covered in episode 123 of the Art of Network Engineering, so check that out as well. I wanted to wrap up this post with some quick advice for those planning to attend Cisco Live in the future:
- Prepare in advance.
- Get on the Cisco Live website for tips and to schedule sessions as many fill up to capacity before the event.
- Be prepared to walk a lot. Wear those comfortable shoes!
- Bring a plastic water bottle with you and fill it often at the various available sessions. You will want to stay hydrated.
- Make sure to consider time management. There is plenty to do, which means it is easy to get distracted.
- All sessions are recorded and available on the Cisco Live website, along with PDFs of the slide shows after the event. These are very helpful to reference in the future!
Thank you for reading this blog post and I hope you found it beneficial!
Netication 