(funky music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi, I'm Peter Burress, and welcome to another CUBE conversation from our beautiful studios in wonderful Palo Alto, California. Enterprises have always struggled with how they're going to add more end points into their networks. More users, more devices, more machines, they need better speeds, lower latencies, greater security. How are they going to do it? Well, we've got a new set of standards coming along within the wifi world as well within the cellular world, to provide those greater densities, lower latencies, higher performance. Wifi Six is what we talk about within kind of the extension of the 802.11 family of protocols, but Wifi Six, like every other significant transformation has required that enterprises think differently about certain attributes of networking. So to have that conversation, we got Sachin Gupta who's a senior vice president of Cisco here, Sachin, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks Peter, very excited to be here. >> Alright, look, so I'm a CIO, and I am working with my team to incorporate these new technologies that are going to improve the quality of my endpoint services, and I'm looking at Wifi Six. What am I mainly worried about as I think about adopting these new technologies? >> So just before we just get into adopting of the new technologies, why are you going after Wi-Fi 6, like what's the reason for the CIO? And quite simply it's, all of the new use cases that are coming on, like everything, all the IoT endpoints have to connect securely, all the bandwidth hungry end users, and the immersive experiences I'm looking to enable, it could be augmented reality, it could be virtual reality, all those are driving a need for me to rethink access, and rethink the network overall. And Wi-fi 6 is one critical component of that. Wi-fi 6 promises four times the capacity, lower latency, a greater range, so the things you talked about in your set-up. So it's a wonderful technology to start addressing some of those problems, but in of it's own it's not sufficient. You got to go well beyond the standard in order to address the CIO problem. >> Okay, so specifically, so think about some of the adoption problems. I got the use cases nailed down, how am I thinking about where things are going to go? Am I going to have to lay out the network differently? What kinds of practical things do I have to start thinking about? >> Well first of all, you have to think about why are you moving, where are you moving with Wi-fi 6. So again, capacity, lower latency, better battery life, the new use cases it enables. After that you need to make sure that whatever you're going to connect, will interoperate. Right? So look, sometimes a standard comes out and it can take a few years before the endpoints and the infrastructure actually get the maximum capability from the new standard. And so we worked proactively with the likes of Samsung, with the likes of Intel, to make sure those endpoints, which any of the new Samsung Galaxy S10, already supports Wi-fi 6. Interaccess points work together to give you the best experience possible. So that's sort of step one. But there's many other things we need to think through. We're also thinking about the problem of just onboarding onto Wi-fi. You know the experience to onboard onto cellular, right? >> Oh, sure. >> You get off airplane mode >> And it works. >> It just works, you're on. What's the experience like on Wifi? >> Well it's certainly not just getting a message from my local carrier that I'm now roaming. You got to get on, yeah it's a lot more involved, you got to authenticate, exactly. >> Give me your phone number, give me your room number, I'll text you something, get on to the It's cumbersome, okay? And we want to make Wifi onboarding to something we call open roaming. Open roaming is a Cisco project, it's a consortium we've set up. That takes all the venue providers and the identity providers, brings them together. So that when you go round, and you roam with Wifi, you onboard the network just like you onboard with cellular. >> So get essentially the same experience you get in the cellular world. >> Same experience. It makes it easy for you to get connected. So those are some of the basic things, but you got to go beyond that then. Now you have to worry about, okay, what do those endpoints require, alright? Well, first of all you need to recognize what the endpoint is. Is this a light bulb, or is it a heart-rate monitor, is it a tablet of some sort, what is actually connecting? So for device recognition, and to understand the experience you're getting, I need virtual analytics. And that's something the infrastructure now needs to provide. So we for the first time now, we've embedded our own ACIG, our own silicon inside the access point. So that we can get visibility from layer one to seven. And now we can pinpoint, what is the device, is it behaving in a compliant way, and how do I deliver the right experience for it. So these are some of things to think about as you move, it's a yes I want Wi-fi 6, but again tying in back to the problem you're looking to solve, how does the entire solution address your problem. >> Alright so we've identified some of the issues that have to be addressed here, and Wifi Six is here. You said the Galaxy S10 already supports it. >> Our access points are shipping, yes. >> So talk to me about the role out of some of these new technologies, these new devices from Cisco, and how customers are going to have to think a little bit differently as they start to plan out their new network structure. >> That's a great question. So I think it's not about hey, I'm just going to roll out new AP's. You should really rethink networking. What am I trying to provide here? And that's why we came out with an architectural approach across the board which is intent based networking. And what we're really talking about there is how do you automate all of the things that IT needs to do, to deliver the security and experience for all of those users and things. How do you get the data, the power of data, the analytics out? And how do you deliver security and policy. >> But it's in the context of the application and the work that's being performed. >> Yes, it's the users and devices and the applications and data. What are you trying to achieve? That's what intent based networking is all about. And so, I love how your asking the question because if you think about the wireless AP's, we only talk about the top already with the endpoint, right? But then I think about the switching architecture, are you segmenting all of that traffic? Is it fully automated? Do you have an identity and policy engine? Can I take the location data that's coming out? Cause remember these APs now are multilingual. They speak BLE, they speak Zigbee and Thread, they're also Wi-fi 6. So how do I take the location data and deliver new business outcomes? How can I tell you that the wheelchair has left the premises? How can I tell you how many people walked in your store, verus walked outside it? How do I get you better asset utilization? Those outcomes are provided at the software step at the top. So you should really be thinking about what am I trying to do for my business, and what architectural approach allows me to deliver those outcomes that I'm looking for. And yes, Wi-fi 6 APs are one critical component there, but you should think about the entire solution though. >> So we got new access points that are Wifi Six enabled ready to go, how far back does this change go into the network? >> So the Wi-fi 6 APs, the beauty of these Wi-fi standards is they're backward compatible. So you can take all kinds of older endpoints, multiple generations, and get them to work in a Wi-fi 6 new environment. So that's nice because it's not a rip and replace of all your clients, when you put the new APs in, they're backward compatible, that's always the case. And a lot of the new software stack and the technology that I talked about with intent based networking, works with at least the two previous generations as well. So if you want some of that telemetry and analytics and security, you can start getting that with some of the APs you may already have, and then when you bring in Wi-fi 6, it's sort of purpose built for that architecture. >> Alright, so we've talked a lot about the use cases of the business side, let's spend a little bit of time describing the fact that you've got the sidecar co processor for analytics inside the APs. How is that going to change the work of IT, the work of network management and administration and security? >> That's a great one So, I'll give you one example of what that does. Today, if you want to go troubleshoot a wireless issue, you're literally walking around with a sensor acting like a client to go figure out what the behavior is, what's going on, how do I figure out what the interference is, why is the experience bad, right? Can take you hours, weeks, days, it's very costly. These new APs, and with our solution with W-fi 6, first of all, I get data with my relationship with Apple from the endpoint. So I get the view from a real client. Then on the access point itself, with that co processor, I can get layer one to seven data and packet captures to see did you fail during authentication, was there some sort of RF issue that's happening, what exactly is happening that's interfering with what's going on? Or, maybe the problem is not even there, it's somewhere else in the network. And the beauty of our Cisco DNA Center solution, which is our controller in intent based networking, is we see end to end. We see the entire network and we can help you pinpoint where that issue is and save a whole bunch of money you'd spend troubleshooting, to deliver the right experience. >> But it sounds as though some of the, historically, some of the analytics associated with network administration was very focused on the device. Intent based network is intended to focus on the application and service that's being provided, but the analytics didn't follow. So know what you're saying is we're going to follow the analytics so that the applications, the services become primary citizens within the network. >> That's exactly right So you have to be able to look at the client holistic view, the application performance holistic view, and the performance of each network element, and that's what the co processor that we talked about helps. Now another thing we did is, that portfolio now, on the enterprise side, we now run the same operating system that also helps simplify for IT. The entire access network with the Catalyst 9000 series, the new access points are called the Catalyst 9100, and we're making it part of one brand and one family, because it's one OS, one programmable architecture, one operational environment if you will, that simplifies the job of IT significantly as well, and then we're also introducing obviously with Wifi Six, our cloud managed Meraki access points to support those deployments as well. >> Alright so one more question on this and then I want to talk about something else in a second. But the beauty, or the essential feature of networking has to be a degree of openness. So new access points can talk to each other, new devices can talk to each other, et cetera. These are new technologies as you said they're going to roll out and diffuse, hopefully very very rapidly, but there will be both enterprise, but also some other network supplier issues. How is Cisco ensuring that your leadership and your thought leadership but also your engineering leadership gets into those other organizations at an appropriate rate so this entire industry can adopt and change and introduce these new kinds of capabilities. >> So I talked about that new family of the Catalyst 9000 series. Let me start there. So all the protocols we support are open interoperable so you can have my switch somebody else's AP, somebody else's AP my switch, all those combinations work. It supports net config open API's programmable models. We expose those through a Cisco dev net. So we have the largest developer community on top of sort of a networking infrastructure where you can write applications that can automate or can get data >> Or services? >> Or deploy services in a very open way. And then we do the same thing at our controller layer. On Cisco DNA Center, fully open so you can have partners ecosystem delivering services and applications on top of the network, on top of that controller. So we think about openness from every angle, and that's how you have to be in a networking world, right? I mean you need to be able to connect to anything. >> Right. Every significant change in networking, someone always presumed it was going to lead to various behavior by the leader to try to somehow close it down. You're saying that's not what's happening here. We're trying to dramatically extend the benefits and capabilities of networking because those enterprises need new use cases. >> But we are saying though, that if you buy that campus architecture, access architecture through Cisco, you're going to get a degree of consistency and automation and analytics and security that's unmatched. So you might as well go, but if you want to compose that with different components, that's absolutely doable. >> Alright, so one last question. The historical norm has been I get a cell service and I get Wifi. Cell had certain positive benefits, and Wifi had other positive benefits. We're talking about Wifi Six, but also we got to talk about 5G. How are the two of them going to work together in your estimation? >> Look, from a wireless standpoint, the problems that you're trying to solve are the same, right? I need more capacity, I need lower latency, more deterministic, better battery life, they're the same. So you need to solve those when you're in an SP outdoor ubiquitous environment, or whether your sort of indoor, where you have predominantly Wifi and that's where most of your traffic flows. So Wifi Six and 5G, it's a beautiful thing that they're both trying to allow you to be in this wireless first, cloud driven world, where most of your apps and data sit in the cloud, and where your experience is really optimized by the data and telemetry that's coming out of the infrastructure. So for me, it's not an or question, it's Wifi Six and 5G that allow you to start solving that problem. >> So everything just as we have today just more, better, faster, lower power. >> Yes, can I add one more thing? >> Of course! >> I just kind of need to do this, okay? So look, when you think about the wireless infrastructure and chaining that out, I talked about how it effects the rest of the network, right? So you do need to think about upgrading your switching infrastructure, we call it being wired for wireless, okay? So with that, we also introduced a new product called the Catalyst 9600. That's a modular core switch, so you're like why are you bringing this up Sasha? >> No, I know why you're bringing it up. >> After 20 years, we are providing the next generation of the Cat 6k, Cat 6k is iconic, it's the foundation of tens of thousands of mission critical networks in the world. This is next-gen, it's more than 10x the capacity, if you have all these endpoints and access points that have more capacity, you need to think about a switch that's bigger factor. >> Scales! >> But fits into intent based networking fully programmable the same way. Just want to do a shout-out for, look we've talked about every aspect of this. APs, switches, identity, everything. >> We're offering, Cisco is offering and the enterprises are going to adopt new classes of network technology at the endpoints, faster, better, but that's going to lead to new use cases, new services, and it's just going to drive that much more complexity and routing and switching and patching thorough the network, you got to be able to scale. >> Right, you have to think about all the components. >> Absolutely. Sachin Gupta is the senior vice president of Cisco, we've been talking about how to think through Wifi Six upgrades. Thank you very much for being on the CUBE. >> Thank you, Peter. >> And once again I'm Peter Burress, and this has been a CUBE conversation. Until next time. (funky music)