Introducing Cisco’s next-generation CW9800 wireless controllers

Published on May 24, 2024 by Dave Benham

Cisco recognizes the importance of innovating for both cloud-based and on-premises customers. To support their on-premises customers, Cisco is introducing a new family of next-generation wireless controllers. The Cisco Catalyst CW9800M, CW9800H1 and CW9800H2 bring significant performance and efficiency gains over the previous generation of wireless controllers, while also reducing the form factor in the […]

Cisco Catalyst CW916x Access Points – The Choice is Yours

Published on June 14, 2022January 29, 2023 by Dave Benham

The Cisco Catalyst CW9166, CW9164 and CW9162 Wi-Fi 6E Access Points feature the ability to be managed either in the Meraki cloud, or with a Catalyst 9800 Wireless LAN Controller. Many of us have wanted this feature for a decade! Each of the ”CW” access-points are convertible between the two modes, which allows you to […]

The Cisco Catalyst 9136 Access Point

Published on February 3, 2022January 29, 2023 by Dave Benham

The Catalyst 9136 is Cisco’s latest addition to the Catalyst 9100 AP line up, and is their first AP with Wi-Fi 6E (6GHz) capability. This is the big brother to the 9130, in pretty much every way. The Cisco Champions program allowed me to test the 9136, and I was pleasantly surprised when I first […]

Building a Catalyst 9800-CL Lab with an Intel NUC

Published on November 1, 2019November 1, 2019 by Dave Benham

This guide is intended to walk you through the process of installing VMware ESXi on an Intel NUC, so that you can install multiple Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL Virtual Machines for Lab/Training/Testing use. The Intel NUC is a fantastic platform to install the Catalyst 9800-CL because of the very small form factor, silent operation, multiple connectivity […]

Deploying and Configuring the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL in VMware – a Detailed Guide

Published on August 24, 2019May 28, 2022 by Dave Benham

The intent of this post is to get your Catalyst 9800-CL online with a trunked network interface. I will be writing another post to cover configuring WLANs, go over the new configuration model, and best practices. First off, don’t let the length of this post scare you. I promise it really is simple if you […]

Cisco Catalyst 9100 Series: 802.11ax APs to be excited about

Published on April 29, 2019May 28, 2022 by Dave Benham

The Catalyst 9100 platform is Cisco’s entry into the 802.11ax/Wi-Fi 6 Access Point realm. The platform currently includes 3 Access Point models of varying capabilities, which I will discuss below. The Elephant in the Room Catalyst? Why Catalyst? What happened to Aironet? In a word, marketing. However, the more I hear the reasoning behind the […]