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Earlier this year, we introduced our family of MS Switches, the industry’s first cloud-managed access switches. The MS is off to a tremendous start, but we’re not done yet. Today, we’re announcing an exciting software update to the MS Switches and another industry first, Layer 7 visibility.

MS Switches: now with Layer 7 visibility

We’re super excited to bring something never before seen on a switch: Layer 7 application visibility. Our teams worked hard to overcome the tremendous engineering challenges in being able to do deep packet inspection at Layer 7 on 24 and 48 non-blocking Gigabit ports, while maintaining the performance needed on the switch fabric. The new Layer 7 visibility requires no configuration or additional purchase, and hundreds of applications are automatically classified and reported in the dashboard, showing which applications consume the most resources and where your network’s bandwidth is spent.

Figure 1: Layer 7 visibility reveals heavy bandwidth-consuming apps

Layer 7 visibility also shows which users most heavily use a given application, letting administrators identify bandwidth abusers on a per-application basis. For example, identifying which users consume the most YouTube traffic is as simple as clicking on the YouTube app in the application details.

Figure 2: Top YouTube users

 

Security enhancements, additional troubleshooting tools, and more

In addition to Layer 7 visibility, we’ve included a number of other enhancements in this release:

  • 802.1X security
  • Link aggregation (LACP)
  • Per-port email and text message alerts
  • Enhanced live tools, such as packet capture
  • General stability improvements.

This latest release is available at no cost to all MS customers, and will be rolling out over the next few weeks. Full details are available in our press release. Stay tuned to the blog for deep dives on these features!