Cisco Systems (News - Alert) Inc., of course, is taking the bring your own device (BYOD) trend and mobile device management (MDM) seriously. In fact, this week the company released version 7.4 of its Cisco Unified Wireless Network (CUWN) software. This is an update which includes improvements of security, performance, quality and delivery of services through mobile applications; in addition to presenting over 40 features that are relevant to wireless infrastructures and offering visibility and control into Wi-Fi networks to proactively monitor and analyze traffic even through Cisco’s wireless LAN controller (WLC) Web interface.

The 7.4 release works much like vBroker Series products from the network packet broker vendor VSS Monitoring (News - Alert) in the way it takes a similar innovative systems-based approach to network packets by being able to perform “stateful packet inspection”: For instance, 7.4 uses Cisco's Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) techniques which enhances the quality of service prioritization of unicast and multicast traffic to a client on a wireless LAN via some Cisco controller system.

Also like Cisco Systems, VSS Monitoring has been concentrating on network connectivity, WAN acceleration tools and network intelligence. In fact, it recently won the 2012 Product of the Year award for its vBroker Series. This suite provides passive network monitoring and offer wireless security capabilities, which are characteristics of the Cisco Unified Wireless Network software release 7.4.

CUWN 7.4 provides real-time location analytics; produces network metrics to be analyzed to discover use of the network that is context-aware, and offers increased performance of the 802.11n standard to deliver enhanced deployment and operational services for mobile users.

This release also allows for a much higher level of visibility into a wide range of Web applications (like Netflix and YouTube (News - Alert), for example) through packet inspection (using DPI); it’s able to identify and classify traffic as well as prioritize packets belonging to a specific application.

The WSSI (Wireless Security and Spectrum (News - Alert) Intelligence) module is now available on Aironet 3600 access points, which can intercept threats and interferences through spectrum monitoring analysis.

There is also a new series of Cisco access points, the Aironet 1600 that promises better performance and reliability; use of tools and know-how provided by ThinkSmart Technologies, acquired in September of 2012 by Cisco which helps it to deliver innovation in mobility services engines (MSE).

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