Cisco Cisco Application Performance Assurance Network Module Data Sheet
Data Sheet
© 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 1 of 5
Cisco Application Performance Assurance Network Module
2.0
2.0
Product Overview
Enterprise customers face a growing need to track application use, manage network bandwidth
resources, and identify malicious and otherwise unwanted traffic.
Unlike controlled Systems Network Architecture (SNA) environments, IP-based environments lack
the structure to make sure that applications behave appropriately. Mission-critical applications
contend for available bandwidth with noncritical applications, and many applications are subjected
to network latency and jitter characteristics that impede their ability to function appropriately. With
between 50 percent and 60 percent of enterprise bandwidth now being consumed by peer-to-peer
(P2P) traffic, the productivity of the network is significantly compromised.
The issue is significantly worse in specific environments. Large Digital Imaging and
Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images impede other network traffic in healthcare
environments, financial institutions wrestle with the impact of "webification" of specialized time-
sensitive applications (for example, teller applications, trading applications), and the efficiency of
manufacturing operations computer numerical control (CNC) machinery, purchasing, and inventory
operations is reduced by the transfer of large CAD images. In such environments, the IT
department requires a solution that is able to identify the impact of these applications on overall
network traffic. Cisco
®
Application Performance Assurance (APA) Network Module is designed to
provide detailed application visibility in an Integrated Services Router (ISR) integrated form factor.
Residing in the 2800 Series or 3800 Series Integrated Services Router, Cisco APA Network
Module facilitates the detection of virtually any network application, including enterprise resource
planning (ERP) applications, multimedia streams, broadband voice, web browsing, instant
messaging, and forms of unwanted and malicious traffic such as P2P. Once this traffic has been
identified, the network administrator is able to utilize APA Network Module to establish control
policies with the router, thereby helping to ensure that the required quality of service (QoS) policies
to control and prioritize the traffic are put in place. The result is overall reduction of network
congestion, improved application performance, and the ability to plan more effective network
bandwidth upgrades.
Features and Benefits
Stateful Deep Packet Inspection
Instead of processing packets as individual events, Application Performance Assurance Network
Module fully reconstructs individual traffic flows and the Layer 7 state of each individual application
flow. Using Layer 7 signatures and attributes in addition to behavioral classification algorithms,
Cisco APA Network Module readily identifies applications that employ dynamically assigned port
numbers and tracks applications that involve multiple interrelated or spanned flows commonly
found in voice over IP (VOIP) or multimedia streaming protocols.