Cisco Cisco Prime IP Express 8.2 White Paper

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Whether enterprises are connecting employees’ personal devices, IP phones, industrial sensors, or virtual

desktops, all have one thing in common: the need for secure, always-on connectivity to the network and the

Internet. DNS and DHCP are core enabling capabilities to provide these connections: If DNS fails, there is no

Internet. If DHCP capabilities c

an’t keep pace with proliferating devices and mobile applications, users can’t

connect.

Enterprises also need more sophisticated IPAM capabilities. Spreadsheets and homegrown applications might

have sufficed in the past, but trying to adapt them for thousands of new devices and connections in the enterprise

is a recipe for complexity, errors, and high operational costs.

And BYOD is just one of the trends straining organizations’ legacy DDI systems to the breaking point. Others

include:

●

New technologies and applications: Demanding new voice and video applications, combined with a need

to track and control more mobile users and devices, push traditional DHCP servers to their limits. These

challenges will only grow as enterprises virtualize more resources and applications in their environments.

●

Looming transition to IPv6: Many enterprises are still using IPv4, but exponential growth in devices and

connections will force the issue sooner than later. Manual IPAM processes and basic free or open-source

DHCP tools present a significant barrier in transitioning to IPv6.

●

Growing security concerns: DNS attacks are creating major risks for enterprises. In addition, as more

devices and users are added, it becomes even more important for enterprises to make sure that

connections are properly authenticated, secure, and private.

●

Growing demand for agility, speed, and efficiency:

Users don’t care about the underlying complexity of

supporting virtualized desktops or BYOD; they want their applications, and they want them now. IT needs to

be able to provision new devices quickly, as soon as they enter the enterprise environment. And they need

to do so in an efficient and automated fashion, without increasing operational costs.

Add it all up, and it’s a troubling paradox for enterprise IT: the need to meet exploding demand for new

connections, while contending with the increased complexity, costs, and risk those connections entail. The manual
IP management processes and basic DNS/DHCP solutions you’ve used in the past cannot meet this challenge.

You need a more advanced, end-to-end DDI solution.

Introducing Cisco Prime IP Express

Cisco has provided industrial-strength DNS and DHCP solutions to service providers for many years. These

solutions have a well-earned reputation for efficiency, scalability, and high reliability in the most demanding large-

scale service provider environments. Now, they are available to enterprises, including purpose-built IP address

management and BYOD tools, as part of Cisco Prime IP Express.

Cisco Prime IP Express provides a reliable, cost-effective DDI solution for enterprise networks. It includes the

following high-performance components and their respective services, all of which support both IPv4 and IPv6, and

are available individually or as part of two preintegrated suites:

●

Comprehensive DNS for centralized IP address translation and service delivery

●

An advanced DNS caching server that supports forwarding, DNS recursion, and DNS security

●

High-capacity DHCP to efficiently connect all of the devices operating in the modern enterprise and fully

integrate with Microsoft Active Directory authentication systems