Cisco Catalyst 9800-80 Wireless Controller for Cloud
next generation of enterprise-class wireless controllers for cloud

Cisco Catalyst 9800-80 Wireless Controller:

Built from the ground-up for the intent-based network and Cisco DNA, Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers are Cisco IOS XE based and integrate the RF excellence of Cisco Aironet access points, creating a best-in-class wireless experience for your evolving and growing organization. The 9800 Series is built on an open and programmable architecture with built-in security, streaming telemetry, and rich analytics.

The Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers are built on the three pillars of network excellence -always on, secure, and deployed anywhere - which strengthen the network by providing the best wireless experience without compromise, while saving time and money.

The Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL is the next generation of enterprise-class wireless controllers for cloud, with seamless software updates for distributed branches and midsize campuses to large enterprises and service providers.

The Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL controller is feature rich and enterprise ready to power your business-critical operations and transform end-customer experiences:

• High availability and seamless software updates, enabled by hot and cold patching, keep your clients and services always on in planned and unplanned events.
• Secure air, devices, and users with the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL. Wireless infrastructure becomes the strongest first line of defense with Cisco Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA) and Software-Defined Access (SD-Access). The controller comes with built-in security: runtime defenses, image signing and integrity verification.
• Deploy anywhere to enable wireless connectivity everywhere. Whether in a public or private cloud, the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL best meets your organization’s needs.
• Built on a modular operating system, the 9800-CL features open and programmable APIs that enable automation of day-0 to day-N network operations. Model-driven streaming telemetry provides deep insights into the health of your network and clients.
• Cisco User Defined Network, a feature available in Cisco DNA Center, allows IT to give end users control of their very own wireless network partition on a shared network. End users can then remotely and securely deploy their devices on this network. Perfect for university dormitories or extended hospital stays, Cisco User Defined Network grants both device security and control, allowing each user to choose who can connect to their network.
• The Wi-Fi 6 readiness dashboard is a new dashboard in the Assurance menu of Cisco DNA Center. It will look through the inventory of all devices on the network and verify device, software, and client compatibility with the new Wi-Fi 6 standard. After upgrading, advanced wireless analytics will indicate performance and capacity gains as a result of the Wi-Fi 6 deployment. This is an incredible tool that will help your team define where and how the wireless network should be upgraded. It will also give you insights into the access point distribution by protocol (802.11 ac/n/abg), wireless airtime efficiency by protocol, and granular performance metrics.
• With Cisco In Service Software Upgrade (ISSU), network downtime during a software update or upgrade is a thing of the past. ISSU is a complete image upgrade and update while the network is still running. The software image—or patch—is pushed onto the wireless controller while traffic forwarding continues uninterrupted. All access point and client sessions are retained during the upgrade process. With just a click, your network automatically upgrades to the newest software.

Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL for Private Cloud

Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL for private cloud

Key highlights

• VMware ESXi, KVM, Hyper-V, and Cisco NFVIS (on ENCS) supported
• Supports centralized, Cisco FlexConnect, mesh, and fabric (SD-Access) deployment modes
• Multiple scale and throughput* profiles with a single deployment package to best meet your organization’s needs
  • Small (low / high throughput): Designed for distributed branches and small campuses supporting up to 1000 Access Points (APs) and 10,000 clients
  • Medium (low / high throughput): Designed for medium-sized campuses supporting up to 3000 APs and 32,000 clients
  • Large (low / high throughput): Designed for large enterprises and service providers supporting up to 6000 APs and 64,000 clients
• One deployment package for all the scale templates. Pick the deployment size and the throughput profile when you instantiate the Virtual Machine (VM)
• Supports up to 2.1 Gbps of throughput in a centralized wireless deployment (low-throughput profile without SR-IOV)
• With a high (enhanced) throughput profile, up to 5 Gbps can be reached on ESXi and KVM with the right set of network cards and resources (SR-IOV-enabled NIC card)
• An intuitive bootstrap wizard is available during the VM instantiation to boot the wireless controller with recommended parameters
• Optimize your branch by deploying the 9800-CL as a virtual machine on the Cisco 5000 Series Enterprise Network Compute System (ENCS) running Cisco NFVIS

Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL for Public Cloud

Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL for public cloud

Key highlights

• Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL is available as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Marketplaces
• Supported only with managed VPN deployment mode:
  • The 9800-CL should be instantiated within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
  • A VPN tunnel has to be established from the customer site to AWS or GCP to enable communication between the Cisco access point and 9800-CL wireless controller
• Cisco FlexConnect central authentication and local switching
• Available on AWS GovCloud
• Supports up to 6000 access points and 64,000 clients
• Deploy a wireless controller instance in AWS using cloud-formation templates provided by Cisco (recommended) or by manually using the EC2 console
• Deploy a wireless controller in GCP using the guided workflow in the marketplace

Key Features:

Metric	Value
Maximum number of access points	Up to 6000
Maximum number of clients	64,000
Maximum throughput (low profile without SR-IOV)*	2.1 Gbps
Maximum throughput (high profile with SR-IOV)**	5 Gbps
Maximum WLANs	4096
Maximum VLANs	4096
Deployment modes	Centralized, Cisco FlexConnect, and Fabric Wireless (SD-Access)
License	Smart License enabled
Operating system	Cisco IOS XE Software
Management	Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Prime Infrastructure, integrated WebUI, and third party (open standards APIs)
Interoperability	AireOS-based controllers
Policy engine	Cisco Identity Services Engine
Location platform	Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX), Cisco DNA Spaces
Access points	Aironet 802.11ac Wave 1 and Wave 2, Cisco Catalyst 9100 802.11ax access points

* For traffic with large (1374 bytes) packet size
** A high-throughput profile is supported on ESXi and KVM hypervisors only. Throughput numbers are with SR-IOV-enabled NICs.

Always on

Seamless software updates enable faster resolution of critical issues, introduction of new access points with zero downtime, and flexible software upgrades. Stateful switchover (SSO) with 1:1 active standby and N+1 redundancy keeps your network, services, and clients always on, even in unplanned events.

Secure

Secure air, devices, and users with the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL. Wireless infrastructure becomes the strongest first line of defense with ETA and SD-Access. The controllers come with built-in security: runtime defenses, image signing, and integrity verification. Cisco Advanced Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (awIPS) is a complete wireless security solution that uses the Cisco Unified Access® infrastructure to detect, locate, mitigate, and contain wired and wireless rogues and threats.

Deploy anywhere

Whether in a public or private cloud, the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL wireless controllers can be deployed anywhere for wireless everywhere. The 9800-CL meets the needs of your branch and campus network deployments.

Open and programmable

The controller is built on the Cisco IOS XE operating system, which offers a rich set of open standards-based programmable APIs and model-driven telemetry that provide an easy way to automate day-0 to day-N network operations.

Key Specifications

Metric	Private Cloud			Public Cloud
	Small	Medium	Large	Small	Medium	Large
Deployment modes supported	Centralized, Cisco FlexConnect, Fabric(SD-Access)	Centralized, Cisco FlexConnect, Fabric (SD-Access)	Centralized, Cisco FlexConnect, Fabric (SD-Access)	Cisco FlexConnect (local switching only)	Cisco FlexConnect (local switching only)	Cisco FlexConnect (local switching only)
vCPUs required*  (Hyperthreading is not supported)	4 – low throughput 7 – high throughput	6 – low throughput 9 – high throughput	10 – low throughput 13 – high throughput	4	6	10
Preferred mode for high throughput*	SR-IOV	SR-IOV	SR-IOV	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched
NIC needed for SR-IOV	Intel x710 / Cisco Intel x710 adapter	Intel x710 / Cisco Intel x710 adapter	Intel x710 / Cisco Intel x710 adapter	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched
Drivers needed for SR-IOV	ESXi – i40en KVM – i40e	ESXi – i40en KVM – i40e	ESXi – i40en KVM – i40e	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched
RAM required (GB)	8	16	32	8	16	32
Recommended hard disk space (GB)	16	16	16	16	16	16
Hypervisors and cloud providers supported	ESXi 6.0/6.5/6.7, KVM, Hyper-V, NFVIS	ESXi 6.0/6.5/6.7, KVM, Hyper-V, NFVIS	ESXi 6.0/6.5/6.7, KVM, Hyper-V, NFVIS	AWS, GCP	AWS, GCP	AWS, GCP
Maximum number of access points	1000	3000	6000	1000	3000	6000
Maximum number of clients	10,000	32,000	64,000	10,000	32,000	64,000
Maximum throughput (low profile without SR-IOV)	2.1 Gbps	2.1 Gbps	2.1 Gbps	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched
Maximum throughput (high profile with SR-IOV)	5 Gbps	5 Gbps	5 Gbps	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched	All traffic will be locally switched
Maximum WLANs	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096
Maximum VLANs	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096
Maximum site tags	1000	3000	6000	1000	3000	6000
Maximum APs per site	100	100	100	100	100	100
Maximum policy tags	1000	3000	6000	1000	3000	6000
Maximum RF tags	1000	3000	6000	1000	3000	6000
Maximum RF profiles	2000	6000	12000	2000	6000	12,000
Maximum policy profiles	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Maximum Flex profiles	1000	3000	6000	1000	3000	6000
vNIC adapters	ESXi: VXNET3, E1000E, E1000 KVM: VIRTIO	ESXi: VXNET3, E1000E, E1000 KVM: VIRTIO	ESXi: VXNET3, E1000E, E1000 KVM: VIRTIO	—	—	—
Virtual switch	ESXi: vSwitch KVM: OVS Linux Bridge(brctl)	ESXi: vSwitch KVM: OVS Linux Bridge(brctl)	ESXi: vSwitch KVM: OVS Linux Bridge(brctl)	—	—	—
VMware vMotion***	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
VMware Snapshot***	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler****	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
VMware NIC Teaming****	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
Hyper-V Checkpoint	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
Hyper-V NIC Teaming	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
High availability	SSO, N+1	SSO, N+1	SSO, N+1	N+1	N+1	N+1
Cisco DNA support	Automation, Assurance	Automation, Assurance	Automation, Assurance	—	—	—
mDNS gateway	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
Anchor controller	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
Foreign controller	Yes	Yes	Yes	—	—	—
Rogue detection / aWIPS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Client IPv6 support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Infrastructure IPv6 support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

* A high-throughput profile is supported on ESXi and KVM hypervisors only.
**For traffic with large (1374 bytes) packet size
***Cloning from snapshots is not supported
****vMotion, DRS, Snapshots, and vNIC Teaming not supported when SR-IOV mode is enabled.

Benefits:

Cisco IOS XE opens a completely new paradigm in network configuration, operation, and monitoring through network automation. Cisco’s automation solution is open, standards-based, and extensible across the entire lifecycle of a network device. The various mechanisms that bring about network automation are outlined below, based on a device lifecycle.

• Automated device provisioning: This is the ability to automate the process of upgrading software images and installing configuration files on Cisco access points when they are being deployed in the network for the first time. Cisco provides turnkey solutions such as Plug and Play (PnP) that enable an effortless and automated deployment.
• API-driven configuration: Modern wireless controllers such as the Cisco Catalyst 9800-40 Wireless Controller support a wide range of automation features and provide robust open APIs over Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) using YANG data models for external tools, both off-the-shelf and custom built, to automatically provision network resources.
• Granular visibility: Model-driven telemetry provides a mechanism to stream data from a wireless controller to a destination. The data to be streamed is driven through subscription to a data set in a YANG model. The subscribed data set is streamed out to the destination at configured intervals. Additionally, Cisco IOS XE enables the push model, which provides near-real-time monitoring of the network, leading to quick detection and rectification of failures.
• Seamless software upgrades and patching: To enhance OS resilience, Cisco IOS XE supports patching, which provides fixes for critical bugs and security vulnerabilities between regular maintenance releases. This support allows customers to add patches without having to wait for the next maintenance release.

Always on

• High availability: Stateful switchover with a 1:1 active standby and N+1 redundancy keeps your network, services, and clients always on, even in unplanned events.
• Software Maintenance Upgrades (SMUs) withhot and cold patching: Patching allows for a patch to be installed as a bug fix without bringing down the entire network and eliminates the need to requalify an entire software image.The SMU is a package that can be installed on a system to provide a patch fix or security resolution to a released image. SMUs allow you to address the network issue quickly while reducing the time and scope of the testing required. The Cisco IOS XE platform internally validates the SMU compatibility and does not allow you to install incompatible SMUs. All SMUs are integrated into the subsequent Cisco IOS XE Software maintenance releases.
• Intelligent rolling access point upgrades and seamless multisite upgrades: The Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL Wireless Controller for Cloud comes equipped with intelligent rolling access point upgrades to simplify network operations. Multisite upgrades can now be done in stages, and access points can be upgraded intelligently without restarting the entire network.
• Standby monitoring of Cisco Catalyst 9800 Wireless Controllers in High-Availability (HA) mode: This enables monitoring of the health of the system on a standby controller in a HA pair using programmatic interfaces (NETCONF/YANG, RESTCONF) and CLIs without going through the active controller. For more details refer to technical documentation .
• In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU): ISSU is a complete image upgrade/update with zero downtime while the network is still on. The software image or a patch is pushed onto the wireless controller while traffic forwarding continues uninterrupted. All AP/client sessions are retained during the upgrade process.

Security

• Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA): ETA is a unique capability for identifying malware in encrypted traffic coming from the access layer. Since more and more traffic is being encrypted, the visibility this feature provides related to threat detection is critical for keeping your network secure at different layers. This feature is supported on private cloud deployments only.
• Cisco Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (WIPS): WIPS offers advanced network security to detect, locate, mitigate, and contain any intrusion and threat on your wireless network. It can monitor and detect wireless network anomalies, unauthorized access, and RF attacks. A new dedicated classification engine for rogue and aWIPS built on Cisco DNA Center. A fully integrated stack for WIPS solution includes Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Catalyst 9800 controller, Wave2, and Catalyst 9100 Access Points. This new architecture provides improved detection and security, simplicity and ease of use, and a reduction in false-positive alarms.
• Trustworthy systems: Cisco Trust Anchor Technologies provide a highly secure foundation for Cisco products. With the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL, these trustworthy systems help assure software authenticity for supply chain trust and strong mitigation against man-in-the-middle attacks on software and firmware. Trust Anchor capabilities include:
  • Image signing: Cryptographically signed images provide assurance that the firmware, BIOS, and other software are authentic and unmodified. As the system boots, its software signatures are checked for integrity.

Flexible NetFlow

• Flexible NetFlow (FNF): Cisco IOSFNF is the next generation in flow visibility technology, allowing optimization of the network infrastructure, reducing operating costs, and improving capacity planning and security incident detection with increased flexibility and scalability.

Application Visibility and Control

• Next-Generation Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR2): NBAR2 enables advanced application classification techniques, with up to 1400 predefined and well-known application signatures and up to 150 encrypted applications on the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL. Some of the most popular applications included are Skype, Office 365, Microsoft Lync, Cisco Webex®, and Facebook. Many others are already predefined and easy to configure. NBAR2 provides the network administrator with an important tool to identify, control, and monitor end-user application usage while helping ensure a quality user experience and securing the network from malicious attacks. It uses FNF to report application performance and activities within the network to any supported NetFlow collector, such as Cisco Prime, Stealthwatch®, or any compliant third-party tool.

Quality of Service

• Superior Quality of Service (QoS): QoS technologies are tools and techniques for managing network resources and are considered the key enabling technologies for the transparent convergence of voice, video, and data networks. QoS on the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL consists of classification of traffic based on packet data as well as application recognition and traffic control actions such as dropping, marking and policing. A modular QoS command-line framework provides consistent platform-independent and flexible configuration behavior. The 9800-CL, also, supports policies at two levels of target: BSSID as well as client. Policy assignment can be granular down to the client level.

Smart operation

• WebUI: WebUI is an embedded GUI-based device-management tool that provides the ability to provision the device, simplify device deployment and manageability, and enhance the user experience. WebUI comes with the default image. There is no need to enable anything or install any license on the device. You can use WebUI to build a day-0 and day-1 configuration and from then on monitor and troubleshoot the device without having to know how to use the CLI.

Specifications:

Item	Specification
Wireless standards	IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11d, WMM/802.11e, 802.11h, 802.11n, 802.11k, 802.11r, 802.11u, 802.11w, 802.11ac Wave1 and Wave2, 802.11ax
Wired, switching, and routing standards	IEEE 802.3 10BASE-T, IEEE 802.3u 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T. 1000BASE-SX, 1000-BASE-LH, IEEE 802.1Q VLAN taggin, 802.1AX Link Aggregation
Data standards	RFC 768 User Datagram Protocol (UDP) RFC 791 IP RFC 2460 IPv6 RFC 792 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) RFC 793 TCP RFC 826 Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) RFC 1122 Requirements for Internet Hosts RFC 1519 Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR) RFC 1542 Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) RFC 2131 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) RFC 5415 Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) Protocol RFC 5416 CAPWAP Binding for 802.11
Security standards	Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) IEEE 802.11i (WPA2, RSN) RFC 1321 MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm RFC 1851 Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) Triple DES (3DES) Transform RFC 2104 HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication RFC 2246 TLS Protocol Version 1.0 RFC 3280 Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile RFC 4347 Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) RFC 5246 TLS Protocol Version 1.2
Encryption standards	Static Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) RC4 40, 104 and 128 bits Advanced Encryption Standard (AES): Cipher Block Chaining (CBC), Counter with CBC-MAC (CCM), Counter with CBC Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP) Data Encryption Standard (DES): DES-CBC, 3DES Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS): RC4 128-bit and RSA 1024- and 2048-bit DTLS: AES-CBC IPsec: DES-CBC, 3DES, AES-CBC 802.1AE MACsec encryption
Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) standards	IEEE 802.1X RFC 2548 Microsoft Vendor-Specific RADIUS Attributes RFC 2716 Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP)-TLS RFC 2865 RADIUS Authentication RFC 2866 RADIUS Accounting RFC 2867 RADIUS Tunnel Accounting RFC 2869 RADIUS Extensions RFC 3576 Dynamic Authorization Extensions to RADIUS RFC 5176 Dynamic Authorization Extensions to RADIUS RFC 3579 RADIUS Support for EAP RFC 3580 IEEE 802.1X RADIUS Guidelines RFC 3748 Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) Web-based authentication TACACS support for management users
Management standards	Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) v1, v2c, v3 RFC 854 Telnet RFC 1155 Management Information for TCP/IP-based Internets RFC 1156 MIB RFC 1157 SNMP RFC 1213 SNMP MIB II RFC 1350 Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) RFC 1643 Ethernet MIB RFC 2030 Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) RFC 2616 HTTP RFC 2665 Ethernet-Like Interface Types MIB RFC 2674 Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges with Traffic Classes, Multicast Filtering, and Virtual Extensions RFC 2819 Remote Monitoring (RMON) MIB RFC 2863 Interfaces Group MIB RFC 3164 Syslog RFC 3414 User-Based Security Model (USM) for SNMPv3 RFC 3418 MIB for SNMP RFC 3636 Definitions of Managed Objects for IEEE 802.3 MAUs RFC 4741 Base NETCONF protocol RFC 4742 NETCONF over SSH RFC 6241 NETCONF RFC 6242 NETCONF over SSH RFC 5277 NETCONF event notifications RFC 5717 Partial Lock Remote Procedure Call RFC 6243 With-Defaults capability for NETCONF RFC 6020 YANG Cisco private MIBs
Management interfaces	Web-based: HTTP/HTTPS Command-line interface: Telnet, Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol, serial port SNMP NETCONF

Licensing:

No licenses are required to boot up a Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller. However, in order to connect any access points to the controller, Cisco DNA software subscriptions are required. To be entitled to connect to a Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series controller, each access point requires a Cisco DNA subscription license.

They can support 3 types of Cisco DNA license: Cisco DNA Essentials, Cisco DNA Advantage and Cisco DNA Premier:

Determining license requirements for access points connecting to Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers

As connecting to Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series controllers have new and simplified software subscription packages.

They can support three tiers of Cisco DNA software: Cisco DNA Essentials, Cisco DNA Advantage, and Cisco DNA Premier.

Cisco DNA software subscriptions provide Cisco innovations on the AP. They also include perpetual Network Essentials and Network Advantage licensing options, which cover wireless fundamentals such as 802.1X authentication, QoS, and PnP; telemetry and visibility; and single-sign-on, as well as security controls.

Cisco DNA subscription software has to be purchased for a 3-, 5-, or 7-year subscription term. Upon expiration of the subscription, the Cisco DNA features will expire, whereas the Network Essentials and Network Advantage features will remain.

Two modes of licensing are available:

• Cisco Smart Licensing is a flexible licensing model that provides you with an easier, faster, and more convenient way to purchase and manage software across the Cisco portfolio and across your organization. And it’s secure- you control what users can access. With Smart Licensing you get:
  • Easy Activation: Smart licensing establishes a pool of software licenses that can be used across the entire organization-no more PAKs (Product Activation Keys).
  • Unified Management: My Cisco Entitlements (MCE) provides a complete view into all of your Cisco Products and services in an easy-to-use portal, so you always know what you have and what you are using.
  • License Flexibility: Your software is not node-locked to your hardware, so you can easily use and tranfer licenses as needed.
• Specific License Reservation (SLR) is a feature used in highly secure networks. It provides a method for customers to deploy a software license on a device (product instance) without communicating usage information to Cisco. There is no communication with Cisco or a satellite. The licenses are reserved for every controller. It is node-based licensing.

Four levels of license are supported on the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers. The controllers can be configured to function at any one of the four levels.

• Cisco DNA Essentials: At this level the Cisco DNA Essentials feature set will be supported.
• Cisco DNA Advantage: At this level the Cisco DNA Advantage feature set will be supported.
• NE: At this level the Network Essentials feature set will be supported.
• NA: At this level the Network Advantage feature set will be supported.

Cisco DNA Premier is a bundle with ISE licenses and Cisco DNA Spaces Advantage. It is inclusive of Cisco DNA Advantage, so at this level the Cisco DNA Advantage feature set will be supported. For customers who purchase Cisco DNA Essentials, Network Essentials will be supported and will continue to function even after term expiration. And for customers who purchase Cisco DNA Advantage or Cisco DNA Premier, Network Advantage will be supported and will continue to function even after term expiration.

Initial bootup of the controller will be at the Cisco DNA Advantage level.

Managing licenses with Smart Accounts

Creating Smart Accounts by using the Cisco Smart Software Manager (SSM) enables you to order devices and licensing packages and also manage your software licenses from a centralized website. You can set up the Smart Account to receive daily email alerts and to be notified of expiring add-on licenses that you want to renew. A Smart Account is mandatory for Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series controllers.

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Catalyst 9800-CL Wireless Controller for Cloud Datasheet (PDF).