Cisco DNA-Spaces : Monitoring IOT Network

In today pandemic , it is very difficult by business to plan occupancy in office to provide safe and covid free environment to their employees. Now a days business are planning to integrate some good tool which can provide or give actionable insights , which can further help them in planning – occupancy monitoring , Air Quality testing , contract tracing , in-room presence.

This all can be achieved by using – Cisco DNA Space IOT Services. This product transform business measures and interact using existing Wi-FI network Environment to provide actionable insights and drive business outcomes.

These all is achieved by consuming tons of data and working with a plethora of devices. The key components of this solution are : Cisco DNA Spaces IOT Services , Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers , Cisco Access Points , IOT Partner Eco Systems.

• Partner Devices: These are the partner’s sensors which broadcast their measurement data over air.
• Gateways: Cisco Access Points used for Sensors measurements. They securely communicate to partner devices, sometime gateway also broadcast the data.
• Controllers: They acts as a trust point between Gateways and Cloud.
• Connectors: It connects on-prem gateways to DNA Spaces cloud and also perform edge processing.
• DNA Spaces IoT Services:  Provides intelligence services to sensors data, allows partner clouds to communicate securely with partner devices.

Below Network architecture demonstrate that, Access points communicate with connector over a gRPC data plane while it communicates with the Controller over a CAPWAP control plane.

In this solution , partner devices broadcast either time-driven data or event-driven data with high frequency. As example per device transmission rate varies widely from every 100 ms to once in several days. But in average an IOT devices process 300 million message per day , and data volume keep on increasing day by day.

Cisco DNA Spaces IOT device Monitoring helps in identifying and predicting issues in network IOT infrastructure.

Device Monitoring: DNA Spaces IOT Services monitors the IOT gateway present in network and provide a quick snapshot when any gateway is down. It not only provides total number of transmitting IOT devices but also provides how many devices are active currently.

Battery Monitoring: Because these IOT Sensors sends or transmits high volume of data, a large amount of battery usage is required which causes device battery drainage. This further makes devices out of battery and cause IOT network failure. With the help of Cisco DNA Spaces, the tool tracks or identifies devices that have critical or low battery life and also provides information to locate devices on map so that they can be easily identified and battery can be changed.

Active device Count: DNA Space also count devices which are scanned in last 5 minutes. If it count too many devices , it may indicate unmitigated rouge transmission on the network and if it counts too few active devices , it may indicate malfunctioning devices or data channel setup issue.

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