Cisco Catalyst 9800 | C9800L-RMNT Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller Rack Mount Bracket

Built from the ground up for intent-based networking

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L

The Cisco^® Catalyst^® 9800-L is a fixed wireless controller with seamless software updates for small and midsize enterprises.

Built from the ground up for intent-based networking, the Cisco Catalyst 9800-L brings together Cisco IOS^® XE Software and Cisco RF excellence to create a best-in-class wireless experience for your evolving and growing organization.

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

●     Choose between copper and fiber uplinks. This choice gives you flexibility in your network.

●     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 the air, devices, and users with the Cisco Catalyst 9800-L. The wireless infrastructure becomes the strongest first line of defense, with Encrypted Traffic Analytics and Software-Defined Access (SD-Access). The controller comes with built-in security: Secure Boot, runtime defenses, image signing, integrity verification, and hardware authenticity.

●     Built on a modular operating system, the controller features open and programmable APIs that enable automation of day-0 to day-N network operations. Model-driven streaming telemetry provides deep insights into your network and client health.

Product overview: Key features

Always on

The Cisco Catalyst 9800-L provides seamless software updates for faster resolution of critical issues, the ability to introduce new access points with zero downtime, and flexible software upgrades. Stateful Switchover (SSO) with active standby and N+1 redundancy keeps your network, services, and clients always on, even in unplanned events.

Secure

Secure the air, devices, and users with the Cisco Catalyst 9800-L. Wireless infrastructure becomes the strongest first line of defense with Encrypted Traffic Analytics and SD-Access. The controller comes with built-in security: Secure Boot, runtime defenses, image signing, integrity verification, and hardware authenticity.

Open and programmable

The Cisco Catalyst 9800-L 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.

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L physical dimensions

Front panel

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L-C front panel

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L-F front panel

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L -C front panel with components labeled

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L-F front panel with components labeled

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L front panel components

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L ports and their purpose

The four data ports can operate in either 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet or 1 Gigabit Ethernet mode.

Note:       10-Mbps operation is not supported.

Front LEDs

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L front-panel LEDs and their purpose

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L rear panel with components labeled

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L rear panel components

Power

The Cisco Catalyst 9800-L Wireless Controller is powered by a single output 12VDC, 110W 120/240VAC adapter (C9800-AC-110W) that is shipped by default.

SFPs supported (C9800-L-F-K9 only)

SFPs supported on the Cisco Catalyst 9800-L

Product benefits

Cisco IOS XE

The Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series 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 the device lifecycle.

●     Automated device provisioning: This is the ability to automate the process of upgrading software images and installing configuration files on Cisco Catalyst access points when they are being deployed in the network for the first time. Cisco provides turnkey solutions with Plug and Play (PnP) capabilities that enable an effortless and automated deployment.

●     API-driven configuration: Modern wireless controllers such the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series support a wide range of automation features and provide robust open APIs over NETCONF and RESTCONF 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 switch 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.

Security

●     Trustworthy systems: Cisco Trust Anchor Technologies provide a highly secure foundation for Cisco products. With the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series, these trustworthy systems enable hardware and software authenticity assurance 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.

●     Secure Boot: Cisco Secure Boot technology anchors the boot sequence chain of trust to immutable hardware, mitigating threats against a system's foundational state and the software that is to be loaded, regardless of a user's privilege level. It provides layered protection against the persistence of illicitly modified firmware.

●     Cisco Trust Anchor module: A tamper-resistant, strong cryptographic, single-chip solution provides hardware authenticity assurance to uniquely identify the product so that its origin can be confirmed to Cisco, providing assurance that the product is genuine.

Resiliency and high availability

●     Stateful Switchover (SSO): Stateful Switchover with an active standby and N+1 redundancy keeps your network, services, and clients always on, even in unplanned events.

●     Software Maintenance Upgrades (SMUs) and hot and cold patching: Patching allows for a patch to be installed as a bug fix without bringing down the entire network and avoiding 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 Series comes 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.

Flexible NetFlow

●     Flexible NetFlow (FNF): Cisco IOS Software FNF 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 and accuracy, with up to 1400 predefined and well-known application signatures and up to 150 encrypted applications on the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series. 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, Cisco Stealthwatch^®, or any compliant third-party tool.

Quality of Service (QoS)

●     Superior QoS: QoS technologies are a set of 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 Series consists of classification and marking, policing and markdown, and scheduling, shaping, and queuing functions. A modular QoS command-line framework provides consistent platform-independent and flexible configuration behavior. The Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series also supports 2-level hierarchical or nested policies.

Smart operation

●     Bluetooth ready: The Cisco Catalyst 9800-L has hardware support to connect a Bluetooth dongle to the controller, enabling you to use this wireless interface as a management port. This port functions as an IP management interface and can be used for configuration and troubleshooting using the WebUI or Command-Line Interface (CLI), and to transfer images and configurations.

●     WebUI: WebUI is an embedded GUI-based device-management tool that enables provisioning of the device, simplifying device deployment and manageability and enhancing 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-1 configuration and from then on monitor and troubleshoot the device without having to know how to use the CLI.

Cisco Catalyst 9800-L specifications

Software requirements

The Cisco Catalyst 9800-L runs on Cisco IOS XE Software version 16.12.1 or later. This software release includes all the features listed earlier in the Product Benefits section.

Table 8 lists the minimum software requirements for the controller models.

Minimum software requirements

Licensing

The Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers require mandatory Smart Licensing. This provides ease of use for Cisco DNA license management, consumption, and tracking.

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 licenses are required. Every access point connecting to the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series controller requires a Cisco DNA subscription license. See Figure 8.

Adding a Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series controller to your network

The APs connecting to the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series have a new and simplified licensing package.

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

The Cisco DNA licenses provide Cisco innovations on the access points. The license also includes the Network Essentials and Network Advantage licensing options, which cover wireless fundamentals such as 802.1X authentication, QoS, PnP, etc., telemetry and visibility, and SSO, as well as security controls. These Network Essentials and Network Advantage components are perpetual and are valid throughout the life of the AP. Cisco DNA subscription licenses have to be purchased for a 3-, 5-, or 7-year subscription term. Upon expiration of a Cisco DNA license, the Cisco DNA features will expire, but the Network Essentials and Network Advantage features will remain.

The following figures and tables show what each base and add-on package includes.

Wireless subscription offer structure

Advantage vs. Essentials licenses

Note: It is not required to deploy Cisco DNA Center just to use one of the above packages.

The following table shows the features included in the Network Advantage and Network Essentials package.

Features included in the Network Advantage and Network Essentials packages

The following table shows the features included in the Cisco DNA Advantage and Cisco DNA Essentials packages.

Features included in the Cisco DNA Advantage and Cisco DNA Essentials packages

Two modes of licensing are available:

●     SL: Smart Licensing simplifies and adds flexibility to licensing. It is:

◦    Simple: Procure, deploy, and manage licenses easily. Devices self-register, removing the need for Product Activation Keys (PAKs).

◦    Flexible: Pool license entitlements in a single account. Move licenses freely through the network, wherever you need them.

◦    Smart: Manage your license deployments with real-time visibility into ownership and consumption.

●     SLR mode

◦    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 will be no communication with Cisco or a satellite. The licenses will be reserved for every controller. It is node-based licensing.

●     Four levels of licensing 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: Supports the Cisco DNA Essentials feature set.

◦    Cisco DNA Advantage: Supports the Cisco DNA Advantage feature set.

◦    NE: Supports the Network Essentials feature set.

◦    NA: Supports the Network Advantage feature set.

●     For customers who purchase Cisco DNA Essentials, Network Essentials will be supported and will continue to function even after term expiration. For customers who purchase Cisco DNA Advantage, Network Advantage will be supported and will continue to function even after term expiration.

●     Initial bootup of the controller is at the Cisco DNA Advantage level.

●     For questions, contact the Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers Licensing mailer group at ask-catalyst9800licensing.

●     Cisco Catalyst 9800-L wireless controller has enhanced capability to increase performance through a performance license. This performance license allows customers to connect with 500 access points, 10000 clients and gives a higher throughput.

●     Customer will have an option to select this performance license while buying Cisco Catalyst 9800-L wireless controller or can order as spare.

●     Performance license is a perpetual license that is separate from Cisco DNA license. They are also tracked by smart account.

●     For high availability deployments, performance licenses must be brought on both the controllers in HA pair.

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. For more information on Smart Accounts

Warranty

Find warranty information on Cisco.com at the Product Warranties page.

Cisco 1-year limited hardware warranty terms

The following are terms applicable to your hardware warranty. Your embedded software is subject to the Cisco End User License Agreement (EULA) and/or any Supplemental EULA (SEULA) or specific software warranty terms for additional software products loaded on the device.

Duration of hardware warranty: One (1) year

Replacement, repair, or refund procedure for hardware: Cisco or its service center will use commercially reasonable efforts to ship a replacement part within ten (10) working days after receipt of the RMA request. Actual delivery times may vary depending on customer location.

Cisco reserves the right to refund the purchase price as its exclusive warranty remedy.

Cisco environmental sustainability

Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment Sustainability”

Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment Sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in the following table:

Cisco makes the packaging data available for informational purposes only. It may not reflect the most current legal developments, and Cisco does not represent, warrant, or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up to date. This information is subject to change without notice.

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