The Catalyst 8300 Series Edge Platforms have a wide variety of interface options to choose from—ranging from lower and higher module density with backward compatibility to a variety of existing WAN, LAN, voice, and compute modules. Powered by Cisco IOS XE, fully programmable software architecture, and API support, these platforms can facilitate automation at scale to achieve zero-touch IT capability while migrating workloads to the cloud. Catalyst 8300 Series Edge Platforms also come with Trustworthy Solutions 2.0 infrastructure that secures the platforms against threats and vulnerabilities with integrity verification and remediation of threats.

The Catalyst 8300 Series Edge Platforms are well suited for medium-sized and large enterprise branch offices for high WAN IPSec performance with integrated SD-WAN services.

Quick Specs

Table 1 shows the Quick Specs.

Product Details

Figure 1 shows the appearance of the C8300-2N2S-6T.

Overall Platform Benefits

Accelerated services with Cisco Software-Defined WAN

Cisco SD-WAN is a set of intelligent software services that allow you to connect users, devices, and branch office locations reliably and securely across a diverse set of WAN transport links. Cisco Catalyst 8000 Series Edge Platforms can dynamically route traffic across the “best” link based on up-to-the-minute application and network conditions for great application experiences. You get tight control over application performance, bandwidth usage, data privacy, and availability of your WAN links—control you need as your branches conduct greater volumes of mission-critical business with both on-premises and cloud controllers.

Application performance optimization

Ensure that SD-WAN networks meet Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) and maintain strong performance, even if network problems occur. With branch multi-cloud access, you can accelerate your SaaS applications with a simple template push from the SD-WAN controller. Features like Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) optimization, forward error correction, and packet duplication help application performance for a better user experience.

Multilayer security

You can now move your traditional and complex WAN networks to a more agile software-defined WAN with integrated security. The Cisco Catalyst 8300 Series Edge platforms connect branch offices to the Internet and cloud, with industry-leading protection against major web attacks. Secure Direct Internet Access (DIA) to the branches helps optimize branch workloads for improved performance, specifically for cloud-hosted applications. At the same time, DIA ensures your branch is protected from external threats.

Unified communications

The Cisco Catalyst 8300 Edge platforms offer rich voice services in both SD-WAN and traditional IOS-XE software feature stacks. Cisco is the only SDWAN vendor to natively integrate analog/digital IP directly into single CPE reducing Capex and Opex costs. In SD-WAN mode, the Catalyst 8300 Series also prevent internal and external outages using SRST enabling Branch router to assume role of call control PBX for Telephony survivability. They also continue to support the long list of traditional IOS-XE voice use cases like Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE), Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Session Border Controller, SRST, ISDN and Voice over IP.

5G-ready

The Catalyst 8200 Series Edge Platforms are built for future 5G networks. With the higher throughputs from Cat18 LTE and 5G, wireless WAN solutions are becoming feasible options for primary transport use cases. These platforms will support both integrated pluggable modules as well as external cellular gateways with Cat18 LTE and 5G capability for improved throughput that addresses those use cases. Either an integrated or external gateway can be chosen based on a specific branch’s cellular coverage.

Compare to Similar Items

Table 2 shows the comparison.