Frequently Asked Questions

Application Hosting on the Cisco Catalyst 9100 Family of Access Points (AP) is a Cisco solution that allows Dockerized applications to be deployed from Cisco DNA Center to a Cisco Catalyst 9100 Family of APs to power an IoT solution. Cisco DNA Center manages the deployment of the application part of the workflow. After the application gets deployed, it can access an RF dongle inserted into the USB port of the AP to communicate with surrounding IoT devices. The data from these surrounding IoT devices get sent to a third-party application server for management and visualization.

Cisco provides the infrastructure such as the container on the access points and the Cisco DNA Center for application management. Cisco’s partners offer the Dockerized application, RF dongle, and application server. The solution is then shipped together to the customer to satisfy a particular IoT addressable use case.

The only method is by leveraging a third-party RF USB dongle inserted into the AP’s USB port. This RF USB dongle can support most RF frequencies (BLE, Zigbee, UWB, to name a few) as long as the AP’s USB power output is sufficient for what the USB dongle requires. The AP’s integrated BLE and Zigbee radios are currently not supported by application hosting.

Each application contains a file named package_config.ini. When deploying the application to an AP on Cisco DNA Center, you can directly provide inputs into fields of that file, which can point the application to its application server and configure the settings of the RF dongle. These inputs can be provided both during and after deployment directly on Cisco DNA Center. For more information, see the Deployment Guide.

The following are the required software and hardware versions:

The customer must be subscribed to a DNA Advantage License.

Two applications can be deployed to each access point contingent on available resources on the AP and the resources required by each application.

Application Hosting security is divided into three parts:

1. Segmentation of Traffic:
   1. When a deployed application needs to communicate to external sources from the AP’s network, it can use a VLAN different from the AP’s management VLAN. This is accomplished with a configurable feature called the Auxiliary-Client Interface and is enabled through the controller CLI commands. For more information, see the Deployment Guide.
2. AP Resource Allocation:
   1. There are resources (CPU, Memory, Storage) dedicated to application hosting within the access point. The application hosting’s application usages do not conflict with the AP’s client-serving resources and vice versa.
3. Data Encryption:
   1. Cisco provides the platform infrastructure to host the IoT application; therefore, any data encryption and security on those lines between the application to IoT devices and application to the application server is taken care of by each partner’s specific solution.

Yes, the AP requires a direct routable VLAN connection to Cisco DNA Center that isn’t using NAT (Network Address Translation Protocol). The AP uses HTTPS with port 8443 to communicate with Cisco DNA Center. Application deployment and management fail when a direct connection to the Cisco DNA Center is not available.

The access point can either be in local or FlexConnect mode. However, the IOx application is always switched locally from the access point’s Ethernet port. For more information, see the Deployment Guide.

No, Application Hosting on Cisco Catalyst series access points is only supported on Cisco Catalyst 9800 series wireless controller deployments.

Yes, you need Cisco DNA Center (minimum version 2.1.1) for application management in a production setting. However, if you are a partner developing an application, you can directly deploy an application to an AP using IOxClient (CLI Tool). Refer to IOxClient Tool Download.

The size of the IOx application is the size of the file in its final compressed form (.tar). The package.tar file size should not exceed 20 MB.

When the IOx application gets deployed on a Cisco Catalyst series access point, the package.tar file gets placed in the /tmp directory. Based on your AP model, this /tmp directory has a maximum size of approximately 80 MB. The package.tar file contents are extracted in the /tmp directory resulting in an artifacts.tar.gz file, which, when extracted, produces the rootfs file (rootfs.img). You need to copy this rootfs file (rootfs.img) into the /storage directory.

The total size of the original package.tar file and the extracted rootfs file size should not exceed the maximum size of the /tmp directory (~80 MB). Usually, when the contents of a 10 MB package.tar file get extracted, the resulting rootfs file size after extraction is nearly 60 MB.

To add a new USB device, please provide our team with information about your RF USB Dongles, such as the product ID (PID), VID, and drivers. The USB PID gets added in the AP code after the USB device’s compatibility with the access point is implemented and verified by our team.

Execute the CLI ap-type capwap in the AP terminal. This triggers the AP to reload. On a successful reload, the AP should be marked as supported for IOx.

The following are the resource specifications for each AP:

The following are the minimum PoE types to be used to enable each APs USB port:

The logs generated by the IOx apps need to be put into a file in the /data/logs directory of the IOx app. The files created at this directory, /data/logs can be retrieved by the DNAC to debug IOx apps. The IOx app must manage these logs (including the size and the number of files). The size of the /data directory in the IOx app is limited to the size mentioned in the IOx apps package.yaml in the disk section.

If the IOx app is printing messages to the stdout/stderr, this issue is seen. IOx app should put the messages into a file in /data/logs directory and avoid printing it to stdout/stderr.

Send us an email with your dongle’s product ID (PID), VID, and drivers, and we can verify and confirm if the dongle is compatible with Cisco APs.

For any questions - apphosting_ap_support@cisco.com. If you’re looking to partner with Cisco for this solution, please fill out this survey before emailing us – AppHosting Partner Survey.