Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) Software Version 2.1.0 Ships

I notice that Cisco has released 2.1.0 for the Cisco ACE today. A quick read of the release notes show lots of fun goodies packed inside. These features are starting to ‘catch up’ with the F5.

I have installed the ANM 1.2 management platform in the last couple of weeks and will post a review soon.

Release Notes here

New Software Features in ACE A2(1.0)

The A2(1.0) software release provides the following expanded features and functions:

ïEnhanced load-balancing support:
ñSIP
ñExtended RTSP
ñRADIUS
ñRDP
ñGeneric protocol parsing

ïEnhanced predictors:
ñ Adaptive algorithms
ñ Least loaded
ñ Least bandwidth

ïGeneral SLB enhancements:
ñ KAL-AP
ñ HTTP header rewrite
ñ Partial server farm failover
ñ Application-based probes
ñ SNMP-based probes
ñ UDP fast age

ïSSL enhancements:
ñ Hardware accelerated
ñ Hardware-assisted probes
ñ Session ID stickiness
ñ Session ID reuse
ñ SSL queue delay
ñ Client authentication
ñ URL rewrites for SSL

ïFast DNS load balancingóUDP booster
ïXML-tagged configuration
ïANM 1.2 support
ïReal-time TCP dump
ïManagement traffic protection
ïRedundancy (high availability) sync improvements
ïSource NAT changes
ïProtocol inspection enhancements:
ñ SIP
ñ ILS/LDAP
ñ Skinny

ïACL improvementsóobject grouping
ïDenial-of-service protectionóSYN cookie per interface
ïRate-limiting enhancements:
ñ Connection-rate
ñ Bandwidth-rate

ïHTTP firewall features:
ñ Inspect HTTP POST body
ñ Inspect HTTP secondary cookies