Introduction

Today I'm reviewing Cisco's OnPlus network monitoring and management service. OnPlus is a combination of a cloud-based service providing network visibility, tools and data and a small network appliance that monitors its attached network and feeds the data to the cloud, unimpeded by router firewalls. OnPlus has been available to the Cisco partner community since July 2011 and was formally announced in December of 2011.

The target market for OnPlus is Cisco partners, to help them build and develop a managed service business. Cisco requires OnPlus users to already be Cisco registered partners or willing to become one. But don 't let that scare you—I was able to create a Cisco account and apply to be a Cisco partner over the web, all for free and with no wait for approval.

The physical OnPlus device, referred to as the ON100 Network Agent, measures approximately 5.6” wide x 6.6” deep x 1.5” high. The case is lightweight plastic and passively cooled.

Cisco ON100 Network Agent

On the front are the indicator lights, shown below.

ON100 front panel

The back of the device contains the power port, power switch, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, an SD card slot and a USB port, shown below. The ON100 can be powered via 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) or via the external power adapter that comes with the device.

ON100 rear panel

Inside

The ON100 is powered by a 1.6 GHz Marvell 6282 SoC joined with 512 MB of RAM and 512 MB of flash. A shot of the main board is shown below. Presently, the ON100 has no bulk storage capability, as all data is stored in the cloud. However, there is an SD card slot and USB port (photo lower left) for future enhancements. The SD card is intended for application storage and the USB port is intended for additional storage.

ON100 board