How many applications can Cisco AVC recognize ?

In the past, typical network traffic could easily be identified using well known port number. HTTP, HTTPS, POP3, or IMAP were among common traffic seen in enterprise. Today, there is increasing number of applications which is delivered over HTTP – both business and recreational applications. And many applications use dynamic ports such as Exchange, and voice and video which are delivered over RTP. This makes them impossible to be identified by looking at port number.

NBAR2 is Cisco’s Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), based on application signature, and Field Extraction (FE) technologies, to retrieve fields such as HTTP URL, SIP domain, mail server, and so on. Application information such as Sharepoint, Netflix, or Google Docs is provided by Nbar2 signature dictionary, called protocol pack. The protocol pack is updated several times a year to include new applications. Version 16.0 includes more than 1500 signatures.