At Cisco Live 2025, Cisco unveiled a bold vision for the future of data center networking—one that embraces AI scalability, embedded security and cloud-operational simplicity. From game-changing switch architectures to hyper-intelligent security tools, Cisco's announcements focused on building the AI-native, zero-trust and observability-rich data center of tomorrow. Here are five of the most impactful innovations announced.

At its core, eBPF Programs are at the heart of how eBPF views and controls traffic. The eBPF technology is composed of bytecode that the kernel executes in response to specific events (a.k.a event-driven execution). Meaning the eBPF programs can be attached to various hook points in the kernel, allowing them to run in response to a specific event in the kernel. There's a lot of possibilities that stem from this event-driven execution. So many in fact, that eBPF was dubbed by Brendan Gregg as "superpowers for Linux!"

As cloud-native technologies continue to converge with traditional networking in the data center and enterprise, understanding how Kubernetes, Cilium and eBPF works is crucial for network engineers. With hybrid mesh firewalls being the latest trend, and distributed firewalls (like Cisco's Hypershield) emerging in the market. Understanding how Kubernetes transforms traditional IP networking concepts into a dynamic, software-defined environment is crucial. This article demystifies Kubernetes security, making it accessible for network engineers familiar with ACLs and VLANs. You may think this doesn't apply to you, but if you're planning a firewall refresh anytime soon, then these concepts will need to be part of your vernacular going forward.

As cloud-native technologies continue to converge with traditional networking in the data center and enterprise, understanding how Kubernetes, Cilium and eBPF work is crucial for network engineers. Hybrid mesh firewalls are the latest trend, and distributed firewalls (like Cisco's Hypershield) are emerging in the market.

The Cisco Nexus N9300 Smart Switch revolutionizes data center infrastructure with its convergence of high-performance switching, network security and application services. Featuring Cisco Silicon One ASICs and a Data Processing Unit, it offers intelligent, service-aware capabilities. Optional Hypershield enhances zero-trust security, making it ideal for AI, hybrid cloud and security-conscious environments.

The Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) is a tech innovation that allows user space applications to join the high-speed action of the operating system's kernel. It enables faster security operations and real-time policy tuning, acting as a force multiplier and boosting efficiency and adaptability by allowing user space functions to transition into kernel space.

As cloud-native technologies continue to converge with traditional networking in the data center and enterprise, understanding how Kubernetes, Cilium and eBPF work is crucial for network engineers. Hybrid mesh firewalls are the latest trend, and distributed firewalls (like Cisco's Hypershield) are emerging in the market.

As cloud-native technologies continue to converge with traditional networking in the data center and enterprise, understanding how Kubernetes, Cilium and eBPF work is crucial for network engineers. Hybrid mesh firewalls are the latest trend, and distributed firewalls (like Cisco's Hypershield) are emerging in the market.

Our most anticipated sessions paired with supporting content from wwt.com.