Bringing together network and payload indicators, Cisco Application Visibility and Control (AVC) assists administrators to be aware of applications being used on the network, their location, and their impact on productive network use. AVC brings together information from application recognition systems based on deep packet inspection and network performance data from NetFlow to characterize normal traffic as well as identify abnormal traffic.

This is further combined with management tools such as Cisco Prime Infrastructure, which can be used to control and optimize network utilization using things such as the quality of service (QoS) to prioritize one application over another.

Network application control overcomes one of the key limitations of protocol-based control; protocols can be used for more than one purpose. HTTP traffic can be productive, recreational, malicious, or a combination. Blocking all HTTP traffic would not be appropriate, but nor would allowing unfettered HTTP traffic.