Application-oriented networking
Application-oriented networking (AON) involves network devices designed to aid in computer-to-computer application integration.
Application-oriented networking was popularized by Cisco in response to increasing use of XML messaging (combined with related standards such as XSLT, XPath and XQuery) to link miscellaneous applications, data sources and other computing assets.
Many of the operations required to mediate between applications, or to monitor their transactions, can be built into network devices that are optimized for the purpose.
The rules and policies for performing these operations, also expressed in XML, are specified separately and downloaded as required. Cisco has adopted the AON acronym as the name of a family of products that function in this way.