Sunday, September 11, 2011

Cisco Expands ASR 9000 Edge Routing Family

Cisco introduced three new ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers aimed at supporting the proliferation of new mobile Internet services and devices such as tablets, smartphones and connected appliances on carrier networks. These include:


Cisco ASR 901 cell site router -- a high-capacity, low-power router for 2G, 3G and 4G mobile cell sites. Clocking options include TDM, BITS, 1588v2, and SyncE;


Cisco ASR 903 unified Ethernet access router -- a 3RU, fully redundant Ethernet access device for business, residential and mobile applications. It can also aggregate cell sites and use MPLS as a transport for Radio Access Network (RAN) backhaul traffic;


Cisco ASR 9001 small edge router -- a smaller version of the popular Cisco ASR 9000 Series edge router for smaller deployments. The 2RU unit delivers 120 Gbps of capacity. The Cisco ASR 9001 has an integrated route switch processor (RSP) and two modular bays, which support 1 Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet modular port adapters;


The platforms leverage Cisco's advanced nV (Network Virtualization) technology, which intelligently blends the network edge, aggregation and access layers into a single 96 Tbps system.


Cisco noted that is now has over 500 service provider customers for the ASR 9000 series, including recently announced customers: Polish Telecom (Poland), PCCW (Hong Kong), US Signal (U.S.), Comcast (U.S.), China Telecom (China), Tata Communications (India), FastWeb (Italy), Cox Communications (U.S.), NTT Plala (Japan), Kabel Deutschland (Germany), Charter Communications (U.S.) and Consolidated Communications (U.S.) and 3 Scandinavia (Denmark and Sweden).

http://www.cisco.com

  • In June 2011, Cisco rolled out a series of enhancements for its ASR 9000 series edge and aggregation routers with a new high-capacity chassis, new 10 GigE and 100 GigE interface cards, a virtualization technology for linking edge routers into a single management plane, and a content-caching service module. With this rollout, the company is introduced two new members of the ASR 9000 family: the high-capacity ASR 9922 and the compact ASR 9000V. The ASR 9922 is designed to deliver application layer services quickly and reliably.

    A key design criteria for the new platform was to increase scalability, and this is achieved with the ASR 9922's 20-slot chassis and the new high-density line cards. The first of these high-density line cards supports 24 full-rate 10 GigE ports in a single slot. Transport optimized and service optimized versions of this line card will be offered. The second card offers dual 100 GigE ports. Even at full line rate with small packets, it fully protected with redundant switching fabrics.


    The new ASR 9000V is an access and aggregation router for the intelligent edge. Cisco is tying these edge routers together with a new technology that it is calling Cisco Network Virtualization (nV). This enables Service Providers to manage thousands of ASR 9000vs as though they were a single device, greatly simplifying network operations. The nV technology allows the ASR 9000v to operate as a "virtual distributed line card". Cisco said this enables it to scale to tens of thousands of Gigabit Ethernet ports under a single, managed ASR 9000 system.


    Cisco is also introduced a distributed content caching card for the ASR 9000 series. This module combines compute capabilities with over 3 TB of solid state storage. The idea is store video content in the edge or aggregation router itself, closer to the viewer. Apart from video caching, the integrated service module could support a new generation of applications that require responsive content caching and advanced subscriber management.