Router roundup on tap at SuperComm 2001

ATLANTA - Router enthusiasts will have a busy show at SuperComm 2001 this week, as several companies herald new products for pushing high-speed data services from the carrier cloud into corporations.

Cisco will unveil a router for enterprises and service providers targeted at specific applications. Part of the appeal of the box is that it will save valuable rack and collocation space, and reduce power consumption. Meanwhile, Cosine and Unisphere Networks are introducing bigger, faster edge switch routers for VPNs, firewalls and other network-based applications that sweep past offerings in this category from rivals Lucent and Nortel.

The gear from these three vendors is intended to enable unobtrusive delivery of a new generation of high-speed IP and Internet data services. They are designed to pack as much power as possible into the smallest available package.

The Cisco 7400 Application Specific Router (ASR) is targeted at specific applications: broadband aggregation, managed customer premises equipment (CPE) service and network service appliance applications. The router, which runs Cisco's IOS operating system, can be configured for one of those applications and redeployed for another should a company or service provider's requirements change.

Previously, users had to purchase new equipment with new software images if requirements changed, for example, from broadband aggregation to managed CPE service.

The 7400 ASR is one rack-unit (1.75 inches) high. It sports a slot for housing one of 40 port adapter cards for Cisco's other 7000 series routers, two 10/ 100/1000M bit/sec Ethernet ports and an auxiliary/console port for configuring the router.

Port adapter cards include Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet; ATM and packet-over-SONET; serial, multichannel and channelized WAN; ISDN; and frame relay. Line rates range from 64K bit/sec to OC-3 (155M bit/sec).

Up to 40 7400 ASRs can be stacked in a telephone company's rack using one of the Ethernet ports attached to a high-density Ethernet aggregation switch in the bottom of the rack. Each router can support up to 8,000 subscribers, or up to 320,000 subscribers in a rack.

The 7400 ASR consumes 50 watts of power, which is one-fourth to one-sixth that of alternative products, sources say. It has a forwarding performance of 350,000 packet/sec and is the smallest Cisco platform to incorporate the company's Parallel Express Forwarding (PXF) ASIC, a dedicated processor for handling filtering, queuing, network address translation (NAT) and accounting at wire speed.

Other PXF-based Cisco routers include the Cisco 7200, the 10000 Edge Services Router and the 7600 Optical Services Router.

The 7400 ASR will face its stiffest competition from Unisphere and Tiara rather than dedicated broadband aggregation/subscriber management boxes from Redback Networks and Nortel, due to size and service variability, says Deb Mielke, principal of consultancy Treillage Network Strategies.

"Cisco's finally addressing some service provider needs, especially for small sites," she says. "What they have is a smaller router with a lot more functionality. As service providers expand geographic reach or enter new markets, things like this are really important."

The only downside is Cisco could have come out with this product sooner had it not become defocused during its period of extraordinary growth.

"They've turned the corner," Mielke says. "They're finally realizing [routers are] still their core business and they've got to protect themselves to continue the domination."

Time will tell if the 7400 ASR can contribute to that mission. One of its applications, broadband aggregation, has the router sitting in a service provider's central office taking in feeds from xDSL, mobile wireless, satellite and cable links, and providing access to the Internet, enterprise or service provider core network.

The 7400 ASR authenticates subscribers on those access links and can push Web portals and other customized content to those subscribers based on their profile.

As a managed service CPE device, the 7400 ASR can label traffic with Multi-protocol Label Switching tags, designating that traffic for a VPN tunnel or a set of other Differentiated Services within the service provider cloud.

For network service appliance applications, the 7400 ASR can backend an aggregation router to balance traffic loads for dedicated quality-of-service enforcement, access control list filtering, NAT, accounting and several other subscriber- or traffic-specific functions.

The 7400 ASR has an entry price of $19,000. It will be available next week.

Cosine, Unisphere offerings

A fully loaded IPSX 9500 has 654G bit/sec of switching capacity, the company claims, and is suited for a service provider mega point of presence, according to John Metz, an analyst with Sterling Research.

The sheer capacity not only outstrips major competitors, but also exceeds the current need of even the busiest service provider, says Zeus Kerravela, an analyst with The Yankee Group.

To achieve this speed, Cosine has redesigned its line cards, which it calls service generators and which each occupy two slots in the 26-slot IPSX 9500 chassis.

Cosine will also introduce software support for Ethernet-based services such as virtual LANs (VLAN) as well as for McAfee Antivirus software so providers can offer virusprotection services. The new software also supports rate control to give customers more control of bandwidth they buy.

The IPSX 9500 will be available in September and cost $150,000 for the chassis with a single-service generator card.

Unisphere will introduce the ERX 1440, the latest in its edge routing/switching family that purports to support wire speed for all services. ERX 1440 is a 40G-bit/sec switch router designed to enable wire-speed broadband services with quality guarantees.

Unisphere will also introduce ERX software to support intelligent bandwidth management that can, for example, increase or decrease bandwidth to a customer based on policies, such as time of day. It also lets customers order these services as needed.

The software also supports Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for supporting multiple users with different service profiles at a single site, IP addresses to customer devices, as well as VLAN tagging for added security of customer traffic. The ERX 1440 supports up to 32,000 VLANs per chassis.

The ERX 1440 is scheduled to be available in September with pricing starting at $75,000 for the chassis with the 40G-bit/sec processor card.

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Routers appear everywhere
More SuperComm 2001 announcements. Network World, 06/04/01.