Cisco this week is expected to unveil the first evidence of stated plans to diffuse its nextgeneration routing technology throughout its product line.
Cisco this week is expected to unveil the first evidence of stated plans to diffuse its next-generation routing technology throughout its product line.
The company plans to roll out a model of its 12000 series Internet routers that runs the company’s modular IOS XR operating system that debuted almost a year ago along, with a new core router. Cisco also is set to unwrap a smaller version of its 7600 metropolitan Ethernet router, as well as interface card and module enhancements for its midrange and high-end carrier routers.
The expected product extensions (see story ) could translate into more carrier service options for enterprise networks, as they will let carriers offer a broader range of services on a wider array of Cisco platforms. The enhancements also will help stabilize the IOS XR operating system by putting it in the hands of more carriers and in more production networks, analysts say.
Key move
“This is a very important thing for Cisco to do,” says Mark Seery, an analyst at RHK. “Because the CRS-1 is going to take time to really evolve into a high-volume platform, getting IOS XR onto the 12000 form factor will accelerate the maturity of that software base. The CRS-1 is Cisco’s top-of-the-line core carrier router.
The XR 12000 is essentially a 12000 series router with an IOS XR software upgrade. IOS XR brings a number of improvements to the 12000, which had been running Cisco’s traditional IOS software, such as secure virtualization, continuous system operation and multiservice scale, Cisco says.
Secure virtualization is the key feature, as it lets service providers isolate public and private services in a single router into separate physical and logical routing domains.
“It allows them to have true separation of customers per virtual router,” says Jennifer Liscom, an analyst at Gartner.
The operating system’s modularity helps provide continuous system operation by isolating specific software components for upgrades or fixes without taking the entire router offline. The XR 12000 also enhances scalability of services such as frame relay, ATM, Layer 2 and 3 VPNs, queues and access control lists, Cisco says.
BellSouth is anxious to evaluate XR 12000 for edge-specific functions next year.
Time for change
“IOS is many, many years old, and it is an amalgamation of enterprise and carrier feature sets,” says Mike Duckett, research director in BellSouth’s science and technology group. “It’s not very modular, it’s high-risk for introduction of new functionality, it is not carrier-class.”
Meanwhile, 7600 users can deploy the router in smaller points of presence now that Cisco has winnowed down the chassis to four slots. Larger customers requiring WAN aggregation at the edge of the network also can use the 7604.
The 7604 and XR 12000 routers – as well as those ranging from the 7300 to the CRS-1 – can run Cisco’s new Shared Port Adapters and SPA Interface Processors (SIP). SPAs and SIPs are intended to provide broad interface options – such as copper, channelized, packet over SONET, ATM and Ethernet – for the Cisco carrier routing portfolio to reduce total cost of ownership for cross-platform sharing and sparing.
The XR 12000 is expected to be available in June. List prices for upgrade kits start at $10,000. The 7604 router is expected to be available by the end of the month. It’s priced starting at $34,000.
The SPAs and SIPs are priced starting at $2,500 and vary according to product models and supported platforms.
