Cisco Systems Inc. announced additions to its ASR 9000 product line on June 7, aiming to help service providers deal with growing Internet traffic demands over the next few years.
Available immediately, the new 9000v is for the network aggregation layer and the new 9922 edge router will ship in the first half of 2010, Cisco executives said.
“We are very proud of what we have created here,” Pankaj Patel, senior vice president of engineering and general manager of service provider business said during a Webcast announcing the new offerings.
The goal was to create an entire ASR 9000 system, according to the company. “It’s about being able to simplify the operation,” he said. The system will run on Cisco’s nV (network virtualization) technology, a protocol that allows service providers to manage all their network operations from a single interface. “At the core of the technology is nV,” Patel said. “It truly is the envy of the industry.”
The nV technology connects the Cisco ASR 9922, 9010 and 9006 routers with more than 1900 ASR 9000v units and allows them to operate as one system. “It really harnesses the power of many,” Patel said. Cisco estimates that this will save service providers up to 70 per cent on operating costs compared to competing platforms.
Cisco claims that the new system allows for a capability of 96 terabits per second, or downloading the equivalent of 180,000 DVDs every minute.
Cisco predicted earlier this month that by 2015, the world would see almost three billion Internet users and 15 billion network-connected devices-or two devices for every person on the planet-and that Internet traffic will quadruple, so that kind of capacity will be crucial, the company argues. “We’ve just scratched the surface,” Patel said.
The company also stressed that all of its routers will support IPv6, which it argues is critical to service providers. Service providers “will have to provide bridges between IPv4 and 6,” he said.
The 500 existing ASR 9000 customers worldwide will be able to take advantage of this with a simple upgrade, according to the company. “Cisco has always taken a lot of pride in protecting the customer’s investment,” Patel said.
Cisco’s existing ASR 9000 customers in Canada include the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) and EastLink. Several of the developments to the ASR line have also been made in Kanata, Ont., outside of Ottawa.
