Cisco has unveiled strategic product additions and enhancements to its 7600 series routing portfolio. The move is a bid to help service providers build flexible web protocol (IP) next generation networks (NGNs).
These will help to provide the infrastructure necessary for telcos to provide much vaunted triple play services, comprising video, voice, and data, over the IP network. IOS enhancements to the Cisco 7600 series include hierarchical quality of service (QoS), enhanced capabilities for prioritising IP traffic, and dynamic multipoint virtual private network (VPN) security capabilities.
The new Cisco 7604 router is a eight slot, eight rack unit high modular chassis, providing customers with high availability, density and 10Gigabit Ethernet performance. The small form factor router accommodates line cards from DS0 to OC-48 as well as 10/100/1000 Ethernet routing speeds and is designed to enable service providers to deploy L2/L3 VPN and triple play services in small points-of-presence (POPs) and web gateways, or for enterprises requiring wide area network aggregation at the fringe of the network.
The Cisco 7604 router is accessible now with prices beginning at US$3,000. Cisco has also migrated the Cisco internetworking operating method (IOS) XR program to its Cisco 12000 series routers. This extends the Cisco web Protocol Next Generation Network (IP NGN) strategy that is designed to foster network convergence and extend investment protection for service providers.
Cisco says the IOS XR program is the industry’s first fully modular, self-healing operating method designed specifically for carrier-class routing platforms that can scale and distribute processing. “The move will extend the IOS XR from CRS-1 carrier routers to the more widely deployed XR12000 relatives.
The advantages of the IOS XR are greater reliability and scalability, which allows users to add new services without switching the product off,” says Suraj Shetty, global director of marketing for the router expertise group at Cisco. Cisco observes that IP is becoming more and more important in service provider infrastructure.
“The market the approaching to IP and this motivates us to add innovation to our routers. and, the competition on TDM is feeling the pain of moving to IP,” says Shetty.