New Cisco router prepares carriers for You Tube-driven ‘zettabyte era’

Cisco Systems Corp. recently released a new Internet router, the ASR 9000, which is designed to give carriers the network capacity required to handle the significant surge in video and other rich online media traffic traveling over wireline, cable and mobile networks."There is a sea change occurring, and it is mandating a whole new technology at the edge of the network," Len LuPriore, service provider marketing manager at Cisco, tells Network Letter. " allows carriers to converge video delivery and to focus on services while tremendously reducing operational expenditures. The ASR 9000 drives more functionality into the network layer - we want to make the router-based delivery system as efficient as possible."The ASR 9000 prepares service providers for the ‘zettabyte era', where video will make up half of all Internet traffic. With the release of its latest router, Cisco is now well-positioned to go head-to-head with Juniper Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. It is also an upgrade from its 7600 series Internet routers, which, while stacking up well against Alcatel's 7750 and Juniper's MX960, experience difficulties with traffic spikes at the edge of the network."Last quarter John Chambers talked about a gap in the edge portfolio. This product fills that hole," Ray Mota, VP and chief strategy officer at Reno, Nevada-headquartered Synergy Research Group, tells NL.The ASR 9000 has six-slot and 10-slot designs, with up to 400 Gbps a slot and up to 6.4 Tbps of overall speed, offering a non-stop video experience. That's the equivalent of about 200 movies per second."The competition offers 100 Gbps a slot," says Olaf Krahmer, Cisco's VP, service provider operations in Canada. "We're saying that isn't enough - especially at the edge, because it could become a bottleneck."Cisco claims that power and airflow maximization make for a greener technology than a comparable Juniper solution - but we'll have to wait for real world testing to see if these claims stand up."It's true the quantum flow chipset can add more boxes in one without compromising scalability," says Mota. "However, from a performance perspective I haven't spoken to any customers doing trials. It seems to be in line with what Alcatel and Juniper have." The ASR 9000 is priced at $80,000, which Mota thinks is competitive if one takes into account the degree of processing consolidation.Flexible video delivery at the edgeMota adds that full availability may still be a few quarters out, but he is on message with Cisco when it comes to how video is changing the game. "If you look at Ethernet services, video is the killer application. The vendors salivate - these are big packets," he says.And they are only going to get bigger."Video is now part of every story," says LuPriore. "YouTube didn't even exist five years ago, yet now social networking sites are using video, even our press releases are using video. It's showing up in the traffic patterns - video will be half of IP traffic by 2012."This means scale is of central importance, and here the ASR 9000 promises to deliver up to six times the capacity of comparable edge router solutions. As well, Cisco argues that by extending Internet protocols over to the aggregation edge by integrating optical transponders, it can reduce network complexity, carbon footprint, and cost.One area of significant innovation is the incorporation of the Cisco advanced video services module (AVSM), which enables terabytes of streaming capacity at the aggregation edge while offering content caching, ad insertion, fast channel changing, and error correction. This means not only that a vendor like Cisco is positioned to make a lot of money - the company invested $200 million in what it believes is a $1-billion offering - but that it is also doing its best to make sure customers can leverage the technology to have flexible delivery and, as a consequence, innovative business models."The problem has been that with more services this compromises the reliability of the control plane within the router itself," says Mota. "There was a threshold with the 7600, but the operating system now allows for the mapping of services without compromising reliability and performance."This should be good news for operators that want to deliver multimedia services to their customers, allowing for video streaming to any device and the ability to more easily offer personalized content choices. This is true for 4G wireless, too, as the ASR 9000 offers enhanced backhaul capabilities."You just have to look at what is happening in the industry, and at the congestion in the aggregation space," says Sanjeev Mervana of Cisco's technical marketing group. "The scale of the ASR 9000 will help solve that."

New Cisco router prepares carriers for You Tube-driven ‘zettabyte era’

News | 11/11/2008 2:26 pm EST

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