Cisco Claims IP NGN Progress

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cisco Systems ® today announced new products, features, and customer wins that demonstrate its continued momentum in delivering innovative Internet Protocol Next-Generation Networks (IP NGN) to service providers worldwide, increasing their ability to deliver innovative new services, improving their operational and capital expenditure efficiencies, and advancing the value-added network and service control carriers need for long-term business success.

Cisco first introduced its IP NGN vision and architecture in December 2004 by delivering a number of innovative solutions and major customer wins. Today’s announcements build momentum on this vision with two major customer deployments:

On the innovation necessary to achieve this vision Cisco is delivering a number of new solutions highlighted by: the introduction of the Cisco XR 12000 Series routers, significant enhancements to the Cisco 7600 Series routers including the new Cisco 7604 Router, a wide range of Interface Flexibility (I-Flex) options across the Cisco carrier-class routing portfolio through new shared port adapters (SPAs) and SPA interface processors (SIPs), and the introduction of the Cisco Call Session Control Platform.

“With this announcement, Cisco shows its strong commitment to innovation at each layer of IP NGN,” said Mark Bieberich, Director, Communications Network Infrastructure. “The announcement signals to the marketplace that Cisco stands ready to deliver an integrated technology solution for bringing profitable new services to market.”

Adding to the extensive existing Cisco IP NGN architecture and portfolio, these recent innovation announcements are focused around two of the three primary areas of convergence which are already well established in service provider networks today:

Network convergence - where disparate networks need to be converged over a more efficient and cost-effective common infrastructure. Cisco’s recent momentum in network convergence includes:

Service convergence or “triple play on the move” - where increased application and subscriber-level service control intelligence is needed to facilitate the efficient and profitable delivery of voice, video, data and mobility services for wireline and wireless convergence. To achieve true service convergence, providers must be able to operate, bill, and manage a service over a range of access mediums. Cisco and its partners have developed an open Service Exchange framework, which allows service providers to facilitate and control customer access and use IP services while placing no limit on the types of applications that can be deployed. Recent momentum in this area includes:

“Our momentum in the market is clearly demonstrated by these major customer announcements and the new and innovative IP NGN solutions we introduced today,” said Jeff Spagnola, vice president, Service Provider Marketing at Cisco. “But we recognize that the transformation of the networks and their business that our providers are pursuing requires continued innovation and collaboration on all fronts, including implementation, training and sales. To this end, we are firmly committed, are making the investment, and have the drive necessary to help our customers be successful.”

In a separate release:

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cisco Systems ® today introduced the Cisco XR 12000 Series routers, which represents the combination of the Cisco Internetworking Operating System (IOS) XR software with the proven market-leading capabilities of the Cisco 12000 Series routers. This extends the Cisco Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) strategy that fosters network convergence and extends investment protection for service providers.

As with the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, the Cisco XR 12000 Series is powered by Cisco IOS XR software, the industry’s first fully modular, self-healing operating system designed specifically for carrier-class routing platforms that can scale and distribute processing. Cisco IOS XR software allows customers unmatched flexibility in terms of adding new features or patches via In Service Software Upgrades (ISSU), built-in reliability, and uptime.

One customer who is experiencing the benefits of IOS XR and the Cisco XR 12000 is the China Education and Research Network (CERNET). As the first nationwide education and research computer network in China, CERNET’s goal is to deliver next-generation Internet applications that support more than 900 education and research institutions worldwide.

“As such, we have asked our router vendors for a fully modular software architecture that enables each routing protocol and other applications to run independently from one another,” said Professor Li, Chief Technology Officer of CERNET. “For two months we have run the Cisco XR 12000 with IOS XR in our live network and we are pleased with the results demonstrated during this deployment.”

KDDI Labs, the research and development subsidiary of KDDI Corporation, has also been testing the Cisco XR 12000 in its lab.

“KDDI is planning to build a ubiquitous network for broadband and narrowband and as such network reliability is critical,” said Dr.Tomohiro Otani, senior research engineer at KDDI Labs. “In our evaluation of the IOS XR software on the Cisco 12000 platform, Cisco demonstrated great progress towards a cross platform, next-generation software architecture that gives IP networking utility-like simplicity and reliability.”

Offering key features such as secure virtualization, continuous system operation, and multiservice scale, the Cisco XR 12000 provides intelligent routing solutions scaling from 2.5 gigabits-per-second (gpbs) to nX 10 gbps per slot. With its unique ServiceFlex design and Service Separation Architecture, the Cisco XR 12000 Series allows service providers to isolate public and private services through the secure virtualization of a single router into separate physical and logical routing domains.

Continuous system operation is based on the self-healing and self-defending capabilities of the IOS XR software, which is designed for always-on operation while scaling capacity and adding new services or features. And with distributed processing intelligence and robust quality of service and multicast mechanisms, the Cisco XR 12000 Series allows providers to scale service attach points like FR/ATM, L2/L3 VPN and customer attach points such as queues and access control lists, while simultaneously scaling performance. Also, Cisco’s new Interface Flexibility (I-Flex) design for Shared Port Adapters (SPAs) and SPA Interface Processors (SIPs) provides broad interface options for the Cisco XR 12000 Series.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cisco Systems ® today announced strategic product additions and enhancements to its Cisco 7600 Series routing portfolio, underscoring its leadership in helping service providers build out flexible Internet Protocol (IP) Next Generation Networks (NGNs) to deliver scalable, profitable and differentiated video, voice, and data, or “triple play” services to their customers.

The Cisco 7600 Series Router also enables enterprise customers to build carrier-class wide area networks for converged LAN/WAN functionality and provides smooth migration from existing Cisco 7500 routers through Cisco FlexWAN technology and software-feature parity. And with over 10 million video-on-demand (VoD) subscribers deployed, Cisco 7600 Router is an industry benchmark for delivering triple play services.

“Service providers and enterprises alike are pursuing a vision of service delivery that can only be achieved with an intelligent, scaleable and highly secure network infrastructure for IP-NGN, which supports converged applications, services and networks,” said Pankaj Patel, vice president and general manager of the Broadband Edge and Midrange Routing Business Unit at Cisco. “These enhancements to the Cisco 7600 Router and our other routing platforms extend our customers IP NGN vision and supports their IP/MPLS network convergence strategy.”

The new Cisco 7604 router, a 4-slot, 5-rack unit high modular chassis, provides customers with high availability, density and nX 10 Gigabit 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 internet gateways, or for enterprises requiring wide area network aggregation at the edge of the network.

New IOS enhancements provide key upgrades to the Cisco 7600 Series of routers such as hierarchical quality of service (QoS), enhanced capabilities for prioritizing IP traffic, and dynamic multipoint Virtual Private Network (VPN) security capabilities.

Cisco Systems Inc.