Cisco announced enhancements to its broadband aggregation routers including the 7200, 7400, and 10000 Internet Routers (see Cisco Unleashes News Deluge). It has added features like dynamic bandwidth selection (DBS), which allows end users to turn up services; service selection gateway (SSG), which enables carriers to provide customized and branded portals for end users; and per-user network-based firewall capabilities, which gives end users the ability to select different levels of firewall protection for individual family members or employees. The company has added an additional processor to the 7200 and 7400, to help improve the throughput performance on these devices. The 10000 already comes equipped with dual processors.

Unisphere, another edge routing player, announced similar functionality with its new software-based product, the SDX (see Unisphere Shoots for Service Creation). It too offers enterprise users the ability to turn up new services and change existing services through a Web browser. But unlike Cisco’s implementation, Unisphere uses a protocol called COPs to communicate policies to routers. Cisco uses Radius, which Unisphere claims is a less optimal solution because it doesn’t maintain state on flows transmitted between the policy database and the routers. Cisco claims that this isn’t a problem, given that its routers maintain state of sessions.

Nortel announced upgrades to its service platform, Shasta (see Nortel Offerings Enable VPNs). The company said that starting in September Shasta will be able to integrate third-party applications for firewall, content filtering, and antivirus protection. For the first time, these third-party software applications can be added to the box without introducing latency. It also added BGP-based Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) so that it can support Layer 3 MPLS VPNs, moving Shasta closer to the capabilities of an edge router.

CoSine got its start as a network-based VPN platform. It then added firewall capability from Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP). This week the company announced that it is also adding denial-of-service protection to the platform (see CoSine's Fear Factor ). The IPSX already offered routing protocols (including BGP and OSPF) and MPLS VPNs.

Net.com also announced product upgrades this week and made a push for its service creation community (see Vendors Hold Service Creation Love-In). The Scream platform is based on an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) infrastructure and handles multiple types of traffic, including IP. Unlike the other vendors’ products mentioned here, net.com’s Scream platform doesn’t support MPLS nor does it support VPNs. This week at Supercomm, the company announced enhancements to the platform -- traffic management features that will allow carriers to guarantee bandwidth to enterprise and residential customers. It also announced ATM multicast for delivery of real-time video. And it added the OSPF routing protocol.