The ASR 1000 gives Cisco a new kick beyond the 7200/7600 routers, providing a shot at offering a wider swath of applications

Craig Matsumoto, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

March 4, 2008

8 Min Read
Cisco Takes Hold of the Edge

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) has unveiled a new router product line that, it claims, is a major power and space saver.

But what's more interesting is the way the new Aggregation Services Router (ASR) family, which will be commercially available from April, puts the vendor and the network more in control of applications.

And that's not the end of the eye-catching marketing: The launch of the ASR 1000 family features a wacky Web campaign that Cisco has been pushing for weeks. It discusses the network needs of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and some kind of unicorn lady. (See Cisco's Big Splash.)

Cisco's new family
The ASR 1000 comes in three versions: the three-slot, two RU-high box that can process up to 15 million packets per second (MPPS); the eight-slot, four RU-high product that can process up to 20 MPPS; and the 12-slot, six RU-high box that also can process up to 20 MPPS.

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Spearheading Cisco's new vision for the edge network, the ASR 1000 can incorporate a host of functions, including deep packet inspection (DPI), a session border controller (SBC), and a firewall. But beyond that, it also enables carriers to program additional applications themselves.

The new line is intended to upgrade Cisco's edge network to the video age, adding some oomph that the Cisco 7200 and 7600 router lines can't match. Cisco is quick to note, though, that it intends to continue selling and supporting those products.

The launch continues what's been a hot season for switch and router announcements. A little more than a month ago, Cisco and Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) launched their Nexus and EX switches, respectively; Juniper followed that with the introduction of a new control-plane box. (See Cisco's Nexus Targets Data Center's Future, Juniper Storms Into Ethernet Switching, and Juniper Splits Out Its Control Plane.)

Processor power
Here's the ASR's trick: Rather than drop features such as DPI onto linecards of their own, the router runs all of them from a central processor, the QuantumFlow chip Cisco announced last week. (See Cisco Intros QuantumFlow.)

The 12-slot ASR includes two QuantumFlow chips, while the smaller versions use just one.

"All of these things, which typically used to be on a blade or a chassis, you can program on this chip," says Suraj Shetty, a Cisco director of marketing.

That helps to make the ASR relatively small. Combined with all the functions it can handle, it all adds up to potential space and power savings for a carrier.

The ASR 1000 certainly modernizes Cisco's edge networking portfolio, but the box isn't yet able to replace all the attributes of the 7200 or 7600.

"It doesn't have the performance of the 7600 at the higher end, and it doesn't have the price point of the 7200 at the lower end," Shetty admits. Moreover, he notes the ASR isn't a carrier Ethernet platform like the 7600. (See table below.)

Table 1: Big, Medium, Small

7200

ASR 1000

7600

Performance
(Millions of packets per second)

2

20

30

Price
(Bare-bones configuration)

$28K

$35K

$57.5K

Source: Cisco





Call to war
In a sense, the ASR is an extension of the Integrated Services Router (ISR), a customer-premises line introduced by Cisco in 2004. The ISR handles functions such as security and VOIP, establishing the router as the point of origin for certain services. (See Cisco Takes Apps on Board.)

That boosted Cisco's importance in the network. Cisco boxes now control some applications that would otherwise have been the domain of servers, or of specialized appliances.

The danger Cisco faced with the ISR is that routers typically slow down if more functions are activated; CoSine Communications Inc. is held up as an example of the pitfalls there. (See CoSine: 'Come & Get Us'.)

But Cisco has managed to get the processors in the ISR to juggle routing and applications smoothly.

"The ISR proved everyone wrong in that area, because the chipsets took care of that," says Ray Mota, an analyst at Synergy Research Group Inc.

That makes it likely the ASR can likewise deliver on performance. "There are going to be providers that say they want the separate boxes, but little by little, if there's no degradation, I think they'd be very open to it," Mota says.

Cisco's badge of honor in that respect is the announcement today of NTT Communications Corp. (NYSE: NTT) as an ASR customer. "You know NTT is freakin' hardcore," Mota says.

The ASR, then, primes Cisco to take control of applications in the edge network, continuing the work started by the ISR. And while Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) might not consider that a declaration of war, maybe it should, says Deb Mielke, president of Treillage Network Strategies Inc.

"What people are beginning to ask, especially guys like Cisco, is: Where are voice and video going to live?" Mielke says. "In the end, although Microsoft and Cisco talk nice to each other now, it's going to be: Does Microsoft control voice and video, or does Cisco?"

Enterprises will ultimately make that decision based on politics and other non-techy issues, Mielke thinks. Still, the ASR and ISR have at least given Cisco a serious chance in that fight.

But that's not necessarily what Cisco wants to talk about with the ASR launch. What seems to be more on the company's mind is the chance for power and space savings with the box.

To Page 2

Packing them in
Cisco's Web campaign focuses on end users, and it's true the routers could play a role in the enterprise wide-area network. But Shetty characterizes the ASR 1000 as a service provider play.

The routers, with all the features they supposedly can handle, would give carriers a way to augment IPTV or VOIP services -- or to offer new services, he says.

"You are talking about not only doing these things at line rate, but doing them as managed services for customers," he says.

What Cisco is particuarly proud of, though, is the potential for eliminating other boxes from the network -- security appliances or DPI gear, for instance. "From that perspective alone, if the product works, it's very compelling," Mota says.

Cisco is even extending that idea to call the ASR "green," because its use could save power in a point of presence (POP) or central office.

The company might have a point there. According to numbers Mota has run, competitive alternatives to the smallest ASR 1000 would cost 2.2 to 3.14 times more in initial setup, which includes the hardware price and the cost of data center space. In terms of annual operating expenses, ASR alternatives would cost 2.15 to 3 times more.

There's an extra cost saving, too, in that service providers won't have to pair up ASRs for redundancy. Routers typically get deployed two at a time, so that if one needs to be shut down for a software upgrade (or if it fails), its twin can take over. The ASR gets around that by running two instantiations of IOS, meaning each router carries its own software backup.

To do this, Cisco is running the ASRs on IOS XE, being described as a virtualized spinoff of the Internetwork Operating System (IOS) found on most of its routers.

IOS XE doesn't appear to be a full-blown "new" operating system, but a spinoff of IOS built to be modular; Mota likens it to a "stripped-down version" of IOS XR, the modular operating system introduced with the CRS-1.

Cisco did need to do something new to let the ASR run two copies of its operating system, something Shetty says hasn't been done before in boxes this small.

Cisco could take some ribbing for IOS XE, since it comes on the heels of a really new operating system announcement, the NX-OS that's running on the Nexus switches. Even so, Cisco is quick to point out that all the applications running on an ASR 1000 would be controlled by a single operating system, as opposed to the multiple types of software that would come into play if separate appliances were used.

That's meant to be a poke at Juniper, which runs different operating systems on its routers, its ERX line, and its NetScreen gear.

Then again, Juniper does keep customers to a single version of its Junos operating system, with updates adhering to a strict schedule that might as well be on Swiss timing. In contrast, Cisco's IOS is notoriously fragmented, with multiple threads strewn about the customer base.

Operating system squabbles aside, one interesting aspect on the software front is that the QuantumFlow chip is programmable in C. It's possible Cisco could allow carriers to write their own programs for the chip. Such a move would bear some similarity to Juniper's plan to let certain customers tap into its operating system. (See Juniper Opens Up to Apps Developers.)

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Craig Matsumoto

Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Yes, THAT Craig Matsumoto – who used to be at Light Reading from 2002 until 2013 and then went away and did other stuff and now HE'S BACK! As Editor-in-Chief. Go Craig!!

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