Q&A: Mike Volpi, Cisco SVP, Routing Technology Group, on New IP/MPLS Edge Portfolio Products

April 8, 2003

Cisco Systems recently announced a series of new hardware and software capabilities for its carrier class Cisco 12000 and 7600 Series routers that improve network efficiency while allowing carriers to further evolve their service portfolio. These include two line cards for the 12000 Series routers, three optical service modules (OSMs) for the 7600 Series routers, and a new chassis for the 7600 Series - the Cisco 7613. By integrating these products at the network edge, carriers and service providers augment their ability to deploy, provision, and manage value-added IP/MPLS edge services to their customers.

News@Cisco recently spoke with Mike Volpi, senior vice president of the Routing Technology Group, about how these new products help service providers evolve their network edge incrementally and open up new market opportunities while providing important investment protection.

Cisco stresses that these enhancements are critical in developing the network edge. What's important about this part of the network, and how is Cisco addressing the evolving needs of the edge?

Mike Volpi: First, let me explain briefly what we mean by the edge. The carrier edge is not a single location or single opportunity - rather it's a function that can take on a different product shape or service delivery role depending on a carrier's business model and/or network technology. So, the edge might mean something slightly different for cable, broadband, wireless, private line, metro Ethernet, or mobile networks.

For example, in a cable network the edge extends out to the Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS). But in a typical lease-line service delivery to businesses, it's not as close to the customer; the connection is carried over an optical transport (SONET/SDH) system back to the point of presence, where the edge products then come into play.

The edge is one of the most critical parts of the network because it's where much of the intelligence lies. It's where carriers and service providers roll out their intelligent, revenue-generating managed services - such as VPNs, subscriber access, managed security, and VoIP. Cisco is the only provider that delivers a comprehensive portfolio that can suit the wide variety of business models and technologies that carries use to deliver services to their customers.

Can you give us a brief rundown of the new products that Cisco is announcing?

Mike Volpi: We're announcing new interfaces for both the 12000 and 7600 Series routers.

As you know, the Cisco 12000 Series represents the industry's most intelligent portfolio of 10G routing solutions to service-enable carrier IP/MPLS core and edge networks. These announcements - an ATM edge line card and an Ethernet card - allow users to get greater operational advantage and even more functionality from their 12000s at the edge.

The ATM card (Cisco 12000 Series 4-port OC-12c/STM-4c ATM ISE line card) greatly enhances the Cisco 12000 Series ATM capabilities; in particular, the card allows carriers to consolidate their core elements further. It's an interface that lets them transport ATM traffic over a 10G IP/MPLS core. The benefit this offers is that they don't have to continue investing in two parallel systems, yet they maintain all the services in their ATM network.

The Ethernet card (Cisco 12000 Series 4-port Gigabit Ethernet ISE line card) advances the 12000's peering capability. It also adds high-performance Ethernet aggregation - in other words, combining multiple slower-speed connections into a few, larger connections.

And what about the 7600 Series?

Mike Volpi: The Cisco 7600 Series is the ideal platform for carrier Ethernet services as well as integrated private-line services (such as T-1 or frame relay).

The three new OSMs (the Twelve-Port Channelized T3 (DS0) OSM, the One-Port Channelized OC-12c/STM4-c (DS0) OSM, and the Enhanced Four-Port Gigabit Ethernet OSM) offer greater performance and flexibility as well as investment protection.

Customers who buy the 7600 to deploy a new service, for example, can use the line cards from their existing 7500s. So for those who've been using the 7500, this represents an opportunity to bring all the features and capabilities of private line aggregation in the 7500 together with the high performance and increased density of the 7600. A FlexWAN card in the 7600 lets the old port adapters from the 7500 be used in the 7600 while also enabling the deployment of new services like metro Ethernet. It's the perfect way to upgrade a network in an evolutionary fashion.

Finally, we've also announced a new 13-slot chassis - the 7613 - for customers who need greater density.

What sets these product enhancements apart in the marketplace?

Mike Volpi: These new products are helping our customers break through service and bandwidth barriers today, while designing networks to scale for future growth. One of the ways Cisco achieves this is through Adaptive Network Processing (ANP) or the ability to upgrade the router's features with new IP or MPLS services without hardware upgrades or degrading performance.

All these cards take advantage of Cisco's adaptive network processing technology, which provides customers to with more intelligent features - QoS mechanisms and VPN, accounting, and traffic shaping features, for example. All these can be turned on to deliver optimized service reliability and to provide greater service differentiation for our customers.

IP/MPLS technologies are critical for evolving carrier infrastructures all over the world, and Cisco's edge portfolio is unmatched in offering carriers the most comprehensive range of capabilities.