Mike Volpi Discusses Cisco Router Technology Advances

December 10, 2003

This month Cisco Systems announced an array of significant enhancements to the company's network backbone and edge router portfolio, encompassing more than a dozen new products, including systems, line cards, software, and hardware modules. The new products help service providers by simplifying network operations, and at the same time, increasing revenue opportunities.

News@Cisco recently spoke with Mike Volpi, senior vice president and general manager of the routing technology group at Cisco, about these new announcements and how they can help service providers gain revenues while reducing costs.

What are the enhancements to Cisco's network core and edge routing equipment portfolio?

Mike Volpi: The new product announcements focus around scaling of the Cisco 12000 Series router family and accelerating service delivery with both the 12000 Series and the Cisco 7600 Series router family.

Innovation in IP routing is one of Cisco's strongest commitments. One of the noteworthy new products is the 40 gigabit per second (Gbps) per slot Cisco 12800 Routers, with complementary higher density OC-192/STM-64 and OC-48/STM-16 line cards. These products are field upgradeable, so service providers get the industry's first smooth upgrade to 40 Gbps, while protecting their existing investments. We've also introduced the new software-upgradeable Cisco 12010 and 12006 routers, which provide carriers with the simplest migration from 2.5 Gbps to 10 Gbps, and are ideally suited to deliver high-performance edge services.

The improvements to the Cisco 7600 Series include a new route processor, Supervisor Engine 720-3BXL, support for additional Layer 2 and Layer 3 Multiprotocol Label Switching Virtual Private Network (MPLS VPN) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) services. The upgrade also provides greater scalability, and a new Enhanced FlexWAN module which doubles the service performance of Cisco 7500 interfaces migrated for re-use in the Cisco 7600.

How do these new enhancements help service providers lower costs?

Mike Volpi: The new enhancements help service providers further consolidate Layer 2 and Layer 3 services onto a single packet infrastructure. This lowers the total cost of ownership of the network through simplified design and ease of management and maintenance - by reducing the number of platforms deployed and managed in any given network, as well as decreasing rack space and power requirements. Plus, the 40 Gbps upgrade provides dramatic cost-savings, since it is the industry's first solution that preserves up to 95 percent of a service provider's investments and requires no changes to facilities - while doubling network capacity.

How do these new products help service providers generate new revenues?

Mike Volpi: Reduced budgets are driving service providers to simplify and consolidate their networks - not only through lowered capital expenses but through reduced operational expenses. Additionally, the drive to implement premium packet-based services is creating new revenue opportunities and service differentiation for carriers. To meet these demands, Cisco is bringing routing products to market that will enable service providers to support greater scale and reliability in order to reduce total cost of ownership and accelerate deployment of new IP services.

Coupled with the broadest set of interfaces and innovative adaptive network processing technology, the Cisco 7600 Series leads the industry with integrated Ethernet, private line and subscriber aggregation capabilities. Also, the new Cisco 7600 Series Enhanced FlexWAN module delivers virtually 100 percent feature and interface parity with the Cisco 7500 Series, so service providers can scale to deliver services. Carriers can also use their existing IP/MPLS infrastructure to deliver point-to-point and point-to-multipoint services, such as Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs and VPLS (Virtual Private LAN Service) to capture additional revenue.

How do these new enhancements further Cisco's routing strategy?

Mike Volpi: These products fully support Cisco's "Smarter, Faster, Lasting" approach to our networking equipment development. These new routing products are "smarter" because they allow service providers to run more services from the same router, while supporting advanced features such as QoS. They are "faster" as manifested in the four-fold increase in capacity. And they are "lasting" because they don't force our customers to invest in one expensive upgrade. We are particularly proud of this third characteristic of our equipment and believe this clearly separates us from our competitors. Our customers don't have to throw out their older gear to gain these new advantages, but, instead, can add our modular components to their existing infrastructure.