SAN JOSE, Calif. - February 20, 2001 - Building on its high-end router heritage, Cisco Systems, Inc. today introduced the Cisco 7600 Optical Services Router (OSR), a high-performance router for service providers that delivers industry-leading IP services at optical speeds. The Cisco 7600 OSR extends the Cisco IP+Optical strategy, which outlines Cisco's approach for advancing the integration of IP and optical networking solutions.

	Brochure: Cisco 7600 Optical Services Router Overview E-Press Kit: IP + Optical Photo: High-res photo of Cisco 7600 OSR (104kb)

In the IP+Optical announcement on Jan. 31, Cisco introduced solutions for the access and core layers of service provider networks. The Cisco 7600 OSR introduces a high-performance router with the versatility to consolidate multiple functions in a Point of Presence (PoP), which include access aggregation, core backbone interconnect, and local server farms connectivity. The Cisco 7600 OSR can also provide a layer of intelligence for the metropolitan environment over SONET and Gigabit Ethernet (GE).

The Cisco 7600 OSR enables service providers to create profitable, value-add service offerings while meeting their customers' demands for faster, higher performing networks. This means offering a wider choice of Internet services than their competitors including video and voice convergence, network-based security, and "e-applications" such as e-learning. The Cisco 7600 OSR delivers the rich set of IP services that service providers need at optical speeds, eliminating the need for them to choose between high performance and high-touch services.

"Though being able to offer high-speed access is certainly still important for service providers, adding new services on top of bandwidth presents new business opportunities," said Deb Mielke, principal at Treillage Network Strategies, Inc. "The Cisco 7600 OSR's integration of IP services aggregation and high performance features under a single platform will appeal to many service providers looking to push these capabilities out to the edge of their networks."

Built from Cisco's Best

The Cisco 7600 OSR incorporates the best features of the award-winning Catalyst 6500 . platform and Cisco IOS . software to form a powerful, highly scalable solution with no single point of failure. The Cisco 7600 OSR adds optical connectivity through the new Optical Services Modules (OSM), a set of high-performance linecards available in GE WAN, Packet over SONET (PoS), and ATM interface options. The OSMs feature GE, OC-3, OC-12, and OC-48 speeds in a variety of port densities.

Cisco 7600 Optical Services Router

The Cisco 7600 OSR consists of a 256 Gbps switching fabric and a 30 million packets per second (mpps) forwarding engine. Its breadth of IP services comes from Cisco IOS, which provides features such as security, enhanced QoS, and destination sensitive services. In addition, the Cisco 7600 OSR allows the migration of existing port adapters from Cisco 7500 series routers, via the Cisco FlexWAN module, giving service providers one the industry's widest array of interface options in any single platform. This provides service providers great flexibility in deploying the Cisco 7600 OSR for a variety of applications, protects their investment in existing systems, and gives them a practical migration path to the New World Optical Internet.

Steve Baker, chief technology officer (CTO) at 360Networks said: "For the past few months, 360Networks has been evaluating the Cisco 7600 OSR and has performed extensive testing on this product. We are impressed with the ability of the Cisco 7600 OSR to deliver optical transmission speeds combined with extremely granular IP services. The ability of the Cisco 7600 OSR to support many independent traffic queues with QoS on each line card will enable 360 Networks to deliver a broad range of service levels to meet the unique requirements of our customers. We are currently ordering and intend to deploy the Cisco 7600 OSR over the next few months."

Neil Timm, CTO of QoS Networks said: "QoS Networks achieves its differentiated service offers partly through classification of flows. To scale a QoS-oriented network at line speeds in a SONET network, a classification engine needs to be implemented in the network processor, as it is in the Cisco 7600 OSR. This engine supports flow-based accounting integrated into hardware. The queuing algorithm has the sophistication to allow for granular diffserv markings for full diffserv classification. The Cisco 7600 OSR has the potential to provide a very powerful edge solution for networks that embody true QoS."

A Revolutionary Platform For Evolving Networks

The Cisco 7600 OSR helps service providers break through service and bandwidth barriers today, while designing networks to scale for future growth. The Cisco 7600 OSR achieves this through "adaptive network processing," or the ability to evolve the platform for new IP services without hardware upgrades. Unlike fixed, ASIC-based platforms, which are hardware encoded, the Cisco 7600 OSR relies on the highly flexible Parallel eXpress Forwarding (PXF) technology for scalable performance of services. PXF is a patented, Cisco-developed network processor capable of line-rate IP services delivery that can support new IP services through periodic software upgrades. Each OSM has two PXF processors capable of 12 mpps of IP services delivery per interface card.

"IP+Optical combines the dynamism of the Internet world with the foundation of the transport world, creating an infrastructure that can deliver the services that service providers need," said Lele Nardin, vice president of the Internet Systems Business Unit at Cisco. "Cisco will continue to add innovative solutions on top of this solid foundation to make service providers better equipped to meet the constantly escalating and changing customer demands for new networking services."

Pricing and Availability

The base Cisco 7600 OSR system is list priced at $73,000 and the entry level system, with interfaces, start at $100,000. The interfaces modules are priced between $27,000 to $180,000. The Cisco 7600 OSR is available now worldwide.