Cisco blows out network edge with more bandwidth, virtualization

Last week, Cisco ushered in the zettabyte era (CP: Cisco VNI: Traffic grows (to zettabyte levels), as does survey’s impact). Today, it unveiled new edge and aggregation routers and network virtualization technology to ensure the operator network edge doesn’t become a bottleneck as it funnels all of that traffic to network cores increasingly operating at 100 Gb/s and higher.

The additions to Cisco’s ASR 9000 router line deliver 96 Tb/s throughput, aiming to offer a big raw performance boost over most of today’s edge routers, including Cisco’s own ASR 9010 and Cisco ASR 9006 Routers as well as systems from competitors like Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent. The new Cisco ASR 9922 Router (with 10G and 100G interfaces) is focused on the network edge and the Cisco ASR 9000v on the network aggregation layer. The vendor also highlighted IPv6 support across all of its routers, a key requirement for service providers today.

Along with those new routers, Cisco introduced Cisco nV (network virtualization) technology which lets service providers blend together the management and bandwidth provisioning of edge, aggregation and access layers into a single virtualized system. The capability will be made available first on the ASR 9000, then on other Cisco platforms. Cisco claimed the higher capacity systems managed on a more virtualized basis can save operators up to 70% on operational costs, crucial as operators aim to monetize costly-to-deliver higher bandwidth services on tight margins.

Cisco focused its initial virtualization efforts on the data center, now the vendor “is bringing virtualization into the network,” said Pankaj Patel, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's service provider business. With Cisco nV, service providers “can intelligently blend edge, aggregation and access into one logical system. It breaks down the silo between the network cloud and the customer, simplifies operations and creates feature parity throughout the network.”

In a Webcast announcing the new systems, Cisco rolled out a handful of existing customers to advocate for the need for more bandwidth, and better management, at the network edge, including Comcast, Cox Communications, Fastweb and Tata Communications.

Cox, for instance, has already deployed more than 100 previous-generation ASRs throughout its network, and welcomed the higher-capacity new systems and network virtualization, noting that current levels of network growth “can make you dizzy as an operator,” said Jay Rolls, senior vice president of technology, Cox Communications. Currently Cox manages all those Cisco edge routers, spread out across 18 different cities, on a site by site basis. “I don’t think that’s the best model,” he said. “One touch management is pretty exciting.”

Indeed, network virtualization – and the less costly, more flexible bandwidth management it promises – fits Cox’s needs to change the way it manages its network applications. “One of the axioms we’ve been starting to act on here at Cox is that we need to disassociate our applications from the network. We need to start separating them and not make them appliance vertical solutions as in the past,” Rolls said. “It means we have a lot more demands out of what we need from the network.”

Service providers have been bulking up their network cores to 100 Gb/s and higher with products like Cisco’s CRS-3. Cisco’s focus today on the network edge – along with similar efforts in mobile backhaul networks, where T-1s are quickly giving way to 10 Gb/s and higher Ethernet links – demonstrate that a network is only as strong as its weakest links.

In its recent VNI survey, Cisco predicted that by 2015, network-connected devices would number more than 15 billion and the total amount of global Internet traffic would reach 966 exabytes per year – driven by mobile data network growth and in particular video delivery over both wired and wireline networks.