Cisco unveils ASAP architecture

Cisco Systems today unveiled the Any Service, Any Port (ASAP) architecture for its AS5000 series of universal gateways, which the company said would enable service providers to deploy voice, data, fax and mobile services over a single network platform.

A scaled-back version of the architecture has been deployed in a beta trial since last year by Telnet Worldwide, a facilities-based competitive local exchange carrier headquartered in Troy, Mich. Telnet President Mark Iannuzzi, said his company became interested in the technology due to the cost savings it offers.

“You’re looking at saving 25% - 50% over what it would take to deliver a DS-0,” he said.

Mathew Lodge, manager of product marketing group for Cisco, added that although the company’s customers recognize they could deploy a single IP core to carry many services, they also realize they have problem at the edge: multiple overlapping, single-purpose networks.

“Cisco's motivation was to eliminate this costly problem by offering universal gateways that could do all of those services, but also make the network open-ended by making them programmable, and therefore open for next-generation applications,” he said. “Also, by implementing the application in the edge of the network, you move it closer to the end user and therefore make it more responsive as well as more scalable.”

Iannuzzi said that the new ASAP architecture builds on the capabilities of the earlier beta version and accomplishes the goal described by Lodge.

“What Cisco is bringing to the table now is the ability to bring voice and data together into a single chassis,” he said. “You have the PSTN on one side and the Internet on the other. And this guy is sitting right in the middle, able to talk the SS7 language to the PSTN, and able to talk IP to the Internet.

Among the services that can be offered simultaneously on an ASAP-enabled network, according to Cisco, are unified messaging applications, mobile wireless WAP access, pre-paid calling cards, wholesale dial-up Internet access, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

It is the VoIP capability that is most intriguing to Iannuzzi. “This technology is another one of the things that’s going to improve the marketing of VoIP. It does nothing but make it a lot easier to implement and obtain VoIP. It’s the next jump that we were looking for,” he explained.