Cisco set to roll out high-speed optical router

by Jim Duffy

February 20, 2001 —

Cisco this week will unveil a new router that will let users provision services at the edge of metropolitan optical networks.

For companies, the new 7600 Optical Services Router (OSR) could open up a variety of new, high-speed IP services, such as VPNs, that can be provisioned flexibly and dynamically over optical fiber. Optics let services be delivered faster and in a wider variety of options than does electronics, experts say.

The 7600 OSR is based primarily on Cisco's Catalyst 6500 LAN switch. It uses the Catalyst 6500's 256G bit/sec switching fabric and nine-slot Network Equipment Building Standards-compliant chassis to support new service modules designed for service provider points-of-presence that consolidate metropolitan optical transport with IP-enabled services.

The modules include Optical Carrier packet-over-SONET and ATM, Gigabit Ethernet WAN, 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet LAN, and serial WAN port adapters from the Cisco 7500 router. The router also supports T-1/E-1 and T-3/E-3 WAN port adapters from Cisco's venerable 7500 router.

Cisco claims to have a port density and line-rate service performance advantage over Juniper Networks' edge routers with the 7600 OSR. The router features Cisco's Parallel Express Forwarding (PXF) reprogrammable ASICs processors for forwarding performance of millions of packets per second.

PXF is designed to enable deployment of new Cisco IOS services for Multi-protocol Label Switching, quality of service, security, policing, traffic shaping and filtering. With PXF, the OSR can filter 30 million packet/sec and perform access control lists, traffic policing and shaping at line-rate, Cisco says.

The 7600 is the third Cisco product to support PXF processors. The other two are the 7200 router and the 10000 Edge Services Router, which is targeted at high-density leased line T-1/T-3 aggregation.

Users say the OSR will provide a speedy service-enabling entry point into their backbones.

The basic 7600 OSR system costs $73,000. The entry-level system, with interfaces, starts at $100,000. The interfaces cost from $27,000 to $180,000. The 7600 OSR is available now. Cisco says it is offering "attractive" incentives for 7500 user to upgrade to the 7600.

Network World