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Cisco Systems ASR 1000 Series Routers
DataVox customers are increasingly deploying
integrated services routers, or sophisticated network
routers that can deliver voice, video, data and Internet
access, wireless, and other applications.
Cisco® is reinventing edge routing with the Cisco ASR 1000
Series Aggregation Services Routers, a new line of midrange
routers that establish a new price-to-performance class
offering, benefiting both service providers and enterprises
alike:
- For service providers, the Cisco ASR 1000 Series
Routers facilitate more flexible, efficient, and
cost-effective delivery of complex consumer and business
services.
- For enterprises, the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers
deliver a highly reliable, high-performance WAN edge
solution where information, communication,
collaboration, and commerce converge.
The Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers:
- Accelerate services by offering outstanding
performance and resiliency with optimized, intelligent
services
- Establish a new benchmark for price-to-performance
offerings in the enterprise advanced routing, service
provider edge, and broadband aggregation segments
- Facilitate significant network architectural
innovations in areas such as WAN aggregation, managed
customer-premises-equipment (CPE) services, service
provider edge services, etc.
- Reduce operating expenses (OpEx) and capital
expenditures (CapEx) by facilitating managed or hosted
services over identical architectures and operating
environments
Product Overview
The Cisco ASR 1000 Series consists of three different
versions (Figure 1): the Cisco ASR 1002 Router, the Cisco
ASR 1004 Router, and the Cisco ASR 1006 Router. All three
models use the new innovative and powerful Cisco QuantumFlow
Processor which provides a huge leap in performance and
resiliency for network processors.
Figure 1. Cisco ASR
1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers

The Cisco ASR 1000 Series provides a significant enhanced
value compared to prior generations of Cisco midrange
routing solutions by providing more than tenfold performance
improvement with services running. Additionally, the routers
have hardware and software redundancy, as well as an
industry-leading high-availability design.
The Cisco ASR 1000 Series delivers multiple services
embedded in the Cisco QuantumFlow Processor at wire speeds
of up to 10 Gbps. The services supported on the Cisco Packet
QuantumFlow Processor include security services (for
example, encryption and firewall), quality of service (QoS),
Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR), Cisco IOS®
Flexible Packet Matching, broadband aggregation, and session
border controller, among others.
With the separation of the control and data planes in the
Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router architecture, software
redundancy (on the Cisco ASR 1002 and 1004 models) and
hardware redundancy (on the Cisco ASR 1006 Router) are
provided. Additionally, the modular Cisco IOS XE Software
that is introduced with the Cisco ASR 1000 Series
facilitates In Service Software Upgrade (ISSU).
From a price-to-performance perspective, the Cisco ASR 1000
Series Router solution fits well between the Cisco 7200 and
Cisco 7300 Series and the Cisco 7600 and Cisco Catalyst®
6000 Series Routers, thus dramatically enhancing the Cisco
midrange routing portfolio (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Cisco
Midrange Routing Portfolio

Table 1. Cisco ASR 1000 Series Enterprise Applications
|
Applications |
|
Application |
Benefits |
Implementations |
Superior application availability at the WAN
edge:
Guarantee high-priority applications by creating a
virtual “glass ceiling” for lower-priority
applications. |
- Applies MQC policies on VLANs or tunnels
- Clamps an arbitrary collection of
low-priority traffic to a certain bandwidth
- Classifies based on differentiated services
code point (DSCP), NBAR, and Cisco IOS Flexible
Packet Matching (FPM) into numerous hierarchies,
(one for high priority and one for low priority)
|
- Implements flexible hierarchies
- Supports 128,000 queues
- All queues can have a minimum, maximum, and
excess bandwidth with priority propagation.
|
Multiservice, scalable, and secure headend:
The Cisco ASR 1000 Series offers full-service IP
Security (IPsec) VPN aggregation that scales to meet
the new bandwidth demands of service provider IP
VPNs. |
- Reduces CapEx and OpEx by migrating and
consolidating to fewer Cisco ASR 1000 Series
Routers
- Protects investment through easy transition
to much higher encryption support – offering an
encryption support of up to 3.5 Gbps with the
Cisco ASR 1000 Series Embedded Services
Processor (ASR1000-ESP10)
- Offers easier management through embedded
security services in Cisco Packet Processor,
with no additional service modules or blades
required
- Optimized for QoS and IP Multicast
applications
|
- Supports thousands of sites
- Supports 6000 tunnels
- Offers 3.5-Gbps encryption performance and
6.5-Gbps non-cryptographic throughput support
- Offers 2 Mpps with all baseline services
combined and encryption enabled
|
|
Embedded high-speed firewall:
With the Zone-Policy Firewall, the Cisco ASR 1000
Series acts as an implicit complete barrier between
any interfaces not members of the same zone. An
explicit zone-pair policy must be specified (using
Cisco Policy Language; that is, Modular QoS CLI [MQC])
in each direction between each zone pair. The policy
establishes within the router what kind of stateful
inspection (Layer 4, Layer 7, or application) and
session parameters to apply to each zone pairing.
Example: An explicit policy allowing HTTP and
Domain Name System (DNS) to traverse the
Internet-DMZ zone
|
- The firewall is embedded in the Cisco Packet
Processor; no additional service blades or
modules are required.
- Multigigabits of bandwidth are routed while
at the same time the router performs Zone-Policy
Firewall and other baseline features such as QoS,
IPv4, IPv6, NetFlow, etc.
- The Cisco ASR 1000 Series provides logging
of all firewall session state off to
network-management applications capable of
accepting relatively huge amounts of flow data.
Third-party applications can handle the session
data.
|
- Provides firewall performance of 5 to 10
Gbps at time of first availability, depending on
the embedded services processor
- Offers high-speed logging of 40,000 sessions
per second with NetFlow Version 9
- Supports throughput of 2 million packets per
second (Mpps) with numerous services and
firewall enablement combined
|
Managed CPE:
This implementation of branch architecture offers
powerful investment protection with services and
scale. |
- Helps branch office route correctly over
various types of Ethernet service-level
agreements (SLAs)
- Encrypts multigigabits of bandwidth –
without any additional service blades or modules
- Optimizes the WAN to route around brownouts
in the service provider network to further
guarantee mission-critical applications
- Offers a small form factor (2 rack units
[2RU]) with the Cisco ASR 1002 Router, including
software modularity and ISSU
- Offers accessibility even when
|
- Offers first-in-industry software redundancy
support, without any additional hardware module
- Powerful firewall and NAT performance of 5
to 10 Gbps and 1.5 - to 3.5-Gbps encryption
support in addition to WAN optimization and
voice features
|
Table 2. Cisco ASR 1000 Series Service Provider Applications
|
Applications |
|
Application |
Benefits |
Implementations |
Broadband L2TP access concentrator (LAC) or L2TP
Network Server (LNS):
Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) endpoint to tunnel
Point-to-Point Protocol (PPPoX) or IP sessions with
bandwidth demands in the STM-1 ATM, Fast Ethernet,
Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet range |
- Ideal for triple-play (data, voice, and
video) wholesale deployments
- Offers integral service delivery
- Offers per-user firewall, flexible packet
matching, NBAR, SBC, etc.
|
- Provides very high scalability of up to
32,000 subscribers and up to 16,000 tunnels
|
Service provider edge: Layer 3 VPN (L3VPN)
provider edge:
Example: Distributed provider edge, or provider edge
in global VPN networks for bandwidth demands such as
asymmetric DSL (ADSL), T1/E1, STM-1, STM-4, Fast
Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, etc. |
- Provides integral services in Cisco
Packet Processor:
- Encryption, Flexible Packet Matching,
NBAR, SBC, IP Multicast, etc.
|
- Offers excellent multicast performance
- Scales to 4000 Virtual Route Forwarding (VRF)
instances, 1 million Label Distribution Protocol
(LDP) labels, and 16,000 access control lists (ACLs)
- Supports up to 1 million IPv4 routes
- Supports up to 250,000 IPv6 routes
|
Service provider edge: High-end route reflector:
As a route reflector for bandwidth support of 10
Gbps |
- Provides high scalability
- Offers modular design of route processor and
embedded services processor with hardware and
software redundancy
|
|
Next-generation voice and multimedia example:
Cisco Session Border Controller (SBC):
The SBC implementation performs the voice and video
gateway functions simultaneously with regular IP
data services.
No appliance or additional service blade is required. The control
protocols and media protocols work transparently
within a complex voice architecture. |
- The WAN edge is simpler to manage because
only one egress and one ingress point needs
management and policy application.
- With the distributed control plane and
separate data-forwarding plane, the signaling
and control processing remain separate from
media processing.
- ISSU support allows for easy addition of
new-use cases.
- A single SBC application on the Cisco ASR
1000 Series can be used for residential,
enterprise, and service provider peering
applications.
|
- Facilitates SBC with security, QoS, IPv4,
and IPv6 (IP Unicast and IP Multicast
simultaneously)
- 32,000 simultaneous voice calls and
multimedia data of up to 10 Gbps with
accounting, firewall, and call quality
enabled
- Integrated with inbox high-availability
infrastructure and Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Relay
|
Software
The Cisco ASR 1000 Series is supported in Cisco IOS XE
Software, which is introduced with the Cisco ASR 1000 Series
Routers as a modular operating system. Based on Cisco IOS
Software Release 12.2SR, Cisco IOS XE Software is designed
to provide modular packaging, feature velocity, and powerful
resiliency. Because of the extreme flexibility and robust
performance of the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Embedded Services
Processors (ESPs), which are based on the Cisco QuantumFlow
Processor technology, Network Security, Deep Packet
Inspection, Cisco IOS Firewall, and many other advanced
features are implemented in Cisco IOS XE Software without
the need of additional hardware support (for example, in the
form of a service blade).
One of the most innovative features is that the Cisco IOS XE
Software supports dual Cisco IOS Software consolidated
packages in one single Cisco ASR 1000 Series Route Processor
for software redundancy in the Cisco ASR 1002 and the Cisco
ASR 1004 Router. This dual Cisco IOS Software consolidated
package could be the same consolidated package for backup,
or a different consolidated package also on a different
Cisco IOS XE Software release for resilient upgrade.
Information about the compatibility of supported dual
consolidated packages is available in the release notes. The
(optionally) hardware-redundant route processor and ESP
configuration in the Cisco ASR 1006 Router does not support
Cisco IOS Software redundancy in a single route processor
since each of the two RPs support one Cisco IOS XE image.
Businesses today demand more from their networks than ever
before.
Networks today now need to support all forms of
media—including data, voice, and video—to enhance business
communications and lower operating costs. Access has also
changed, as thousands of new devices connect to the network
via wireless and wired connections.
To solve these pressing challenges, organizations need their
networks to contain intelligence and play an active role in
securely integrating applications in a way that is easy to
manage. Intelligent networks integrate many advanced
applications into an adaptable, pervasive, and collaborative
system.
Integrated Security:
In today's environment , a mix of point-product solutions is
no longer sufficient protection.Network security must be
pervasive and integrated into the fabric of the network
infrastructure itself. The network becomes the main point of
control for preventing and responding to security threats
from internal and external sources. An integrated strategy
includes multiple types of protection and dramatically
improves the ability of networks to identify, prevent, and
adapt to security threats. Such systems help to ensure
information privacy, protect against threats, and control
access to corporate resources.
IP Communications:
Voice, video, and other types of data are woven into a
converged network. IP Communications—which includes IP
telephony as well as unified messaging and voicemail;
customer contact applications; and audio, Web, and
rich-media conferencing tools—demonstrates the power of an
intelligent network. Tight integration into the
infrastructure means that each new application—video, Web,
or telephony—is just another media type rather than an
entirely different communications system. The applications
themselves can intelligently communicate with the
infrastructure to meet the constantly changing needs of the
system.
Wireless:
Wireless cannot be viewed as an isolated application,
especially when wireless access points scale into the
hundreds or thousands. An intelligent network provides the
framework that enables a wireless LAN solution to take full
advantage of existing tools, knowledge, and resources of the
wired infrastructure to address critical wireless LAN
security, deployment, and control issues.
IP-based voice, wireless, and security are
only the first in a new wave of advanced applications that
are beginning to powerfully change the ways in which
businesses operate. Organizations must consider how they can
best enable their networks today so that their companies can
continuously take advantage of new applications quickly,
secure them easily, and manage them efficiently in pursuit
of their business goals.
Other Cisco Systems solutions include:
Catalyst Switches
Security
Trend Micro
Additional Resources:
Documents:
Cisco Router Guide
Cisco Routing and Switching Technology Made Simple Guide
Integrated Services Router Poster

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