Cisco Pumps Up Router Performance

Cisco Systems Thursday is upping the ante in the WAN space with performance upgrades to its recently-launched family of aggregation routers.

Cisco has doubled the performance capabilities of its Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 Series to 20 Gigabits-per-second and also expanded the security services available on the router line.

The performance boost comes via Cisco's new 20-Gbps Embedded Services Processor, available for its ASR 1004 and ASR 1006 models. The new module also offers 8-Gigabit IPsec encryption capabilities. Cisco up until now has offered only 5-Gigabit and 10-Gigabit processor modules for the ASR line. All three modules are based on the QuantumFlow processor technology introduced in February.

"It's more than just saying, 'hey, this router is faster.' It's about all of the additional services," said Jonathan Davidson, director of enterprise routing at Cisco, San Jose, Calif. "Now you can have a 20-Gigabit firewall inside of a router."

In addition to the new hardware module, Cisco also introduced a software upgrade that adds tighter integration between the ASR line and the vendor's WAN optimization technology.

Cisco first began shipping the ASR line in March, billing it as a new class of router that filled the gap between its 7200 Series and Catalyst 6000 lines.

The new processor module is available now at a list price of $50,000.

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