Cisco Product Blitz Targets Service Providers

Continuing its efforts to capture a greater share of spending by telecom and cable TV service providers, Cisco Systems on Monday rolled out new routers, upgrades to products and operating systems, and new interface options. It also reported that Sprint and Comcast have selected the vendor to provide IP-based networking gear for the build-outs of their networks.

Cisco introduced the Cisco XR 12000 series of routers, which enhances the company's 12000 router line with Cisco's IOS XR, a modular, self-healing operating system. The product line provides secure virtualization, which lets customers provide public and private services over a single router while isolating the services for greater security.

The system also is designed to provide continuous operations, even when new capacity or features are added. Expected to be available in June, a base configuration of the router has a list price of $45,500. It's being tested or used by the China Education and Research Network and KDDI Labs, the research arm of KDDI Corp., Cisco says.

The company also introduced hardware and software enhancements to its 7600 line of routers, used by many service providers to deliver converged voice, data, and video services. Cisco introduced the 7604 router, which offers multiples of 10-Gbps performance in a four-slot, five rack-unit chassis. It also added software features such as advanced traffic engineering and better quality-of-service capabilities. The products are being used by TeliaSonera, a Nordic and Baltic telecom company, and Bharti Televentures, a service provider in India.

Cisco also introduced the Cisco Interface Flexibility design, shared-port adapters, and interface processors. Because they're built on a common design, they're interchangeable across the Cisco line of routers. They are available for the 7304, 7600, 10000, 12000, XR 12000, and CRS-1 lines of routers.Sprint is migrating to a core IP, multiprotocol label switching network built on Cisco gear that will let it support and sell wide-area wired and wireless services, Cisco says. And Comcast is using Cisco equipment to build a network to deliver high-speed Internet, standard and high-definition TV signals, and voice services.

"In this competitive environment, service providers have to differentiate themselves from their competition," says Kelly Ahuja, VP of marketing in Cisco's carrier business unit. "We're providing them with the infrastructure products for them to be able to do that."