The Cisco® ASR 9000 Series Route Switch Processor (RSP) is a scalable, low-power, next-generation Carrier Ethernet platform with a system architecture specifically designed to accommodate service providers' unique convergence requirements of Layer 2 Ethernet transport plus Layer 3 services (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Cisco ASR 9000 Series Route Switch Processor
Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers offer one of the industry's highest-capacity Carrier Ethernet platforms. These routers are optimized for aggregation of dense 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gigabit Ethernet connections.
In addition to a higher capacity and scale, the Cisco ASR 9000 Series offers:
• Distributed forwarding and control planes for higher performance
• Modularized system components in both hardware and software, isolating failure and faults to subsystem and component
• Hardware-based signaling for the fabric: support for zero packet loss on switchover
• Built-in redundancy in hardware components such as the route switch processor, switch fabric, control-plane chassis control bus, and power supplies, thereby avoiding a single point of failure
The Cisco ASR 9000 Series operates in a fully distributed fashion, meaning that all packet-forwarding decisions and actions take place on each individual line card. The Cisco ASR 9000 Series Line Cards provide flexible programming infrastructure with high-density hierarchical quality-of-service (HQoS) services, security, and integrated Synchronous Ethernet (SyncE). The distributed nature of the Cisco ASR 9000 Series also presents itself in the control plane. The distributed control plane facilitates scale in features such as Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) and Ethernet operations, administration, and management (EOAM), which improve resilience and provide comprehensive instrumentation.
Cisco ASR 9000 Series routers bring the time-tested and comprehensive carrier-class capabilities of Cisco IOS® XR Software to the Carrier Ethernet edge. The operating system supports true software process modularity. The capabilities of Cisco IOS XR Software allow each process to run in separate protected memory, including each routing protocol along with multiple instances of control, data, and management planes supported.The software also supports distributed route processing.
Cisco ASR 9000 Series Route Switch Processor
The Cisco ASR 9000 Series Route Switch Processor is designed to deliver the high scalability, performance, and fast convergence required for today's and tomorrow's demanding video, cloud, and mobile services.
The Cisco ASR 9000 Series RSP provides a superior set of features that deliver unprecedented scale, service flexibility, and high availability:
• Switch fabric architecture
– Active-active switch fabric architecture that provides scalability and high availability
– Single-stage nonblocking architecture
– Service intelligence and traffic prioritization
• Network synchronization support
– Support for centralized Building Integrated Timing Supply (BITS) and DOCSIS® Timing Interface (DTI) timing reference system
Features and benefits of the Cisco ASR 9000 Series RSP are listed in Table 1.
Table 1. Features and Benefits of Cisco ASR 9000 Series RSP
Feature
Benefit
Highly scalable fabric
• Designed to support high 1/10/100-Gbps port densities
• Provides built-in scalability for investment protection
Dual RSP to provide an active-active switch fabric
• Offers traffic load balancing simultaneously across both fabrics
• Offers highly available system where loss of one RSP allows for unimpeded performance per slot
Distributed forwarding plane architecture
Allows line cards to support independent forwarding for enhanced performance and scale
Memory-less switch fabric
Ensures transparent nonblocking packet forwarding
Virtual output queuing and arbitration
• Offers service intelligence with prioritization of traffic (unicast and multicast)
• Provides efficient congestion management mechanism and avoids problems related to head-of-line blocking
Centralized arbiter
Uses an efficient credit mechanism to help ensure transparent switchover with zero packet loss
Two independent clock source connections (BITS and Synchronization Supply Unit [SSU])/DTI
Offers redundant, centralized network synchronization support
40-GB hard disk drive (HDD)
Allows storing of core dumps and helps reduce the system mean time to repair (MTTR)
Embedded Universal Service Bus (eUSB) memory port
Provides access to USB flash memory devices for software image loading and recovery
Front-panel LEDs
Provides visual indication of RSP status (active or standby), power management, and activity on Compact Flash and HDD
Management ports
Provides easy access to system console
Table 2 lists all the hardware that ships with the Cisco ASR 9000 Series RSP.
Table 2. Hardware Available
Product Number
Product Description
Cisco ASR 9000 Series Route Switch Processor
A9K-RSP-4G
and
A9K-RSP-8G
Route switch processor, bidirectional nonblocking fabric, controller, 40-GB hard drive; includes the following:
• Switch fabric
• CPU
• High-performance dual-core processors
• Memory internal
• 4-GB Error-Correcting Code (ECC)-protected DRAM for A9K-RSP-4G
• 8-GB Error-Correcting Code (ECC)-protected DRAM for A9K-RSP-8G
• RJ-45 connector for external timing reference interfaces (for example, BITS/SSU)
• Management
• Two 10/100/1000 BASE-T (RJ-45) LAN management ports
• One console port
• One auxiliary port
• Alarms
• Alarm outputs: Critical alarm (CR), major alarm (MJ), and minor alarm (MN)
• LEDs
• Amber alarm cut-off (ACO) and lamp test
• System synchronization alarm (SYNC)
• Compact Flash activity (CF)
• Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
• Fan tray visual indicator (UFAN/LFAN)
Software
The Cisco ASR 9000 Series delivers superior scale, service flexibility, and high availability into access and aggregation networks. It is powered by Cisco IOS XR Software - an innovative self-healing, distributed operating system designed for always-on operation while scaling system capacity up into the Tbps.
Cisco ASR 9000 Series Carrier Ethernet applications include business services such as Layer 2 VPN (L2VPN) and L3VPN, IPTV, Content Delivey Networks (CDNs), and Mobile Backhaul transport networks. Features supported include Ethernet Services; L2VPN; IPv4, IPv6, and L3VPN; Layer 2 and Layer 3 Multicast; IP over dense wavelength-division multiplexing (IPoDWDM), SyncE, EOAM and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) OAM, Layer 2 and Layer 3 access control lists (ACLs), H-QoS, MPLS Traffic Engineering Fast Reroute (MPLS TE-FRR), Multichassis Link Aggregation (MC-LAG), Integrated Routing and Bridging (IRB) and Cisco Nonstop Forwarding (NSF) and Nonstop Routing (NSR).
Cisco IOS XR Software Releases 4.0.0 and 4.0.1 introduce the support for a comprehensive portfolio of shared port adaptors (SPAs) to facilitate the multiservice edge (MSE) and Ethernet MSE (E-MSE) capability on the Cisco ASR 9000 Series. The Cisco ASR 9000 Series MSE and E-MSE capabilities allow enterprises to offer powerful business VPN services with strong SLA (service-level agreement) enforcement. Such services typically require simultaneous scale increases across multiple dimensions, for example, the number of Virtual Route Forwarding (VRF) interfaces, IPv4 and IPv6 route scaling, Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) sessions and instances of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) NSR interfaces, and so on. A Cisco ASR 9000 Series system configuration requiring high multiple dimensional scale requires an RSP with 8G memory to support the increased system scale.
Product Specifications
Table 3 provides details about two chassis variants of the Cisco ASR 9000 Series: the Cisco ASR 9010 and Cisco ASR 9006. Both systems are designed to the same high standards of performance and reliability, feature the same power and thermal innovations, and can share RSPs, line cards, power entry modules (PEMs), and power supplies, for maximum flexibility in your network planning.
• RSP redundancy (both RSPs must be the same version, either A9K-RSP-4G or A9K-RSP-8G)
• Software redundancy
Power supply
• A9K-3KW-AC
• A9K-2KW-DC
• A9K-1.5KW-DC
• PWR-3KW-AC-V2
• PWR-2KW-DC-V2
Physical specifications
• Occupies one slot; dual redundant RSPs in 2 slots in Cisco ASR 9010 and ASR 9006 chassis
• Height: 1.65 in. (4.19 cm) [[please add metric equivalents in parentheses; see temperature examples]]
• Width: 16 in. (40.64 cm).
• Depth: 26.53 in (67.38 cm).
• Weight: 18 lb (8.16 kgs)
Power input
• Worldwide ranging AC (200-240V; 50-60 Hz; 16A nominal)
• Worldwide ranging DC (-48V to -60V; -54V; 50A nominal)
Environmental conditions
• Operating temperature: 32 to 104°F (0 to 40°C)
• Storage temperature: -40 to 167°F (-40 to 75°C)
• Relative humidity: 10 to 90%, noncondensing
• Regulatory compliance
Power consumption
• Typical: 170W
• Maximum: 205W
Environmental Specifications
Operating temperature (nominal)
41 to 104ºF (5 to 40ºC)
Operating temperature
(short-term)
23 to 131ºF (-5 to 55ºC)
Note: Short-term refers to a period of not more than 96 consecutive hours and a total of not more than 15 days in 1 year. (This time refers to a total of 360 hours in any given year, but no more than 15 occurrences during that one-year period.)
Operating humidity (nominal) (relative humidity)
10 to 85%
Operating humidity
(short-term)
5 to 90%
Note: Not to exceed 0.024 kg water per 1 kg of dry air
Storage temperature
-40 to 158ºF (-40 to 70ºC)
Storage (relative humidity)
5 to 95%
Note: Not to exceed 0.024 kg water per 1 kg of dry air.
Operating altitude
-60 to 4000m (up to 2000m conforms to IEC/EN/UL/CSA 60950 requirements)
Compliance
Network Equipment Building Standards (NEBS)
Cisco ASR 9000 is designed to meet:
• SR-3580: NEBS Criteria Levels (Level 3)
• GR-1089-CORE: NEBS EMC and Safety
• GR-63-CORE: NEBS Physical Protection
• VZ.TPR.9205: Verizon TEEER
ETSI standards
Cisco ASR 9000 is designed to meet (qualification in progress):
• IEC/EN-61000-4-4: Electrical Fast Transient Immunity (2kV Power, 1kV Signal)
• IEC/EN-61000-4-5: Surge AC Port (4kV CM, 2kV DM)
• IEC/EN-61000-4-5: Signal Ports (1kV)
• IEC/EN-61000-4-5: Surge DC Port (1kV)
• IEC/EN-61000-4-6: Immunity to Conducted Disturbances (10Vrms)
• IEC/EN-61000-4-8: Power Frequency Magnetic Field Immunity (30A/m)
• IEC/EN-61000-4-11: Voltage DIPS, Short Interruptions, and Voltage Variations
• EN 50121-4: Railway EMC
Safety
Cisco ASR 9010 is designed to meet:
• UL/CSA/IEC/EN 60950-1
• IEC/EN 60825 Laser Safety
• ACA TS001
• AS/NZS 60950
• FDA - Code of Federal Regulations Laser Safety
Cisco Services for Cisco ASR 9000 Series
Through a lifecycle services approach, Cisco delivers comprehensive support to service providers to help them successfully deploy, operate, and optimize their IP Next-Generation Networks (IP NGNs). Cisco Services for the Cisco ASR 9000 Aggregation Services Routers provide the services and proven methodologies that help assure service deployment with substantial return on investment, operational excellence, optimal performance, and high availability. These services are delivered using leading practices, tools, processes, and lab environments developed specifically for Cisco ASR 9000 Series deployments and post-implementation support. The Cisco Services team addresses your specific requirements, mitigates risk to existing revenue-generating services, and helps accelerate time to market for new network services.