Cisco ASR 1000 designed for multivendor enterprise branch networks

Earlier this week, Cisco launched its ASR 1000 (Aggregation Services Router), positioning the technology for both carriers and enterprises.

Now consider the following:

1) The press release quotes the SVP and GM of the Cisco Service Provider Group, confirming who the product was primarily designed for.

2) It's called an aggregation router. But aggregation in enterprise networks is most often provided by the public network cloud (based on MPLS, Ethernet or the Internet).

3) It's a 10+Gig box so it fits best at the WAN edge core router in large sites and in the data center, probably replacing legacy Cisco routers.

4) It's primarily built for service provider WAN Edge environments, and has been designed to support whatever the carrier's enterprise and residential customers have deployed as premise routing platforms (whether Linksys, Netgear, SMC, Multitech, Asante, USRobotics, D-Link in the consumer space, or Cisco, Juniper, Entrasys, 3com, HP, Huawei or Nortel Secure Routers in the enterprise space)

5) It runs on Linux and has a new version of IOS, not the same IOS on Cisco's ISR branch router.

For enterprises, put these together and it spells great news!

Cisco's new enterprise core router (the ASR 1000) is built for multi-vendor carrier environments, and opens the door for enterprises to look at converged branch solutions from other vendors, to realize better network performance, better reliability, and lower TCO and to unlock themselves from Cisco.