Telstra gears up for zettabyte era: deploys Cisco ASR 9000 edge routers in Next IP

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 25 August 2009 12:30

IT Industry - Strategy

Cisco has announced that Telstra is deploying its ASR 9000 multiservice edge routers to support a range of bandwidth intensive, content-based services, such as video.

According to Cisco, Telstra selected the Cisco ASR 9000 as its next generation IP edge routing platform "because Cisco was able to provide a strong foundation to meet Telstra's future bandwidth requirements."

Cisco added that deployment of the ASR 9000 at the edge of Telstra's network, "complements the existing deployment of the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System (CRS) router in the core...Because both platforms use the Cisco IOS-XR operating system, Telstra is able to take advantage of operational consistency and high reliability through the majority of its production network."

The decision is a significant development on Telstra's original plans for its next generation IP network, Next IP, announced in 2005, under which it has already widely deployed Tellabs 8800 multiservice edge routers throughout the network.

Telstra told iTWire at the time  that "Using Tellabs' 8800 multi-service router will allow Telstra to deliver a wider range of high-speed data services over a converged network architecture. Over the next three to four years, this will see Telstra provide a full range of residential, business and wireless traffic anytime and anywhere, on a single platform."

Earlier this month at a briefing on Next IP Telstra GMD networks and services, Michael Rocca presented a slide showing Next IP with the Tellabs 8800 at the edge of the network providing access to a range of current and legacy services and Alcatel-Lucent 7450 ethernet aggregation switches. He told iTWire that the network had been planned with a 20 year horizon and designed to be scalable to meet anticipated demand over that timeframe and said that the initial project, as envisioned in 2005 was now about 90 percent complete.

However since 2005 when Next IP was conceived IP traffic, and particularly video traffic has increased hugely and the Cisco ASR 9000 is, according to Cisco, "designed to deliver massive scale, with industry leading 400G per slot capacity and scale up to 6.4 terabits per second, rich service capabilities including non-stop video experience with a reduced carbon footprint."

According to Cisco, "Global IP traffic is increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent, nearly doubling every two years. This will result in an annual bandwidth demand on the world's IP networks of more than half a zettabyte. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes."

Separately, Cisco announced that it would double the density of the ASR 9000 Series with the introduction of a new single-slot 16 x 10 gigabit ethernet (10GE) line card, delivering over 100Gbps, "faster than any other forwarding module available," according to Cisco. "Unlike competitive offerings which are limited up to 50G per slot today, the new Cisco 10GE line card showcases the value of the industry's only system designed for up to 400G-per-slot capability," Cisco claimed.

iTWire has sought comment from Telstra and will update this article if and when this becomes available.