Control plane and data plane elements. The Cisco Route Switch Processor (RSP) is the powerful centralized engine that provides these features and more for Cisco routers. The Cisco RSP is designed to address the requirements of converged service provider networks - from Carrier Ethernet technologies to advanced services such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). It helps providers add innovative traffic management and intelligent packet switching and routing features.The Cisco RSP module contains separate control plane and data plane components. These include the main control plane CPU for the operating system and platform control software. The data plane packet processing and traffic management is performed by the Cisco Carrier Ethernet application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
Cisco Carrier Ethernet ASIC
Powered by the Cisco Carrier Ethernet ASIC and designed specifically for the needs of service providers, the Cisco ASR 900 Series routers deliver essential Carrier Ethernet technologies. These include hierarchical quality of service (HQoS), IPv4, IPv6, MPLS, and Hierarchical Virtual Private LAN Services (HVPLS). The Cisco Carrier Ethernet ASIC provides line-rate performance and supports advanced services including access control list (ACL) and HQoS without affecting performance. The ASIC incorporates innovative traffic management capabilities while providing intelligent packet switching and routing operations.
Service enhancement
With Cisco ASR 900 Series routers, each service is assigned enhanced QoS and security attributes. The router provides advanced per-traffic-class metering and offers bidirectional packet count and byte count statistics. The service offering is enhanced with operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) functionality that includes Layer 2 Connectivity Fault Management (CFM), IP service-level agreement (IP SLA) for Layer 3, and MPLS OAM. 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Service scale
The Cisco ASR 900 Series delivers flexible service scalability in a small footprint. The routers deliver high performance and high scale for point-to-point and multipoint VPN services. The HQoS capabilities of the Cisco ASR 900 Series scale to eight queues per service, three levels of scheduling, and buffer sizes capable of accommodating today's most demanding wireline and wireless applications.
Clocking and timing services
The Cisco ASR 900 RSPs contain the central system clocking and timing functions for the Cisco ASR 900 Series platform, which are required in a modern unified network. The RSPs offer integrated support for the Building Integrated Timing Supply (BITS), 10 MHz, 1 Pulse Per Second (1 PPS) and Time Of Day (TOD) interfaces. The Cisco ASR 900 Series platform also supports synchronous Ethernet (SyncE), IEEE 1588-2008, and can act as the clock source for network clocking of time-division multiplexing (TDM) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy/Synchronous Optical Network (SDH/SONET) interfaces.
