Introducing the most powerful compact service router – ASR1001-HX

[csluo@cisco.com]

I’m excited to introduce the most powerful compact services router in a 1-Rack-Unit format, the ASR1001-HX.

Before I go deep into this platform, for folks who are familiar with existing ASR1000 platforms such as ASR1001-X & ASR1002-X, an obvious question you might ask is – why are you coming up with this new platform? What are the differences? Does that mean you will EoS / EoL ASR1001-X & ASR1002-X soon?

For starter, the ‘H’ in ASR1001-HX represents ‘High-end’; so, it is a high-end, fixed platform with the same 1RU form-factor. ASR1001-X is max’d at 20Gbps performance and ASR1002-X at 36Gbps, while ASR1001-HX starts at 44Gbps; in essence, ASR1001-HX is designed to address the market where multiple 10GE interfaces are required as providers are moving from 1GE to 10GE circuits to accommodate the ever-increasing bandwidth needs due to high bandwidth consuming applications such as video and social media. Secondly, ASR1001-HX is designed to handle Ethernet based interfaces only; the ASR1001-X and ASR1002-X, on the other hand, support SPAs with legacy interfaces such as POS, ATM, T1/E1, T3/E3, etc. In short, ASR1001-X and ASR1002-X are here to stay.

Now, let’s dive right into the ASR1001-HX and explore what this router can do for you. With consolidated control plane (Route Processor), data plane (Forwarding Processors), and built-in 10GE/1GE interfaces architecture, ASR1001-HX is equipped with these powerful components and capabilities:

• Intel Gladden quad core running at 2.5 GHz – only one core is currently used as control plane; the remaining 3 are not utilized, making them perfect candidates for applications such as container, application hosting, even for 3^rd party applications.
• Either dual-AC or dual-DC or dual-HVDC Power Supplies (future), hot-swappable and FRU-able from Back panel, providing 1+1 redundancy for Power Supplies (PEMs)
• FRU-able crypto module (not hot swappable), coupled with “pay-as-you-grow” crypto performance upgradable licenses, it provides 8Gbps or 16Gbps crypto (IMIX) performance; for large (1400B) packets, it can deliver up to 29Gbps crypto performance; best of all, you only pay for up to 16Gbps crypto performance; anything above that, you get it for free
• Suite-B encryption is also supported for diverse VPN security solutions.
• Single Yoda ASIC, the 2^nd generation Cisco QFP technology which is the heart of the ASR1001-HX data plane, containing 62 packet processing engines, each engine can have 4 processing threads; this means the ASR1001-HX can process 62 * 4 = 248 packets simultaneously, providing 30+ MPPS (Million Packets Per-Second) forwarding with universal k9 baseline feature set, yielding 60Gbps+ total system output performance for IPv4 & IPv6
• Supports up to 88 Gbps (8x10GE + 8x1GE built-in ports) input traffic into the system; obviously the system is oversubscribed in this case; however, just like all other existing platforms within ASR1000 product family, ASR1001-HX is designed to handle oversubscription with classification and scheduling engine
• In case you are not aware, out of the 16 built-in ports, 4 of them can be configured as either 10GE or 1GE, providing additional level of flexibility for future growth if you need to move from 1GE interface to 10GE interface
• MACSec is also supported on each of the 16 built-in 10GE or 1GE ports, providing point-to-point and/or point-to-multipoint connection support for DCI, Campus interconnect, and Hop-Spoke deployment topology
• With default 8GB memory, upgradable to 16GB, the ASR1001-HX can scale up to 3.5 million IPv4 or IPv6 routes
• 2 million Firewall or traditional NAT Sessions can be achieved at linerate, generating 60Gbps FW/NAT performance
• Even if you were to use it as an AVC (Application Visibility Control, which is our term for DPI – Deep Packet Inspection) appliance, the ASR1001-HX can achieve up to 30Gbps performance
• When used as BNG, this 1RU form-factor router can terminate up to 29,000 BB sessions, plus 16,000 L2TP tunnels
• Last but not least, ASR1001-HX also supports IOS software redundancy without redundant hardware, just like the rest of existing ASR1001-X, 1002-X, 1002-HX, and 1004 routers.

With its built-in four 10-GE ports, eight 1-GE ports, and four configurable 10-GE / 1-GE ports, up to 60Gbps total system bandwidth, and the instant-on service capabilities and on-demand crypto capability up to 29 Gbps (1400B), the ASR 1001-HX is ideal for

• WAN aggregation and secure WAN
• Internet edge
• Data center interconnect
• Intelligent WAN (IWAN)
• Managed Services
• Small to medium BNG

[kamp]

Also FCSd Kahuna i.e ASR1002-HX on 16.2

[Barthorpe]

Is there an FCS date for the ASR1001-HX? (Still not in CCW)

[csluo@cisco.com]

we just enabled ASR1001-HX orderability; it usually takes up to 48 hours to replicate through systems before you can see it on CCW; please check again in a couple of day on CCW.

[abpsoft]

It's now in CCW, but I'm stunned by the fact that it's essentially more expensive than the 1002-HX. The base system is a tad cheaper than the 1002-HX base but only comes with 8GB RAM, after upgrading that to 16GB they are on par. And while the 1002-HX comes with 4*10G and 4*1G unlicensed, I cannot find any kind of data sheet or doc that would say the same about the 1001-HX. Instead, in CCW I can order it with up to four times FLSA1-HX-2X10GE, which would imply that all the 8 10GE ports are licensed. Something like the 1002-HX PIW introduction PDF is desperately missing here, I think. The fact the "data sheet" specifies Scalability starting with 44Gbps could be read as supporting evidence the box might actually come with the same 4+4 unlicensed port setup as the 1002-HX, but it's just guesswork. On the other hand, if all 10G ports need licensing, the 1001-HX would come up more expensive then the 1002-HX - I cannot imagine this is intentional?

[csluo@cisco.com]

ASR1001-HX has the same default ports, i.e. 4x10GE + 4x1GE ports enabled by default; the remaining ports can be enabled via licenses; yes, when adding 16GB memory, ASR1001-HX will be the same price as ASR1002-HX for default configuration. Besides the obvious facts that it's 1RU (vs. 2RU for ASR1002-HX) and less power consumption, one additional advantage of ASR1001-HX is that there are 4 configurable ports that can be configured as either 1GE or 10GE, depending on which port license is applied to these ports. these 4 ports are in bay 1 (right side of the right router).

[abpsoft]

Thanks for the clarification, the port licensing was the largest missing piece in the picture here - now it's clear. The pricing is still going to be a hard sell, though - unless the 1RU and power saved is at one's utmost priority. It may well be, and the up to 12 ports you can run at 1Gbps may be a decision criterion as well. But then the 1002-HX has two Yodas and bandwidth to spare as a result, is extensible with NIMs, scales to 32GiB RAM etc. I've waited for the 1001-HX in the hope it would not only come in at 60% the specced max BW of the 1002-HX but also something like 60% the price point. That (or even 75%) would have made the decision so much easier...