Review: Cisco Router Packs Robust Networking Power into a Small Space

Faced with the expansion of physical designs and increased costs, governments of all sizes are trying to consolidate data center services or eliminate their dependence on them altogether. But, apart from moving completely to the cloud - a transition that not all government entities feel comfortable with - there have been few options so far.

The aggregation service routers of the Cisco ASR 920 series contain a large amount of network power in a small space. They are designed with open configurations so that network administrators can implement them to provide precise support for the services and a specific number of users, and then expand them as needed. I tested the ASR-920-12SZ model, which is designed for operator-level access or specific applications, such as mobile backhaul operations.

I was surprised to find so much capacity in a thin 1U configuration. In addition to a powerful processor backed by 4 gigabytes of RAM, there are 12 ports of 1 gigabit and four dual ports of 1 Gb / 10 Gb for a maximum performance of 64 gigabits per second. The unit can support up to 20,000 simultaneous IPv4 and 6,000 IPv6 routes. It can even handle 128 VPN multiprotocol label switching. This would allow a single router to serve both internal government connections and many public applications, all with secure and fast connections.

Advanced networking with the Cisco ASR 920 series router

Right out of the box, the Cisco ASR-920-12SZ router is an impressive piece of hardware. If you have less than 20,000 simultaneous IPv4 connections (or 6,000 IPv6), then you can probably run most of the default settings.

But the ASR-920-12SZ is designed to do much more. First I tried to prioritize several types of traffic, and then simulated a service level, distribution agreement.

Prioritization was easy with the multilevel priority queuing function. I just prioritized each type of traffic in the policy maps. These can be applied to other Cisco 900 series devices in networks that contain more than a single unit.

I gave traffic that tends to be sensitive to delays, such as voice and video, higher priority in the outbound link on other types of traffic, such as file transfers, so a delay would not be a big concern. When re-running the performance tests, I discovered that the newly designated high-priority traffic passed directly, while the lower-priority data experienced some delay when the unit was near its maximum performance.

It was a bit more complicated (but not so difficult) to also write policies in the code, such as allowing a user with a specific media access control address to have a higher priority than others. It could also track the amount of data accessed by different users, although this required a few more steps.

Still, working with such advanced capabilities was surprisingly easy using the intuitive interface. IT professionals should have no problem squeezing even more the highly configured performance of the already impressive base unit.

Consider the cooling components for the router

By moving away from a single data center model, the router has a simple, step-by-step step-by-step cooling configuration and heat-tolerant components. I put the unit inside a shelf of the test bed with a point cooler that blew directly on it, and then again after hours without any cooling, and the performance was not measurably different. The air conditioner in the single room should work to support the router, although it will get very hot around the machine.

To test the performance, I set up traffic generation devices to simulate network traffic on both sides of the router, including different IPv6 and IPv4 connections. The router never stopped, even when it is running near its maximum, with a variety of different packet sizes and media types. All checks of random cyclic redundancy were approved, so the data was not delayed too much or damaged during transit.

Having this level of performance, comparable to a data center, is impressive in a compact unit. State and local governments could easily use one or more 900 series routers to help manage the traffic of their offices, employees and applications, expand capacity as needed and control expenses, all without compromising performance.