Cisco Launches Industry’s First ‘Network-as-a-Fabric’

Today Cisco announced that it would be expanding its Cloud-Scale Networking solutions. These expanding solutions are designed to help service providers and web companies get the most out of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) as they transition their central offices to next-generation data centers.

Today Cisco announced that it would be expanding its Cloud-Scale Networking solutions. These expanding solutions are designed to help service providers and web companies get the most out of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) as they transition their central offices to next-generation data centers.

In a recent study Cisco commissioned, Heavy Reading (an independent research organization) found that over 70% of service providers that they surveyed are either planning or are currently in the process of transforming their central office using NFV and SDN techniques. Cisco is utilizing data center DevOps principals and techniques to bring the benefits of traditional networks into the central office. Cisco is creating a unified Network-as-a-Fabric across central office, metro, core, and data center environments to bring simplification, automation and virtualization with its Cloud-Scale Networking.

Key benefits of Cloud-Scale Networking include:

• Large-scale automation for provisioning and network changes in minutes vs. hours
• Software extensibility for modular, rapid service deployment
• Real-time visibility and control through streaming telemetry
• Delivered through Cisco IOS XR software at half the total cost of ownership (TCO) and double the efficiency and performance over five years, compared to present mode of operation.

The new capabilities launched today, enabled by Cisco IOS XR include:

• EVPN (Ethernet Virtual Private Network) which provides separation between the data plane and the control plane, creating a unified, centralized overlay control plane based on border gateway protocol (BGP) and industry standards.
• Segment Routing End-to-End that creates a unified, common-forwarding underlay to further simplify network operations
• Model-Driven Telemetry that delivers increased, granular, real-time visibility via native, open, common data models for automation and efficient operation of physical and virtual resources

Cisco is also adding new solutions to its Cisco Network Convergence Series (NCS) family including: NCS 5501/5502, a small form factor router for leaf-spine data center/WAN topology; NCS 5516, a modular router for more scalability in leaf-spine topology; and NCS 1001, a compact, programmable interconnect with integrated optical amplifiers and protection.

Cisco Cloud-Scale Networking

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