Cisco unveils new generation of branch routers

Network World - Cisco this week unveiled a new generation of its Integrated Services Router, a branch office platform optimized for video and virtualized services.

The routers had been expected.

The ISR G2 is designed to address increasingly distributed and collaborative workforces, and is the cornerstone of a new Cisco architecture called Borderless Network. Borderless Network is a five-phase plan to deliver services and applications to anyone anywhere, regardless of device or network technology.

Borderless Network is intended to support applications, processing cycles and services that are increasingly distributed and virtualized, such as those in cloud computing and software-as-a-service environments. Some analysts say it is more than another Cisco "marketecture," though.

"Application and device borders are eroding," says Rob Whiteley of Forrester Research. "This is not like SONA (Cisco's Services Oriented Network Architecture) where it was very hard to point to things to implement. SONA was more of a marketecture, more of a religion that you adopted. It was trying to convince you of value, whereas (Borderless Networks) has value."

Cisco introduced the first-generation ISR in 2004 and has sold more than 7 million units since then, an installed base of $10 billion, company officials say. Some analysts say its popularity is unmatched.

"The ISR line is perhaps the best-selling network product line of all time," says Zeus Kerrvala of The Yankee Group. "They've done a great job of keeping the ISR features set way ahead of any competitor, which is the reason they have north of 90% share. There's no product set that Cisco has put more focus on and it remains the cornerstone of their enterprise penetration strategy."

According to Dell'Oro Group, Cisco owned an 84% revenue share of the $709 million access router market in the second quarter of 2009.

With the economy turning around and video expected to boom as a percentage of network traffic, that share may increase. ISR G2 routers -- the 1900, 2900 and 3900 series -- include new video digital signal processors key to delivering what Cisco calls "medianet" capabilities for TelePresence, surveillance, collaboration and digital signage.

Other media enhancements of ISR G2 include a video-ready media engine, scalable audio-conferencing, up to 1 terabyte of video storage per module, a multi-gigabit switching fabric for high performance, and WAN optimization and application acceleration.

But the ISR really owes its success to service enablement -- Cisco says there are hundreds of services available for the first generation. On that front, Cisco introduced a number of enhancements including a software license to turn up new services on the router rather than going through a hardware upgrade.

The ISR G2's service-ready engine lets users dynamically deploy remote, virtualized services in branches without on-site support or network downtime. The ISR G2 services module includes up to 1 terabyte of on-board storage for these virtualized services.