Cisco 7500 Series Routers

DATA SHEET

High-density, highly available aggregation and intelligent distributed network services at the edge for service providers and enterprises.

Figure 1. Cisco 7500 Series Router

KEY FEATURES

• High-performance distributed switching - This feature delivers high performance for mission-critical applications by supporting high-speed media and high-density configurations. Using the processing capabilities of the Versatile Interface Processors (VIP) and distributed Cisco Express Forwarding (dCEF), the Cisco 7500 Series router system capacity can exceed two million packets per second (pps).

• Full support for Cisco IOS® Software and enhancements for high-performance, feature-rich IP network services - The Cisco 7500 Series router performs network services such as quality of service (QoS) at high speed. VIP technology extends the performance of these features through distributed IP services.

• High port density and unmatched interface flexibility - The Cisco 7500 Series router provides high port density and an extensive range of LAN and WAN interfaces (port adapters). These features dramatically reduce the cost per port and allow for a flexible configuration.

• High availability - Enhanced features and capabilities include redundant route processors and power supplies, software fault isolation, and failover capabilities.

Table 1. Feature and Benefits Overview

APPLICATIONS

• Content networking-Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR) and QoS services, such as Distributed Weighted Random Early Detection (dWRED), Distributed Class-Based Weighted Fair Queuing (dCBWFQ), and distributed traffic shaping (dTS)

• Multiservice-Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) header compression, Multilink PPP (MLPPP) with link fragmentation and interleaving (LFI), Frame Relay Forum (FRF) 11 and 12 support for optimal digital voice transmission

• DS0 to DS1, DS3 and STM-1 WAN aggregation

• IBM mainframe connectivity

Table 2. Maximum Physical Ports/Slots

Table 3. Chassis, Route Switch Processors (RSPs), and VIPs

Table 4. Route Switch Processor (RSP) Specifications

Table 5. Versatile Interface Processor (VIP) Specifications

• High port density - Provides a high level of network consolidation; reduces overall inventory, logistics, and maintenance costs.

• Mixed media - Allows users to obtain better utilization of the slots available in the Cisco 7500. Mixed-media boards (for example, Fast Ethernet and serial) enable users to tailor the VIPs to specific media and density requirements.

• Packet memory - Each VIP ships with onboard packet memory, augmenting the total available system memory. This is particularly useful for applications where a large amount of buffering is required, such as in the presence of bursty traffic conditions, long round-trip propagation delays, or where there might be many high-bandwidth media vying for access to a smaller number of slower media.

• Offload processing - By operating a subset of the Cisco IOS Software, a VIP in a Cisco 7500 can offload some of the interface-specific functions that run in the central processor. This feature increases overall system performance.

• Distributed switching - Routing information is distributed from the RSP in the Cisco 7500 to one or more interfaces, enabling the VIP to make its own multilayer switching decisions. This feature enables an architecture that can gracefully scale to meet increasingly higher levels of system performance.

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Interfaces

• Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet

• Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Token Ring

• ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI)

• High-Speed Serial Interface (HSSI)

• Packet over T3/E3

• Multichannel T1/E1/T3

• ATM

• Packet over SONET (POS)

• Spatial Reuse Protocol (SRP) [also known as Dynamic Packet Transport (DPT)]

• IBM

• Voice

High-Availability Features

• High System Availability - The RSP supports the HSA feature, which allows two RSPs to be used simultaneously with the HSA feature enabled and configured. With the HSA feature, one RSP operates as the active processor and the other RSP operates as the standby processor, which takes over and reboots the system if the active RSP fails. In addition, the Cisco 7500 supports redundancy of power supplies.

• Cisco 7500 Single Line Card Reload - The Single Line Card Reload (SLCR) feature isolates a fault in one VIP from the rest of the system. It allows the system to reload only the line card that has failed, without affecting the work of the other line cards. This feature dramatically reduces total outage time and impact.

• Cisco 7500 Route Processor Redundancy+ - The RPR+ feature is an enhancement to the RPR feature. RPR+ further accelerates RSP switchover (down to only 30-40 seconds) compared to RPR. Also, it keeps the line cards from being reset and reloaded when an RSP switchover occurs.

• Cisco 7500 Fast Software Upgrade - The Fast Software Upgrade (FSU) feature reduces planned downtime; this feature is based on the same mechanism as RPR. It allows users to configure the system to switch over to a standby RSP, which is preloaded with a different image from that running on the active RSP.

• Cisco 7500 stateful switchover - This feature, which is based on RPR+, allows the active RSP to pass the necessary state information of key routing and interface protocols to the standby RSP upon switchover, thereby reducing the time for the standby RSP to learn and converge routes.

• Cisco 7500 Non-stop forwarding - Also based on RPR+, Non-Stop Forwarding allows routers with redundant RSPs to continue forwarding data to the standby RSP during a switchover. This feature uses the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) that was current at the time of the switchover. Once the routing protocols have converged, the FIB table is updated and stale route entries are deleted. This feature eliminates downtime during the switchover.

PHYSICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Table 6. Environmental Conditions

Table 7. Physical Specifications

Table 8. Power

Protocols

• Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols - ARP, IPCP, IP forwarding, IP host, IP multicast, PPP-over-ATM, TCP, Telnet, TFTP, UDP, HDLC, frame relay, IPX, AppleTalk, DecNet, transparent bridging, VLAN, MPLS, and IPv6

• Layer 3 routing protocols - EIGRP, IGRP, IS-IS, OSPF, BGP, PIM, and RIP

• Network management and security - AAA, CHAP, FTP, RADIUS, SNMP, PAP, and TACACS

• RFC 1483: Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM AAL 5

• RFC 1577: Classical IP and ARP over ATM AAL 5

• Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) - Determines the destination MAC address of a host using its known IP address

• BOOTP - Uses connectionless transport layer User Datagram Protocol (UDP); allows the switch (BOOTP client) to get its IP address from a BOOTP server

• Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) - Allows hosts to send error or control messages to other hosts; is a required part of IP; for example, the ping command uses ICMP echo requests to test if a destination is alive and reachable

• IP or IP over ATM - Suite used to send IP datagram packets between nodes on the Internet

• TCP - A reliable, full-duplex, connection-oriented end-to-end transport protocol running on top of IP; for example, the Telnet protocol uses the TCP/IP protocol suite

• Packet Internet groper (ping) - Tests the accessibility of a remote site by sending it an ICMP echo request and waiting for a reply

• Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) - Downloads network software updates and configuration files (Flashcode) to workgroup switch products

• Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) - Determines an IP address knowing only a MAC address; for example, BOOTP and RARP broadcast requests are used to get IP addresses from a BOOTP or RARPD server

• Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP) - A version of IP that runs over serial links, allowing IP communications over the administrative interface

• Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) - Prov