The Cisco® Interface Flexibility (I-Flex) design combines shared port adapters (SPAs) and SPA interface processors (SIPs), taking advantage of an extensible design that facilitates service prioritization for voice, video, and data services. SPAs provide the physical interfaces for router connectivity ranging from copper, channelized, POS, ATM and Ethernet. The Cisco ASR 1000 Series SIP provides the physical termination for the SPAs and accepts up to four half-height and 2 full height Cisco SPAs. Enterprise and service provider customers can take advantage of improved slot economics resulting from modular port adapters that are interchangeable across Cisco routing platforms. The I-Flex design maximizes connectivity options and offers powerful service intelligence through programmable interface processors that deliver line-rate performance. I-Flex enhances speed-to-service revenue and provides a rich set of quality-of-service (QoS) features for premium service delivery while effectively reducing the overall cost of ownership. Figure 1 shows a sample of the wide range of SPAs supported on the Cisco ASR 1000 Series. Figure 2 shows the Cisco ASR 1000 Series SPA Interface Processor.
Figure 1. Cisco ASR 1000 Series SPAs
Figure 2. Cisco ASR 1000 Series SPA Interface Processor
Modular port adapters and programmable interface processors, which are interchangeable across Cisco carrier routing platforms, help enterprise and service provider companies protect network investments and reduce total cost of ownership. The Cisco SPA/SIP portfolio offers a rich set of QoS features for premium service delivery.
Features and Benefits
The Cisco SPA/SIP portfolio offers many advantages, including:
• Industry's most modular, flexible, intelligent interface processors
– Powerful flexibility provides mix-and-match interface types on the same interface processor for consistent services, independent of access technology.
– Pioneering programmable interface processors provide flexibility for the service diversity required in next-generation networks.
– The innovative design provides intelligent delivery of services without compromising on performance.
• Increased speed to service revenue
– The programmable Cisco architecture extended to 10 Gigabit Ethernet dramatically improves customer density, increasing potential revenue per platform.
– Interface breadth (copper, Channelized, Packet over SONET/SDH [PoS], ATM, and Ethernet) on a modular interface processor allows service providers to more quickly roll out new services, helping ensure that all customers large and small receive consistent, secure, and guaranteed services.
– High-density Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP) interfaces are featured for high-port-count applications with reach flexibility. Future optical technology improvements can be adopted using existing SPAs.
Cisco and our certified partners help make your enterprise WAN edge deployment a success with a broad portfolio of services based on proven methodologies. We can help you establish a secure, resilient WAN architecture and successfully integrate security and Cisco Unified Communications technologies with bandwidth to support video, collaboration, branch solutions, and growth in alignment with your business goals.
The Cisco lifecycle approach to services defines the requisite activities at each phase of the solution lifecycle. Planning and design expedite solution adoption. Award-winning technical support increases operational efficiency. Optimization improves performance, resiliency, stability, and predictability and prepares your network and teams for change. For more information: http://www.cisco.com/go/services.
