The Cisco^® ASR 9000 Series 4-port Line Card and 8-port 100 Gigabit Ethernet Line Card deliver industry-leading high density with line-rate 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports to any slot of a Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Router. These high-capacity line cards are designed to remove bandwidth bottlenecks in the network that are caused by a large increase in video-on-demand (VoD) IPTV point-to-point video Internet video and cloud services traffic. A single 100 Gigabit Ethernet port can now replace large 10 Gigabit Ethernet link aggregation bundles to simplify network operations. Based on Cisco CPAK^™technology this line card has flexible interfaces that support 100 Gigabit Ethernet 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet modes so it gives customers the flexibility to mix and match interface types on the same line card.

For example with the help of Cisco CPAK 10x10G-LR optics a single 100 Gigabit Ethernet port can be divided into 10x10 Gigabit Ethernet ports using breakout cables or patch panels for unprecedented density and scale. These different interface modes can be configured easily through the command line interface (CLI) without resetting or restarting the line card. Using a "green design" these line cards also let customers put an unused slice in power-saving mode to reduce power consumption. With these capabilities the ASR 9000 Series line cards (Figure 1 and Figure 2) and routers provide the fundamental infrastructure for scalable Carrier Ethernet and IP/Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) networks promoting profitable business residential and mobile services.

Both the ASR 9000 Series 4-port and 8-port 100 Gigabit Ethernet line cards are fully compatible with Cisco ASR 9006 Router ASR 9010 Router ASR 9904 Router ASR 9912 Router and ASR 9922 Router. However their chassis may require a hardware update for the cooling and power systems because the line cards offer industry-leading high-density 100 Gigabit Ethernet throughput. The 4-port and 8-port line cards are both designed to support full line rate in non-oversubscribed fashion.

In fact the line cards set a new standard for Layer 2 and Layer 3 service density and scale allowing operators to offer highly predictable managed transport services while optimizing the use of network assets. The 10x10G Cisco CPAK breakout option further increases the capability of each line card to support large-scale aggregation data center interconnect (DCI) and the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Satellite Network Virtualization (nV) System mode on the ASR 9000 Series Router. These versatile capabilities help operators qualify and stock one type of line card that can be deployed in any combination of Layer 2 Layer 3 DCI or aggregation applications thereby reducing capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx) as well as reducing the time required to develop and deploy new services.

The ASR 9000 Series can extend 100 Gigabit Ethernet transport over an IP-over-dense-wave-division-multiplexing (IPoDWDM) network when used with the Cisco ONS 15454 DWDM transponder solution. Distances of up to 3000 kilometers can be achieved while using the optical protection capabilities of the DWDM network.