Cisco launches network convergence system for telcos

BANGALORE, INDIA: With Internet traffic rapidly growing amid new waves of cloud, mobile, video and machine-to-machine applications, Cisco has introduced the Cisco Network Convergence System (NCS), a network fabric family designed to serve as the foundation of a massively scalable, smarter and more adaptable Internet.

As per the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast (2012-2017), there will be 2 billion networked devices in India by 2017, up from 1 billion in 2012. VNI also projects India IP traffic to grow six fold from 2012- 2017 with a 44 per cent CAGR. This unprecedented data and devices growth offers monetization opportunities for Service Providers but at the same time puts immense pressure on their networks.

NCS enables service providers to not only accommodate growing network traffic but also seize the opportunity created by trillions of programmable device-driven events generated by the Internet of Everything (IoE), the networked connection of people, data, processes and things.

The IoE requires networks to scale not only bandwidth, but also compute and control functions to manage policies and to program responses with precise results in the expected timeframe.

The NCS is designed to facilitate such IoE events, which can be ongoing "conversations" creating strings of interactivity between people, applications and devices, such as wearable health monitors linking with personal information and cloud-based health portals or 4G LTE-connected automobiles signaling that a driver is almost home, prompting the home network to adjust home temperature and lighting.

The Cisco NCS family consists of three key components that can be managed as a single integrated system for business agility and simplified operations.

NCS 6000 comes with the industry's first 1 Tbps line card and has the capability of transporting up to 5 Tbps per slot and 1.2 Pbps per system, to support a converged IP and optical environment.

NCS 4000, which will be available in the first half of 2014, will support 400 Gbps per slot and 6.4 Terabits per system and be available in single, back-to-back, and multi-chassis configurations. It will also support optical transport network (OTN), dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), SONET and Ethernet applications.

NCS 2000 connects DWDM transport networks at rates of 100 Gbps and beyond and supports dynamic network configurability with 96-channel, next-generation intelligent ROADM capabilities.

The NCS incorporates industry's most scalable and programmable silicon, intelligent convergence for optimization and simplification as well as advanced virtualization capabilities.

Several global service providers - including BSkyB (Sky), KDDI and Telstra - are deploying the Cisco NCS to create new revenue streams, simplify operations and deliver exciting personalized experiences to their customers.The system's programmability and virtualization capabilities enable service providers to accelerate the transition to software defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV).