Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) vs Cisco 500 Series Network Convergence System (NCS 500)

Likelihood to Recommend

These work very well at the WAN edge, it may be costly for some. In which case, it may be worth considering an ISR if all the features or performance of the ASR 1000 are not needed. It works very well in a multi-gig environment regardless of the implementations we have done so far. These also work well at the edge or for smaller cores. I would recommend assessing your needs and checking the documentation to see whether or not this particular router will work for you or if it's overkill. In some cases, a significant amount of money can be saved by going with an ISR (if you still want to stick with Cisco). For data center core or similar environment, these might not be appropriate and I would recommend exploring other models such as ASR 9000.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Internet Company, 51-200 employees

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Well suited for10G aggregation at network edge. Small managed networks such as school districts or distributed enterprise campus. Not well suited to RPHY aggregation at network core — queuing in NCS540 results in jitter and poor RPHY performance. Allow port license purchases in smaller units. Better support for SLA performance monitoring capabilities would allow use as a box for 10G aggregation for Carrier Ethernet NNI handoff.

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Ben Wiechman

Director of Network Strategy and Engineering

ArvigTelecommunications, 501-1000 employees

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Pros

In most cases, the larger ASR routers such as the 1006 and 1009s have sufficient capabilities to be used as a Core network router.
The smaller ASRs such as the 1002 devices are best suited on the edge, capable of handling a limited number of connections due to the fixed chassis.

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Verified User

Contributor in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Switching.
Routing.
Access.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Telecommunications Company, 11-50 employees

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Cons

Licensing on the routers is more complicated than it needs to be. We have the ASR routers along with ISR routers both have the license of the advanced service, however, on the ISR routers that license did not include the app-X feature needed to send the application specific net-flow data we wanted. It would be better if Cisco was consistence with the features included with licenses.
Some software patches are quite involved as there is a boot loaded and IOS that must be upgraded.

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James Arnold

Network Administration Supervisor

Associated Electric CooperativeUtilities, 501-1000 employees

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MPLS feature set on NCS520
Full support for RFC2544, Y.1564 across the product line
Greater clarity of the impact of smaller buffers on NCS540 when compared to other Qumran chipsets — some use cases like RPHY aggregation at network core are not a good fit.

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Ben Wiechman

Director of Network Strategy and Engineering

ArvigTelecommunications, 501-1000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) 7.0

Based on 1 answer

Only ASR get EOL we would like to upgrade our routers to recomended replacements.

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Verified User

Professional in Engineering

Telecommunications Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) 9.5

Based on 2 answers

All our modular contingency service exercises use this equipment, it allows us to perform this type of exercises very easily, in a controlled and effective way. It is used at least once a month for these types of events. It also allows configuration replication in computers that are under the same model.

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Carlos Mendoza Barberán

Analista de Redes y Comunicaciones

Banco Internacional EcuadorFinancial Services, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

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Support Rating

Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) 7.8

Based on 5 answers

We did not heavily engage with the Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Router (ASR1000) support function as we decide to switch the solution to a more cost-effective option, and this was primarily a price decision vs. any support related decision.

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Verified User

General Manager in Corporate

Financial Services Company, 1-10 employees

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No score

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Implementation Rating

Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) 10.0

Based on 1 answer

Implementation was as per design and all best practice configuration was followed.

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Verified User

Professional in Engineering

Telecommunications Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

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Alternatives Considered

The Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) don't go against the alternatives I've used, but make a great combination of devices, and configuring them alongside each other makes it very easy to administer the whole network. Configuring VLANs across them and setting up policies can be done via CLI or web interfaces, or even using third-party softwares that get along really well with all of them.

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Jean Franco

CTO

Maila NetworksComputer & Network Security, 11-50 employees

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Higher 10G port density on NCS540Availability of 25G/40G/100G provides greater flexibilityGood choice when full line rate is not neededGood choice when full capabilities of ASR9000 are not required

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Ben Wiechman

Director of Network Strategy and Engineering

ArvigTelecommunications, 501-1000 employees

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Return on Investment

It is a healthy return on investment with planned packed size data. Average unicast latency is low and consistent with small and large packets (barring mid-sized).
Cisco devices last longer and also have a decent trade-in policy to recover some value when equipment is replaced.
Higher concurrent IPSec tunnels are offered, we tested for 1500+, fielding both encrypted and a mix of encrypted and cleartext traffic.

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Rohit Narang

Assistant Vice President

HSBC Commercial BankingFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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Relatively low cost access layer device.
Very cost effective means of getting 10G interfaces.
Some features available on other devices out of the box are more complex or absent on the NCS without licensing or assistance.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Telecommunications Company, 11-50 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No