Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000)
Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
Considered Both Products
Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000)
Verified User
Administrator
Chose Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000)
I would choose Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers for enterprise WAN edge, branch aggregation, SD-WAN, and mid-sized service provider roles due to their high throughput, Integrated services(firewall, NAT, VPN), low power consumption and cooling, smaller size, and …
Chose Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000)
The Cisco 1000 series devices in most cases perform vastly different roles in a large network than the ASR 9000s. They take up a lot less physical space, require less cooling and less power consumption at a lower cost. However, they cannot process information at the same …
Chose Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
The Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers is more powerful and modular in both hardware and software, a when we began to scale, we needed to replace the 1k as opposed the Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers. At the same PoP, we have had power issues that …
Chose Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
We have mainly used the ASR9000s to take the place of older models and devices such as the GSR and CRS model routers. The GSRs have long been End Of Life and are no longer supported by Cisco. The CRS is a capable device but does not offer the versatility of the ASR family of …
Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000)
Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Based on my past and current experiences as a network engineer, they serve and run really well and also simplify our setup where we used them as edge or border or internet gateway routers. And also we used them as Data Center Interconnect, terminating dark fibers using LR or ZR SFP+. Even though they are well suited for enterprise network, there may still be some room for improvement with SRv6.
It is very well suited to act as your aggregator / core switch for mid to large facilities. it is flexible enough to really be useable in small environments but costs may hinder that. It has redundancy of power and management blades that does add a lot of peace of mind and security. Really the only reason you would not use a 9000 series is frankly cost and/or real requirements for performance. They have several versions of this model, plus they have an entire set of lines that can accommodate nearly as much as the 9000. Less demand or less of a budget can weigh in the decision to select this particular model.
The ASR 1000 series routers can, as with most devices, improve with additional memory capacity and upgraded chip sets for faster processing.
There seems to be limitations on the number of routing sessions the smaller ASR devices can handle, which can be overcome with proper planning and placement within the network.
[The] upgrade process [is] overly complicated compared to NX-OS or IOS. New images and the current configuration need to be compiled into "golden IOS's". If you don't include the configuration, you will have a clean device with no configuration.
[There are] major bugs in every release. We have had to cycle through all of our routers 3 times in the last year for updates due to show-stopping bugs that did not come to light until after the changes were made in production.
[It has] terrible documentation. You have to mine their site to get to any documentation for recent versions of IOS-XR. If you make the leap from 32-bit cXR to 64-bit eXR, then the documentation is more or less non-existent. Due to the internal architecture of hardware itself, technical specs can change from software version to software version, so don't expect any sort of firm scalability numbers. You'll have to rely on your sales engineer for that.
The device without a doubts performs at the level required and expected, we can renew it and use it as we have been using it for years. The device can be used as DCI, IPN/ISN, or even private cloud for customer circuit handoff, it also supports IPSec properly. The device is well suited in multiple segments of the network.
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.
The code for the switch is slightly different than the 2960X series that it is replacing, but still very familiar. It was relatively straightforward to work around this minor issue. The switch itself is solid and is very flexible as well as reliable.
At the time (during 2020 - COVID) there was an issue getting the new switches due to circumstances around COVID with reduced work force, etc. Generally we have not had an issue getting the product in a timely fashion.
We have received training on the equipment, which has made us add more networks on our own, we provide first level support, we validate the publication of the equipment and we can satisfy the needs of our internal clients in terms of the prompt recovery of the affected services
In some ways, the platform is a big improvement over our previous IOS and NX-OS devices: They offer version-controlled configuration staging/commits. They have a robust portfolio of network protocols and features even beyond datacenter devices. Due to the use of NPUs instead of relying entirely on ASICs for forwarding, new versions of the software are able to improve hardware performance and capacity. Unfortunately, I have run into more bugs on IOS-XR than I ever did on IOS or even NX-OS (which has a shocking number of bugs of its own) and you have to be a licensing guru to get your order right the first time.
Really, the only issue encountered when deploying the new 9000 series was attempting to copy a working config from an older series switch and applying it to the new 9000 series. Once it was explained that a new switch configuration needs to be built up specifically for the 9000 and deployed were the issues resolved.
We haven't used any other manufacturer other than Cisco. [H]owever, we have used different models that Cisco offers. The ASR has a little more horsepower than the ISR. Both are very good routers though.
When we are integrating the ASR9000 router with other devices then there should be the same device that can cater to the throughput. We can use the Cisco 9600 Switch which can be easily integrated and can handle the speed in terms of uplinks 40G can be handled. Adding to this Cisco DNA Center can be integrated to do the automation and monitoring purposes.
We work directly with our vendor/partner who works closely with our ability to pay at certain times of the year due to budget restraints of public education.
Depending on the model of 9000, it can be as simple of a setup as needed, or can be as expandable as required. The units we purchased only had SFP ports for basic trunk line configuration
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.
We didn't need to buy new devices when we were increasing backbone capacity from 1G to 10G.
Due to the modular nature of the software, when there is an issue with any running services, we need not reboot the whole device which affects all clients and availability.
