Cisco 5500 Series Network Convergence System (NCS 5500) vs Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)

• Large bandwidth per blade at 36x100Gb.
• IOS-XR for full functionality of automation and service provider experience.
• Great price per port when looking at the scaling opportunity.

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• Layer 3 multicast. It handles the additional load of multicast without issues. Other platforms we have used have had over-subscription issues.
• We've used several MPLS features such as pseudowire using bridge-domains as well as xconnects. Plenty of features to solve any design problem.
• IOS XR. I just love operating in IOS XR. Solve so many problems that exist in IOS.

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• When upgrading components of the NCS 5500 it can take a particularly long time and many steps to confirm additional components. Have all updates on the need basis instead of a one-step process.

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• Upgrade process 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 config.
• 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.
• 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.

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• Allows us to offer free WiFi for our visitors, patients, families, and staff on an equal performance plane.
• Allows us to scale access and traffic based on usage, helping our staff maintain efficiency
• This acts a major component to our mobile expansion strategy allowing development anytime anywhere

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• Higher reliability has significantly reduced the need for manual intervention
• Lower downtime ensures better top-line figures
• Although it may be difficult to quantify, I am certain that the higher performance does have an impact (maybe indirectly) on other business functions. High-performance routers are like the oil that keeps an engine running smoothly.

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