Light Reading's Test of Cisco's Cloud Services Network Infrastructure

NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Light Reading (www.lightreading.com), the leading online publication for the global telecom industry, has published the second part of the world's first publicly available test of an end-to-end cloud services infrastructure, focusing on intelligent cloud network infrastructure. The report is available for free at http://www.lightreading.com/ciscoseries

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The tests, conducted by the independent European Advanced Network Testing Center, covered Cisco's solutions for IPv6 migration as well as a method to optimize customer access to services based on automatic parameterization of the network. These tests focused mostly on Cisco's network core and data center equipment, including the CRS-1, CRS-3, ASR 9010, Nexus 7010 and ASA 5580.

"We feel Cisco's results are quite good," said Carsten Rossenhoevel, Managing Director of EANTC, based in Berlin, Germany. "We hope that this public report will help operators build a blueprint, answering which technologies will scale, and how the various IPv6 migration pieces could be put together for a comprehensive story."

So what did those pieces look like and how did they perform?

Cisco's Stateful NAT64 Performance solution was able to translate more than 67 million IPv6 user sessions into IPv4 sessions, while forwarding 78.4 Gbit/s with only some minor traffic loss. EANTC validated that a million new customers could be supported per second. EANTC further validated Cisco's IPv6 Rapid Deployment (RD) Performance by showing the solution could support 1 million such tunnels as well as support a combined traffic rate of 79.6Gbit/s with no user traffic loss. Finally, the lab verified that Cisco was able to serve a total of 96Gbit/s of dual-stack traffic – IPv4- and IPv6-based user traffic in parallel – a crucial capability for carrier and large enterprise networks today.

"Cisco, like other vendors, is looking for validation that it has several of the pieces needed by service providers to proclaim confidently that they have a plan in place for the future of their IP infrastructure," said Joe Braue, EVP/Group Director of Light Reading. "These public tests are a key step to getting this discussion out into the public domain and offer advice to carriers and large enterprises about how to evaluate and test next-generation cloud services network infrastructure."

Press Contact:
Jennifer Baker
Marketing Director, Light Reading Communications Network
617 871 1910
jbaker@lightreading.com

About Light Reading (www.lightreading.com)

Light Reading combines its research-led online communities and targeted events portfolio to help those in the global communications industry make informed decisions. Lightreading.com is the ultimate source for telecom analysis for more than 300,000 subscribers each month, leading the media sector in terms of traffic, content, and reputation. Light Reading produces targeted communications events and focused one-day conferences each year for cable, mobile and wireline executives across five continents. As part of the Light Reading Communications Network (www.lrcn.com), Light Reading leverages the industry's most trusted telecom research brands, Heavy Reading and Pyramid Research, to contribute to the only integrated business information platform serving the $4 trillion global communications industry. 

About Light Reading Communications Network (www.lrcn.com)

The Light Reading Communications Network combines the most trusted telecom research brands with award-winning online communities and a rich events portfolio to deliver the only integrated business information platform serving the global communications industry.  With the power of this platform, leaders who build, deploy, finance and regulate next-generation telecom networks are able to make more informed decisions on emerging market and service opportunities. The Light Reading Communications Network is a division of UBM TechWeb (www.ubmtechweb.com), the global leader in technology media and business information.

SOURCE Light Reading