Cisco AS5400 Universal Gateway

Today's tough economic environment is forcing service providers to generate revenues quickly, improve returns from invested capital, and adapt to changing demand for various services in the market place. Cisco Any Service, Any Port (ASAP) the architecture for rapid deployment of concurrent services on Cisco AS5000 universal gateways—allows service providers to meet these challenges. Cisco ASAP enables faster service introduction using a common platform for quick return on investment. Service providers can generate new revenue streams from multiple voice and data services such as long distance voice over IP (VoIP), hosted IP telephony, virtual private networks (VPNs), and dial-up Internet.

Cisco AS5400 Series Universal Gateways
The Cisco AS5400 Series consists of two models, the Cisco AS5400 Universal Gateway and the Cisco AS5400HPX Universal Gateway. The Cisco AS5400 offers unparalleled dial capacity and scalability for MLPPP, L2TP, and V.120 sessions, whereas the Cisco AS5400HPX provides enhanced performance for processor-intensive voice and fax applications.

Cisco AS5400 Series Universal Gateways support a wide range of IP-based value-added services including high-volume Internet access, regional or branch-office connectivity, corporate VPNs, long distance for Internet service providers (ISPs), international wholesale long distance, distributed prepaid calling, Signaling System 7 (SS7) interconnect, and enhanced voice services (See Figure 1).

Cisco AS5400 Series Universal Gateways support three primary universal gateway configurations: 8 CT1/CE1, 16 CT1/CE1, and 1 CT3. Two 10/100 autosensing Ethernet LAN ports are provided for LAN connectivity. Two high-speed serial ports support Frame Relay, Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), and High-Level Data Link Control (HDLC) backhaul. All backhaul interfaces support Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP), and all cards are hot-swappable for carrier-class resiliency. Integrated signaling link termination (SLT) is available to provide Cisco distributed message transfer part (MTP) SS7 signaling functionality.

The rich set of Cisco IOS® Software features available in the Cisco AS5400 Series enables ISPs and enterprise network managers to meet traditional dial-in needs, including Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) and AppleTalk, while supporting the migration to new universal port services. The Cisco AS5400 Series supports widely deployed routing protocols, including those generally found in high-end access servers and routers: Border Gateway Protocol Version 4 (BGPv4), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), and Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS).

Cisco customers worldwide have proven that Cisco AS5000 universal gateways provide the flexibility, scale, reliability, and suite of services required to meet market demands. By providing the industry's broadest family of access server products with universal port DSPs, Cisco makes it easy for customers to select the right starting point for a phased rollout based on revenue generation, without compromising future capabilities. Complemented by the industry's highest-rated service and support, Cisco can also provide assistance with startup, maintenance, and marketing tasks, as well as advanced and custom solutions.