The Cisco® ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000 Series) represent an exciting new paradigm in edge and core routing, with exceptional scalability, carrier-class reliability, environmentally conscious design, incredible flexibility, and an attractive price-to-performance benchmark. The Cisco ASR 9000 Series has a wide product portfolio (Figure 1), ranging from the Cisco ASR 9001 (2 Rack Units [2RU]) to the Cisco ASR 9922 (44RU), with each system designed to provide true carrier-class reliability using the Cisco IOS® XR operating system, comprehensive system redundancy, and a full complement of network resiliency schemes.

• The Cisco ASR 9000 System brings increased power and simplicity to the edge, and the ASR 9000v sets the industry benchmark as a virtualized compact carrier-class converged access and aggregation platform. Using the Cisco “network virtualization” or nV technology, the Cisco ASR 9000 System offers exceptional pay-as-you-grow scale, carrier-class reliability, and simplified service provisioning.
• Cisco IOS XR Software modular operating system: The Cisco ASR 9000 Series uses the Cisco IOS XR operating system, made famous by the highly successful Cisco CRS Carrier Routing System platform in core deployments. Built for distributed systems such as the Cisco ASR 9000 Series, the Cisco IOS XR operating system uses a microkernel architecture to achieve true modularity. This modularity provides the path to nonstop operations during software image upgrades or module changes, without affecting normal platform operations.
• Fully distributed system: The Cisco ASR 9000 Series operates in a fully distributed fashion; all packet-forwarding decisions and actions take place on the individual line cards. These high-density Ethernet line cards are equipped with a specialized network processor that provides a flexible programming infrastructure with high-density Hierarchical Quality-of-Service (H-QoS) services, security, and integrated Synchronous Ethernet (SyncE).