The Cisco ASR 9000 Series 5th Generation High-Density Multi-Rate Line Cards are designed to remove bandwidth bottlenecks in the network that are caused by a large increase in Video-on-Demand (VoD), IPTV, point-to-point video, Internet video, and cloud services traffic. A single 100 Gigabit Ethernet port can now replace large 10 Gigabit Ethernet link aggregation bundles to simplify network operations. Based on QSFP technology, this line card has flexible interfaces that support 400 Gigabit Ethernet, 200 Gigabit Ethernet, 100 Gigabit Ethernet, 40 Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet modes, so it gives customers the flexibility to mix and match interface types on the same line card and offers operators the readiness for mass-scale networking.
These different interface modes can be configured easily through the Command Line Interface (CLI) without resetting or restarting the line card. Using a "green design", these line cards also let customers put an unused slice in power-saving mode to reduce power consumption. With these capabilities, the ASR 9000 Series line card and routers provide the fundamental infrastructure for scalable Carrier Ethernet and IP/Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) networks, promoting profitable business, residential, and mobile services.