Intelligence At The Metro Access Edge; Service Breadth, Advanced Quality Of Service, And Rate-Limiting - Cisco Catalyst 3550 Datasheet

Figure 5
Cisco Catalyst 3550-12G and 3550-12T Intelligent Ethernet Switches
Intelligence at the Metro Access Edge: Enabling Profitable Ethernet Services
Service providers are facing significant challenges in meeting the service needs of their enterprise and small and
medium-sized business (SMB) market customers. As they continue to put more and more mission-critical
applications on their networks, these customers are demanding high bandwidth at speeds greater than T1/E1 and at
competitive prices. Enterprise and SMB customers have experienced the speed and cost benefits of Ethernet in their
LANs and want to extend these benefits into the wide-area and metro-area networks (WAN and MAN). However,
in today's economic environment, service providers face several challenges as they look to meet the service needs of
their customers. Such challenges include:
• Providing profitable new services while reducing operational and capital costs
• Meeting variable bandwidth demand at speeds greater than T1/E1
• Effectively integrating existing WAN services such as Frame Relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
• Building cost-effective, highly available, scalable metro Ethernet networks
These challenges are especially evident at the metro access edge. As service providers look to provide profitable
Ethernet services such as Layer 2 virtual private networks (Layer 2 VPNs) or business Internet access, Cisco
intelligent functionality such as 802.1Q tunneling, advanced quality of service (QoS), and granular rate-limiting, is
essential in the service provider's customer located equipment. In addition, with intelligent features such as subsecond
STP convergence and CWDM GBIC support, Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series switches provide the necessary network
availability and scalability at the access edge. With Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series Intelligent Ethernet switches, Cisco
delivers the optimal balance of performance, cost-effectiveness, and intelligence, enabling profitable Ethernet service
breadth, availability, security, and manageability.
Most important, the Cisco Catalyst 3550 Series is a key component of the Cisco Metro Ethernet Switching portfolio.
For regional metro, metro aggregation and metro access, Cisco Metro Ethernet Switching enables service providers
to deliver profitable, comprehensive Ethernet services. With the effective integration of existing WAN services, such
as Frame Relay and ATM, Cisco Metro Ethernet Switching offers an unmatched breadth of service delivery
mechanisms. With its extensive automated operations support, Cisco also helps service providers minimize total cost
of ownership for new services. Through technology leadership, financial stability, and a commitment to customer
support, Cisco ensures service success from "start-to-scale."
Service Breadth through 802.1Q Tunneling, Advanced Quality of Service, and Rate-limiting
The Cisco Catalyst 3550, with its 802.1Q tunneling capability, enables service providers to create Layer 2
transparent LAN services (TLS) with a clear separation of their network from enterprise and SMB customer
networks. Using a 802.1Q tunneling implementation, service provider VLAN information (802.1Q tag) is added to
the customer's original 802.1Q-tagged packets as the packets come into the service provider network. The service
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