Cisco has made a strong VoIP play for quite some time now. They made it very clear to the telephony legacy players like Nortel and Avaya that they're in the VoIP game for good. And VoIP is really just a portion of Cisco's overall strategy for unified communications. You have to remember that Cisco, born as a router company, has through years of growth and acquisition, really become an IP solutions company. If you can packetize it, Cisco can offer a solution to deliver it.

At times Cisco has been slow to evolve. When you acquire new technologies, integrating them into existing product lines can be a real challenge. That's not the case here. The 7200 is a workhorse product that's a solid measure of Cisco's success.

Leveraging the success Cisco has had with their ISR platform is a sound, logical move. Smart move on Cisco's part.

Cisco Overhauls Router Line To Improve VoIP, Security
New modules for the 7200 promise performance improvements for aggregation of services such as security and VoIP from branch offices, and the router line now scales up to OC-3/Gigabit Ethernet speeds.

By Jennifer Hagendorf Follett
CRN

May 1, 2006 08:00 AM

Cisco Systems on Monday at Interop Las Vegas 2006 is expanding its integrated services story with a revamp of its 7200-series routers.

The overhaul includes new network processing and VPN modules for the 7200 that promise performance improvements for aggregation of services such as security and VoIP from branch offices.

The 7200 now scales up to OC-3/Gigabit Ethernet speeds. Priced at $19,000, the new 7200 VXR Network Processing Engine-G2 offers a two-times performance boost over its predecessor for service performance, while the new 7200 VXR VPN Service Adapter, priced at $15,000, brings a three-times performance increase for IPSec VPN services.

The updates follow the highly successful launch of Cisco’s Integrated Services Router (ISR) platform of branch office access routers that tie in optional security, VoIP and wireless services. Solution providers commonly deploy 7200 series routers as an aggregation point in the data center for ISRs.