Route Switch Processor Features The ASR 900 RSP module contains separate control plane and data plane components. These include the main control plane CPU for the Cisco IOS® XE Software operating system and platform control software. The data-plane packet processing and traffic management is performed by the Carrier Ethernet application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). Carrier Ethernet ASIC Powered by the Carrier Ethernet ASIC and designed specifically for the needs of service providers, ASR 900 Series routers deliver essential Carrier Ethernet technologies. These include hierarchical quality of service (HQoS), IPv4, IPv6, MPLS, and Hierarchical Virtual Private LAN Services (HVPLS). The Cisco Carrier Ethernet ASIC provides line-rate performance and supports advanced services including access control list (ACL) and HQoS without affecting performance. The ASIC incorporates innovative traffic management capabilities while providing intelligent packet switching and routing operations. Service Enhancement With ASR 900 Series routers, each service is assigned enhanced QoS and security attributes. The routers provide advanced per-traffic-class metering and offer bidirectional packet-count and byte-count statistics. The service offering is enhanced with operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) functionality that includes Layer 2 Connectivity Fault Management (CFM), IP service-level agreements (IP SLA) for Layer 3, and MPLS OAM. Service Scale ASR 900 Series routers provide flexible service scalability in a small footprint. They also deliver high performance and high scale for point-to-point and multipoint VPN services. The HQoS capabilities of ASR 900 Series routers scale to eight queues per service, three levels of scheduling, and buffer sizes capable of accommodating today’s most demanding wireline and wireless applications. Clocking and Timing Services Cisco ASR 900 RSPs contain the central system clocking and timing functions for the ASR 900 Series platform. With these crucial functions, required in a modern unified network, depending on the RSP version used, the RSPs offer integrated support for the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Building Integrated Timing Supply (BITS), 10 MHz, 1 Pulse Per Second (1 PPS), and Time Of Day (TOD) interfaces. The ASR 900 Series platform also supports synchronous Ethernet (SyncE), IEEE 1588-2008, and can act as the clock source for network clocking of time-division multiplexing (TDM) and SDH/SONET interfaces. The ASR 900 Series can act as an IEEE 1588-2008 Ordinary Clock, Boundary Clock, end-to-end Transparent Clock, and Master Clock function in an IEEE 1588-2008 timing domain.