3/27/2007 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last week announced new integral firewall and session border control (SBC) functionality for its XR 12000 Series routers.

The new features come courtesy of Cisco's new Multi-Service Blade (MSB) for the XR 12000 Series, which features integral route-aware firewall and SBC functionality for VoIP, Cisco TelePresence and other applications.

There's a further wrinkle here, too, analysts say. Cisco's new MSB incorporates functionality that's traditionally been provided by standalone firewall and SBC appliances. Does this bode poorly for the future of such devices?

Not necessarily -- although Cisco does make a compelling case, industry watchers conclude. "The most salient argument for integrating SBC and firewall functionality into routers...is that standalone solutions simply do not offer the scale and high availability attributes that the media planes of full-scale routers can provide," wrote Glen Hunt, principal analyst for carrier infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis. "The argument is grounded on the belief that VoIP and multimedia sessions will become so prolific on carrier networks that service providers will be overwhelmed by complexity if required to string together multiple standalone boxes to meet growth. In addition, Cisco claims that the added costs in high-speed ports and other connectivity equipment between standalone SBCs and the IP infrastructure will be [cost-prohibitive]."

For the record, Cisco's MSB features integral, route-aware firewall and video/voice SBC capabilities that support VoIP, Cisco TelePresence and other applications. Such integration could be welcomed by service providers, Hunt says, because it will let them "leverage the new node-based functionality and eliminate the need to deploy separate out-board network appliances."

According to Cisco, the MSB can support up to 200,000 simultaneous sessions and also boasts direct access to the XR 12000's 80GBPS switching fabric. Hunt says performance of this kind could be a boon to service providers: "This level of performance eliminates the need to deploy multiple external appliances to meet the demands of growing VoIP and high-bandwidth applications such as TelePresence...[and] the performance of the MSB-based SBC is on par with many standalone SBC devices."

Cisco's MSB announcement also marks another milestone in the development of the XR 12000, which -- a year after first going live -- has staked out a role for itself as a high-performance, multi-service edge router. "The addition of the MSB is a logical extension to the platform, given the XR 12000's new role at the edge and the mainstream emergence of VoIP and video applications. The MSB will be able to utilize the inherent security, high availability and virtualization capabilities built into the IOS XR operating system," Hunt pointed out.

There are the requisite concerns, of course. For one thing, the MSB's all-in-one integration comes at a slight cost, with regard to expansion: It requires at least one router slot, or two slots in the case of a failover configuration, Hunt notes. In this regard, he points out, router slots may either be unavailable or may prove to be more costly (in terms of needed or future expandability) than simply adding an external appliance. Moreover, customers have deployed more than 35,000 12000 Series routers. In order to exploit the all-in-one integration of the new MSB, however, an upgrade to IOS XR is required. This puts the onus on service providers to ensure that such an upgrade is possible for their specific hardware configuration. --Stephen Swoyer