The burgeoning Asia Pacific (APAC) region is an area where Cisco® is experiencing rapid growth and momentum in sales, company investments, and local employees.

More employees mean higher traffic on the Internet access circuits that connect the Cisco network to Internet service providers (ISPs) in the region. These circuits provide Internet access to employees working in a Cisco office or from home, where they use a VPN to establish connectivity to the Cisco network.

Upgrading Local Access with Metro Ethernet

To meet current demand and support scalability for future traffic over the network, Cisco IT determined that a regionwide upgrade was required for the Internet access circuits. “Cisco IT chose Metro Ethernet services as a flexible, cost-effective way to add bandwidth for local Internet access and to replace the E1 and DS3 leased lines that were previously used in APAC,” says Mike Anderson, a network engineer in Cisco IT.

No change was necessary to the Cisco Internet point-of-presence (POP) network architecture in order to accommodate the Metro Ethernet circuits. All ISP circuits were provisioned with a 100-Mbps carrier handoff and Cisco contracts for a committed information rate (CIR) of 20 or 40 Mbps, according to the needs of each location.

All high-end Internet POPs in APAC have at least two ISP services. One service provides optimal connectivity over the Internet for Cisco employees working at home via a local, in-country ISP. The second ISP usually provides optimal regional peering.

Cisco IT also upgraded the existing Cisco network hardware in all APAC Internet POPs in order to serve traffic growth and new network services such as Cisco MeetingPlace for Web conferencing. In each Internet POP, Cisco IT upgraded the existing Cisco 7200 Series routers to Network Processing Engine NPE-G2 controllers and added more memory to support increased Internet traffic throughput from the newly terminated ISP Metro Ethernet connections. The core hardware within the DMZ was also upgraded to Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches with the Supervisor Engine 720 to handle the higher aggregate Internet traffic levels passing through each DMZ.

Scaling Capacity to Meet Continued Growth

Metro Ethernet technology enables Cisco to scale the capacity of Internet access circuits more easily as the company continues to grow. “Previously, upgrades of traditional WAN circuits could take as long as three months to complete,” says Anderson. “Today, upgrades in the Metro Ethernet circuits involve only a software change that can be completed in less than one month, with no physical changes to the circuit.”

As Cisco continues to grow, capacity planning is becoming more important across the Cisco network and especially for Internet access circuits worldwide. Cisco IT uses network planning tools to project traffic growth, along with input about hiring plans from the Cisco human resources department. Based on the data, Cisco IT can upgrade the Metro Ethernet services before the circuits are saturated with peak traffic flows that might negatively affect network performance.

Support for New Capabilities

Future plans in the APAC region include providing low-latency connections to the Cisco network so that employees can use IP voice and video services when working at home. Anderson says, “A low-latency service can be a challenge in some countries because of service provider peering arrangements and routing decisions for Internet traffic. For example, Internet traffic that has a destination within a local area might be routed out of the local city or even the country because that is the service provider’s most cost-effective path. We are working with our service providers to help them understand Cisco’s requirements to develop the ideal end-to-end home teleworker solution that takes advantage of the Internet.”

Cisco IT is also working with its ISPs in the APAC region to obtain burstable Metro Ethernet services. A burstable service can help large, global enterprise networks meet additional bandwidth needs during times of very high demand, such as when a large number of employees must work at home. When a traffic burst occurs, Cisco pays for the amount of data sent above the company’s usual CIR, which is a less expensive alternative to paying for extra bandwidth that normally would be unused.

For More Information

Cisco on Cisco
Cisco IT Metro Ethernet Case Study
Cisco IT India WAN CAPNet Case Study
Cisco Enterprise WAN Solutions