aka: GSR
The name given to Cisco's 12000 series of high-end routers.
These routers have the ability to route large amounts of traffic in
complex routing environments due to the division of labor between the
various cards. Rather than a single monolithic processor that handles
the high-level routing protocols, as well as the routing of individual
packets, there is one or more Route Processors which take care of the
routing protocols and administration of the router, which build a
simplified switching table for the line cards.
The line cards act
autonomously, guided by the switching table, and use
their own
CPU to switch traffic across the router's
fabric. This allows
much larger
traffic throughput to be achieved, even while running in
complex environments.
The GSRs also have the
ability to have multiple Route Processors, which
gives the advantage of
hot fall-over in the case of failure of one of them.
In
mission critical situations, this is important.
The average GSR is the size of a small
fridge, and has enough
flashing
lights to impress whoever you are showing around your
machine room.