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Integrated LAN Switching
The Cisco 3900 Integrated Services Routers support the new Cisco Enhanced EtherSwitch® Service Modules,
which greatly expand router capabilities by integrating industry-leading Layer 2 or Layer 3 switching with feature
sets identical to those found in the Cisco Catalyst® 3560-E and Catalyst 2960 Series Switches performing local
line-rate switching and routing.
The new Cisco Enhanced EtherSwitch Service Modules take advantage of the increased power capabilities on the
Cisco 3900 Series platforms. Additionally, the modules enable Cisco energy and power initiatives: Cisco
EnergyWise, Cisco ePoE and per-port PoE power monitoring, and integrated redundant power system (RPS)-
enabled PoE boost. These technologies allow you to meet increased endpoint power requirements without
increasing the total power consumption of the branch office.
Application Services
As organizations continue to centralize and consolidate their branch-office IT infrastructure in an effort to reduce
cost and complexity, they are challenged to provide adequate user experience, ensure continuous service
availability, and deliver business-relevant applications when and where they are needed. To address these
challenges, the Cisco 3900 Series enables you to host Cisco, third-party, and custom applications on a portfolio of
high-performance Cisco SRE modules that transparently integrate into the router. The modules have their own
processors, hard disks, network interfaces, and memory that operate independently of the host router resources,
helping to ensure maximum concurrent routing and application performance while reducing physical space
requirements, lowering power consumption, and consolidating management.
Application Acceleration
The Cisco 3900 Series transparently combines industry-leading security, Cisco IOS Software-based traffic control,
and visibility with Cisco application-acceleration solutions. Cisco IOS Software features such as Network-Based
Application Recognition (NBAR), IP service-level agreement (IP SLA), and NetFlow provide visibility and
monitoring of traffic patterns and application performance while Cisco IOS Software features such as QoS, access
control lists (ACLs), and Performance Routing intelligently control the traffic to maximize the quality of the user
experience and employee productivity. You can further enhance user experience by adding a Cisco Wide Area
Application Services (WAAS) Network Module to securely provide more advanced WAN optimization techniques
such as TCP optimization, caching, compression, and application acceleration. Cisco Integrated Services Routers
combined with Cisco WAAS Network Modules provide optimal performance for applications delivered from a
central data center to branch-office users. The solution allows you to consolidate costly server, storage, and
backup infrastructure into data centers while maintaining LAN-like service levels for remote users.
Cisco Services Ready Engine
The Cisco Services Ready Engine solution is available in service-module (SM) and ISM form factors. The service-
module hardware offers up to a seven-times performance improvement over the previous-generation network
modules and provides a multicore x86 processor. The SRE modules also support up to 1 terabyte of storage,
Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) configurations, hardware-assisted virtualization, and cryptography
options. The Cisco SRE module enables on-demand provisioning of branch-office applications on the Cisco 3900
Series platforms so that you can deploy the right application, at the right time, in the right place. The hardware and
software decoupling provided by the service-ready deployment model enables you to provision applications on the
module at the time of its installation, or remotely anytime thereafter. Supported solutions include Cisco WAAS,
Cisco Unity Express, Cisco Application Extension Platform (AXP), Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC), Cisco
Video Surveillance, and other applications under development. The SRE enables organizations of various sizes to
