Cisco Versatile Interface Processor 2-40

Cisco Versatile Interface Processor 2-40 ... VIP2, enabling the customer to optimize the VIP2 and system configurations in terms of price, performance, and density. PAs provide the media-specific interfaces for the VIPs, and can support specialized processing engines for high-bandwidth compression and encryption applications.

A key feature of the VIP2 is its ability to receive route information from the master Route Switch Processor (RSP) - the system's central processing engine - or RSP7000. Based on this route data, a VIP2 can make its own Layer 3 switching decisions, providing a scaleable, distributed switching architecture, called Distributed Switching and its scales packet processing throughput of a VIP2-equipped router. In addition, resources for route policy and administration are increased by off-loading the central processor of packet handling tasks.