• Ethernet support
New features in this release include support for the 10-Gigabit Ethernet interface and Ethernet features including IEEE 802.1Q VLAN encapsulation and Layer 2 MAC accounting.
• IP and routing
Cisco IOS XR Software supports a wide range of IPv4 and IPv6 services and routing protocols, including Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), static, IPv4 Multicast, Routing Policy Language (RPL), and Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)/Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) features. New features in this release include support for BGP attributes-based policy accounting.
• Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)
Cisco IOS XR Software supports MPLS protocols such as Traffic Engineering/Fast Reroute (TE-FRR), Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP), and Label Distribution Protocol (LDP). These features interoperate with Cisco IOS Software. In Release 3.0, the FRR performance is independent of the number of tunnels or prefixes that are rerouted.
Cisco IOS XR Software provides comprehensive IP Multicast software, including Source Specific Multicast (SSM) and Bidirectional Protocol Independent Multicast-Protocol Independent Multicast (BIDIR-PIM) support. The multicast protocols interoperate with Cisco IOS Software.
• Quality of service (QoS)
Cisco IOS XR Software supports a rich variety of QoS mechanisms, including policing, marking, queuing, dropping, and shaping. Additionally, the operating systems support Modular QoS CLI (MQC). Modular CLI is used to configure various QoS features on various Cisco Systems
Cisco IOS XR Software manageability provides industry-standard management interfaces, including modular command-line interface (CLI), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and native Extensible Markup Language (XML) interfaces.
Cisco IOS XR Software provides comprehensive network security features, including access control lists (ACLs), routing authentications, authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA)/TACACS+, IP Security (IPSec), Secure Shell (SSH) Protocol, SNMPv3, and leading Routing Policy Language (RPL) support. Control-plane protection continues to be distributed into line-card ASICs such as the generalized TTL security mechanism (GTSM), RFC 3682, and dynamic control-plane protection.
Cisco IOS XR Software supports rich availability features such as fault containment, fault tolerance, fast switchover, and nonstop forwarding (NSF).
Cisco IOS XR Software provides complete distributed processing of routing protocols, data forwarding plane, management plane, and infrastructure services to support 90-Tbps multishelf carrier-class router systems.
• Cisco In Service Software Upgrade (ISSU)
Cisco IOS XR Software supports a modular packaging-based release model in order to minimize the impact of upgrades and also support Cisco ISSU with NSF where possible.