Cisco Systems SCE 2000 4/8xFE General Overview, The Cisco Service Control Concept, C H A P T E R

C H A P T E R 1

General Overview

This chapter provides a general overview of the Cisco Service Control solution. It introduces the Cisco Service Control concept and the Service Control capabilities. It also briefly describes the hardware capabilities of the Service Control Engine (SCE) platform and the Cisco specific applications that together compose the total Cisco Service Control solution.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• The Cisco Service Control Concept 1-1

•Cisco Service Control Capabilities1-2

•The SCE Platform 1-3

• Management and Collection 1-4

The Cisco Service Control Concept

The Cisco Service Control solution is delivered through a combination of purpose-built hardware and specific software solutions that address various service control challenges faced by service providers. The SCE platform is designed to support classification, analysis, and control of Internet/IP traffic.

Service Control enables service providers to create profitable new revenue streams while capitalizing on their existing infrastructure. With the power of Service Control, service providers have the ability to analyze, charge for, and control IP network traffic at multigigabit wire line speeds. The Cisco Service Control solution also gives service providers the tools they need to identify and target high-margin content-based services and to enable their delivery.

As the downturn in the telecommunications industry has shown, IP service providers’ business models need to be reworked to make them profitable. Having spent billions of dollars to build ever larger data links, providers have incurred massive debts and faced rising costs. At the same time, access and bandwidth have become commodities where prices continually fall and profits disappear. Service providers have realized that they must offer value-added services to derive more revenue from the traffic and services running on their networks. However, capturing real profits from IP services requires more than simply running those services over data links; it requires detailed monitoring and precise, real-time control and awareness of services as they are delivered. Cisco provides Service Control solutions that allow the service provider to bridge this gap.

Cisco SCE 2000 4/8xFE Installation and Configuration Guide

OL-7826-05 1-1