The Cisco ASR 900 Series RSP modules contain separate control plane and data plane components. These include the main control plane CPU for the Cisco IOS® Software operating system and platform control software. The data-plane packet processing and traffic management is performed by the Carrier Ethernet application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC).

Carrier Ethernet ASIC
Delivers essential Carrier Ethernet technologies such as hierarchical quality of service (HQoS), IPv4, IPv6, MPLS/flex LSP, and hierarchical virtual private LAN services (HVPLS). It provides line-rate performance and incorporates innovative traffic management capabilities while providing intelligent packet switching and routing operations.

Service enhancement
Provides advanced per-traffic-class metering and offer bidirectional packet-count and byte-count statistics. The service offering is enhanced with operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) functionality that includes Layer 2 connectivity fault management (CFM), IP service-level agreements (IP SLAs) for Layer 3, and MPLS OAM.

Service scale
Provides flexible service scalability in a small footprint delivering high performance and scale for point-to-point and multipoint services, accommodating the requirements from the most demanding wireline and wireless applications.

Clocking and timing services
Offers integrated support for the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), building integrated timing supply (BITS), 10 MHz, 1 pulse per second (1 PPS), and time of day (TOD) interfaces, crucial functions required in a modern unified network. As the central system clocking and timing functions for the ASR 900 Series platform, the Cisco ASR 900 RSPs support synchronous Ethernet (SyncE) and IEEE 1588-2008 and can act as the clock source for network clocking of time-division multiplexing (TDM) and SDH/SONET interfaces.

The ASR 900 Series can act as an IEEE 1588-2008 ordinary clock, boundary clock, end-to-end transparent clock, and master clock function in an IEEE 1588-2008 timing domain.

High availability and modularity
Delivers optional intrachassis hardware redundancy for all hardware components and supports software redundancy with In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) support when a pair of route switch processors is inserted in the Cisco ASR 900 system chassis fully modular platform.

With two RSPs inserted in the Cisco ASR 903 or in the Cisco ASR 907 systems, one RSP operates in active mode, and the other RSP operates in hot standby mode. The Cisco ASR 900 RSP is a field-replaceable unit (FRU), and it can be online inserted and removed (OIR) while the Cisco ASR 900 system is operating. The removal or failure of the active RSP in the Cisco ASR 900 system results in the automatic switchover to the standby RSP.

Management interfaces
Contains the out-of-band (OOB) management interfaces for the system. To offer flexible access to the router, a variety of interfaces are available for management access to the platform, including a dual-mode console port that functions as either a USB console or a serial console port.

In addition to the serial console access, the Cisco ASR 900 RSP contains an Ethernet management port that has no interaction with actual Carrier Ethernet ASIC traffic. In addition to the OOB control interfaces, a USB port can connect USB flash devices for loading Cisco IOS® Software images and configurations on the platform.