Some of the many benefits of the upgrade include:

1. Security - CPU rate limiters are used to mitigate DoS attacks on the router itself.

2. Security - The new supervisor cards enabe anti-spoofing to be handled without the use of access control lists. This is a new feature.

3. Security - Part of the Volnet2 design is to install redundant supervisor modules for the router that supplies network access to most of OIT's critical resources.

4. 10 Gigabit Ethernet - Projects like Ultranet, National Lambda Rail, TeraGrid, OneTN, and other high bandwidth connections to outside research networks can be supported. Our current hardware was designed before 10 Gigabit Ethernet was standardized.

5. IPv6 - can be enabled over the entire campus and necessary IPv6 ACLs can be performed in hardware.

6. Multicast - We currently have multicast deployed on campus. The upgrades will give us new features plus enhanced hardware support for multicasting. There are also new security features that will improve the stability of our multicast implementation.

7. MPLS - can be configured to build "private" VPN paths from specific
networks to critical resources both on and off campus.

8. QoS - will be a necessary requirement for the successful campus implementation of VoIP. The new supervisor engine has enhanced hardware support for QoS plus new software features