The Cisco ASR 1000 Series supports Cisco IOS XE Software, a modular operating system with modular packaging, feature velocity, and powerful resiliency. The Cisco ASR 1000 Series Embedded Services Processors (ESPs), which are based on Cisco Flow Processor technology, accelerate many advanced features such as crypto-based access security; Network Address Translation (NAT), thread defense with Cisco Zone-Based Firewall (ZBFW), deep packet inspection (DPI), Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE), and a diverse set of
data-center-interconnect (DCI) feature. These services are implemented in Cisco IOS XE Software without the need for additional hardware support.
Cisco ASR 1000 Series routers sit at the edge of your enterprise data center or large office connecting to the WAN, as well as in service provider points of presence (POPs)