Appliance Vendors Don't Fear Cisco

Even as Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board) trots out a new router to consolidate telecom boxes, the appliance vendors continue to say the big router firms simply can't compete with their standalone products.

Earlier this week, Cisco introduced its ASR 1000 platform, a router that's meant to also do the jobs of deep packet inspection (DPI) gear, session border controllers (SBCs), and firewalls.