The rapid expansion of the Internet continues to change the way organizations conduct business, driving enterprise and service provider requirements for increased network density, bandwidth, high speed services, and new multiservice capabilities. The high-performance Cisco 7500 series router remains the market leader for high-performance multi-protocol/service routing through its breadth of support for advanced LAN/WAN interfaces, reliability, and scalable switching and services performance. The introduction of the Route Switch Processor 8 (RSP8) and new MIX-enabled chassis further enhance the Cisco 7500 series by significantly increasing processing performance and enabling new multiservice enhancements.The Cisco 7500 MIX-enabled chassis is identical to the current Cisco 7500 classic chassis plus the addition of a new multiservice capability: the Multiservice Interchange (MIX) backplane. Future voice applications will provide seamless, end-to-end call management in both the packet and digital voice domains. A Cisco 7500 series router with the MIX-enabled chassis and the DSP-farm capabilities of the digital voice port adapters provides a high-density voice and fax gateway solution to connect private branch exchanges (PBX), the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the WAN to create a multiservice network. In addition, MIX-enabled multichannel port adapters will combine digital voice channels with packet channels on a channelized access link to achieve access cost savings, without requiring a separate time-division multiplexing (TDM) multiplexer. This will allow DS0 channels to be switched from a channelized WAN link to interfaces connecting to PBX, video CODEC, or other TDM-oriented devices. These multiservice capabilities give customers a manageable migration path to robust, cost-effective, multiservice networks.The Route Switch Processor 8 (RSP8) is Cisco Systems' newest-generation main system processor for the Cisco 7500 Series Router. The RSP8 significantly increases system performance for the Cisco 7500 with a new high-performance 250 MHz RISC-based microprocessor and 8 megabytes packet memory for high-density configurations, and utilizes ECC (Error Correction Code) for increased system reliability. It serves as an ideal platform for enterprise and service provider networks that require additional performance and processing power to support service-enabled edge and core applications.