Based on the Cisco Global Cloud Index, digitalization is projected to grow global data center and public/private cloud networks traffic more than 25 percent annually, resulting in a threefold increase by 2019. To help network providers meet these challenges, the Cisco^® Network Convergence System 5500 Series is built with features such as extremely high port densities, deep packet buffering, and forwarding hardware optimized for these types of deployments.

The Cisco NCS 5500 Series modular chassis provides wide variety of combo line cards to address the customer's need to use flexible interfaces and port densities along with full bandwidth utilization of the forwarding ASIC. The Cisco NCS 5500 Series also offers a high-scaled line card, which improves the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) scale capabilities x8 times when compared with the base version of the line card. These line cards are capable of advanced packet forwarding, segment routing, programmable network management, and telemetry along with the robust and mature features already present in 64-bit Cisco IOS^® XR Software.