Optus says it has validated Cisco’s Live Protect capability on Cisco 8000 Series routers as part of efforts to improve network resilience and maintain service availability.
According to Optus, Live Protect is intended to allow supported infrastructure to be hardened without disrupting services while a software fix is tested and validated. The company said this approach could reduce the time needed to put protective measures in place across its national network without requiring restarts of affected equipment.
The telco linked the validation to broader work over the past year across 5G, spectrum, AI and automation, aimed at increasing capacity, responding faster to network issues and improving reliability.
Optus Chief Technology Officer Sri Amirthalingam said the ability to make changes “quickly and safely” without disrupting customer services was central to resilience. “The time needed to deploy a permanent fix should not determine how long we wait before applying a protective measure. Live Protect allows us to separate those activities, applying a targeted control while the permanent update goes through rigorous validation,” he said.
The validation forms part of Optus’ IP network modernisation partnership with Cisco. Optus also said it has validated Live Protect on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches in production.
Cisco Vice President, Product Management Andy Schutz said “the existing approach to software lifecycle and patching practices won’t work in the new era of AI,” adding that the Optus validation supported Cisco’s strategy for helping customers harden infrastructure.
Optus said the next phase is expected to extend validation to Cisco Network Convergence System (NCS) Series routers, with the aim of reducing manual deployment steps while keeping operational checks for managing network changes.
In editors’ notes included with the announcement, Optus said Live Protect is designed to complement rather than replace existing patching and software lifecycle processes. Cisco also noted that some products and features referenced are in development and may be delivered on a when-and-if-available basis.
