The Cisco Broadband Wireless Gateway (BWG) is an essential piece of the IEEE 802.16e (WiMAX) architecture. As the Access Service Network (ASN) Gateway, it provides aggregation services for the Radio Access Network (RAN). Cisco first released it's BWG software in late 2007. Since that time, a considerable number of new features have been added.

BWG 1.0

Released: Oct 29, 2007

Cisco BWG 1.0 shipped with Cisco IOS 12.4(15)XL. It was originally called Cisco ASN GW Release 1.0. It included the following features:

• EAP Authentication
• Security Key Exchange
• IP Address Allocation using DHCP
• Service Flow creation and Management
• QoS Support
• User Group Management
• AAA Accounting Start/Stop/Interim
• Un Predictive Handoff
• KeepAlive Support on R6
• Session Redundancy
• Load Balancing
• MIB Support

Two of these features (session redundancy and load balancing) were not supported on the Cisco 7301 platform.

BWG 1.1

Released: May 29, 2008

Cisco BWG 1.1 was the first release to carry the BWG name. This bug fix release included no new features or hardware support. It fixed several problems with the Cisco Service and Application Module for IP (SAMI) cards and a DNS cache poisoning vulnerability.

BWG 1.2

Released: Oct 20, 2008

Cisco BWG 1.2 included three new features:

• Host-based Accounting
• Mobile to Mobile Traffic Steering
• CAR/AAA Configuration

BWG 1.3

Released: Mar 10, 2009

Cisco BWG 1.3 included a host of new features. There is a corresponding increase in DRAM requirements of certain platforms because of this upgrade. Specifically, the Catalyst 6500 series switches and 7600 series routers now require 2 GB of DRAM instead of 512 MB. New features include:

• Session Caching Mechanism
• Support for 20 Hosts Per Subscriber support
• Host Mobility Across CPEs
• Per-Subscriber DHCP Host Overflow Mechanism
• User Group-Based Maintenance Mode, Show, and Clearing
• CLI-based Keepalive With reset-bs Option
• Brief show CLI to Identify a Static or Dynamic Host
• Enable DHCP RELEASE Relay-only
• Critical Service Flow
• Support for Jumbo Frames

BWG 1.4

Released: May 26, 2009

Cisco BWG 1.4 included the following new features:

• AAA attribute - Service State
• Deregistration Reason TLV in Deregistration Request
• Delay the Attachment Response from BWG

BWG 2.0

Released: Aug 10, 2009

Cisco introduced BWG 2.0 with Cisco IOS 12.4(24)YG. This released dropped support for the 7301 series router and Catalyst 6500 series switch. This BWG version included the following new features:

• Support for Proxy Mobile IPv4 (PMIPv4)
• AAA-Based Hot-lining (CoA)
• DSCP Marking
• WiMAX NWG Specification (1.2.2) Compliant
• Accounting Start Response
• SLB Stickiness Support
• AAA Packet of Disconnect Message (PoD)
• AAA-based Static IP Address Provisioning
• Lawful Intercept
• Hitless Software Upgrade
• Redundancy DHCP server

BWG 2.1

Released: Dec 21, 2009

Cisco BWG 2.1 introduced no new features. It did however resolve a number of bugs.

BWG 2.2

Released: Apr 16, 2010

With BWG 2.2, Cisco introduce the follow new features:

• L2-L2 Bridging
• Interim accounting update during handoff
• PMIP Authenticated Network Identifier (PANI) as the Network Access Identifier (NAI)
• PMIP DHCP proxy support for sending DNS and Default Gateway configuration from local configuration or from AAA server

BWG 2.3

Released: Jul 15, 2010

This release was issued just two weeks after Cisco announced the end-of-life schedule for the BWG platform. It is being replaced by the ASR 5000.

• Intersector controlled handoff
• Flow accounting starts after the subscriber gets the IP address correctly
• NULL Chargeable User Identity (CUI) attribute in the new access requests to authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server