res in the field without penalizing the customer. Longer time in market New functionality and enhanced features can be embedded into an net- work-processor-based product while it is deployed in the field without requiring the customer to buy a new product that uses a new ASIC design. This extends the product's time in market. Because it decreases the cost of product ownership over the life of the product, it creates more sales oppor- tunities for the equipment vendor. The fact that the customer probably does not have to replace the product soon improves the quality of the relationship with the vendor. This is something that can also lead to repetitive and longer-term business prospects. Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. NETWORK PROCESSORS: JUSTIFICATION NETWORK PROCESSORS: JUSTIFICATION 39 Just-in-time (JIT) delivery of new features As mentioned earlier, the rapidly changing reality of the market requires network gear vendors to provide new features and functional characteristics inside their products, such as the support of new protocols. Vendors who adopt the network-proces- sor development path are able to embed this new functionality into their products without having to withdraw them from the market in order to replace them with something more recent or more updated. Greater focus on other issues of business management The majority of the packet-processing functions in an network-processor-based environment are coded in a standard way, either by the net- work equipment vendors or third-party suppliers; therefore, the main core of software development is essentially available off the shelf. This decreases the overall time needed for software develop- ment. It also liberates resources SO that vendors can concentrate their efforts on other aspects of the project that are equally important. They can focus on providing other ne