Cisco's new CRS-3 routing system is designed to mesh closely with switching equipment and virtualized servers Cisco has designed for large data centers. This makes Cisco's CRS-3 attractive for corporate customers with cloud computing facilities, or centralized computer operations that deliver software and information over the Internet.
It won't make your iPhone run any faster right away, but Cisco says its new generation of high-speed routing equipment -- unveiled to much fanfare Tuesday -- is designed to handle a rising tide of video and mobile data Relevant Products/Services transmissions that is threatening to flood the Internet.
Cisco executives said the company's new carrier routing system Relevant Products/Services has the potential to handle 322 terabytes of data per second, or enough to let every person in China make a video call simultaneously.
"It's the foundation for the next generation of the Internet," CEO John Chambers said as the company announced the new system, dubbed CRS-3, in a Web broadcast for analysts and reporters. Chambers said the system, which AT&T is already using in field tests of a new high-speed Internet service, is key to Cisco's vision of a future where businesses and consumers communicate increasingly with mobile devices and Internet video, which requires far more capacity than simple text or still images.
Routers are the traffic cops of the Internet, steering packets of information Relevant Products/Services to their intended destinations across vast and complex networks. Cisco said its new equipment can handle three times the volume of its previous system, introduced in 2004, and has 12 times the capacity of competing systems from other networking Relevant Products/Services companies.
Analysts said the China analogy was somewhat overheated, since in practical terms that much traffic would completely overwhelm other components of existing networks. And in the continuing horse race of research and development, experts said it won't take long for Cisco's rivals to match or beat at least some of the new system's technical specifications.
Anticipating the Cisco news, rival Juniper Networks announced Monday that another telecommunications provider, Verizon, is using Juniper's equipment in pilot deployments of Internet networks capable of operating at 100 gigabits per second, or the same speed as the AT&T field tests. "We welcome Cisco to the 100GB club," said Juniper vice president Mike Marcellin in a statement Tuesday.
But analysts also said Cisco's new system represents a solid advance for the industry, in which Cisco controls more than half of the core routing market. "The product is pretty significant; there's no doubt about that," said Rajan Varadarajan, a senior analyst at Primary Global Research, which tracks the tech industry for investors.
In particular, he noted that Cisco designed the routing system to mesh closely with other switching equipment and virtualized servers that Cisco has designed for large data centers. That could make the new routing system especially attractive for corporate customers who are building "cloud Relevant Products/Services computing Relevant Products/Services" facilities, or centralized computer operations that deliver software and information -- including video -- to employees and customers over the Internet.
As for Cisco's claim that the new system can handle 322 terabits per second, Varadarajan noted that the system is only capable of that capacity if a customer Relevant Products/Services connects 72 routing "chassis," or individual devices, together.
Juniper is expected to start selling devices with similar individual capacity in the next few months. "I don't know if anybody will build out 72 chassis right away. Maybe ten years from now," he said.
In an interview, Cisco senior vice president Pankaj Patel acknowledged that the new routers are just one component of an Internet that will provide high-speed service to millions of people using smart-phones and tablets in the future. But he said they are a key element. "This is the platform for how we'll super-charge the mobile Internet," he added.
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