Cisco has
developed a new carrier-grade routing system that it says will form the
foundation of the future Internet, capable of delivering enormous quantities of
data at very high speeds, enabling widespread delivery and use of high-quality
video applications for businesses and consumers, among other functions.
The networking giant announced the CRS-3 during a TelePresence
video conference on March 9, saying it could deliver up to 322 terabits per
second. That kind of bandwidth could essentially deliver every movie ever made
in just 4 seconds, said Cisco, or enable every person in China to
simultaneously make a video conference call, or enable the download of the
entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in just over 1 second.
“Today’s announcement is about the foundation of the future of the Internet,”
said Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers during the video conference.
Calling video a killer application for the future Internet, Chambers said that
telemedicine, productivity and collaboration would be among the major
applications transforming the Internet market in years to come.
"It’s telling Cisco used video in its examples of the capacity this product delivers," Forrester Analyst Chris Silva told Channel Insider. "From Telepresence to the Tandberg acquisition to the integration of video into all of Cisco’s desktop devices, it’s clear their current view on what drives network capacity is wedded to video."
And it’s as much about consumers as it is about business, according to
Chambers, who noted that “everything we saw at CES requires
networks.” That means that this next-generation Internet enabled by the CSR-3 would enable services
such as video streaming and gaming and 3D television to devices from
smartphones to game consoles to tablets and e-readers.
Cisco’s CRS-3 is currently in trials with carriers, including AT&T in its trial
of a 100-gigabit backbone network between Miami and New Orleans. The companies
said that AT&T’s next-generation backbone network technology will support
the network requirements for the growing number of advanced services offered by
AT&T to consumer and business customers, both fixed and mobile.
Cisco plans to deliver the CRS-3 during the third quarter of this year.
Cisco spent $1.6 billion to develop the CRS-3, and the system pricing
starts at $90,000. Much of the development costs went into the creation of a
six-chip array processor chipset that can provide not just the raw speed but
the smart speed and smart pipes, according to Pankaj Patel, senior vice
president and general manager of Cisco’s service provider group.
The Cisco CRS-3, which offers 12 times the traffic capacity as the nearest
competitor, according to Cisco, is the next generation of Cisco’s CRS-1 product. It triples that
product’s capacity. The CRS-1 currently has 300 customers, and about 5,000 systems have been
deployed. Cisco’s Patel said the company expects the CRS-1 to continue to be
deployed in developing geographies.