Cisco's CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (Credit: Cisco Systems)
On Tuesday Cisco announced the CRS-3, its next-generation internet router for the world's largest internet service providers.
Cisco's CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (Credit: Cisco Systems)
After a two-week countdown to an announcement that it said would "forever change the internet", the company unveiled what looked like an upgrade to its existing "core" router called the CRS-1.
The new router offers 12 times the traffic capacity than its older-generation routers offer. It's three times faster than the older CRS-1, which was introduced in 2004. And it can handle 322 terabits of traffic per second, or simultaneous video calls for every person in China, the company said.
The new router, which starts at US$90,000, will be sold to the world's largest internet service providers. The router is aimed at companies such as AT&T, Verizon Communications, Level3 and Sprint, as they are the internet service providers that aggregate and shuttle the bulk of the US's internet traffic across what is known as "the internet backbone".
When the new Cisco routers are installed, the average broadband consumer likely won't notice anything new. But over time, they will see the benefits of the upgraded infrastructure. The Cisco CRS-3 will allow these internet backbone service providers to increase capacity so that new applications, especially video-based applications, like high-definition TV, video-conferencing and 3D TV, can be offered to the mass market.
Cisco CEO John Chambers said this new router will serve as the foundation of the next-generation internet that will see tremendous growth due to video.
"Video is the killer app," he said. "Video brings the internet to life and most of the devices that will be coming on the network will evolve quickly into video."
Chambers said just looking at the devices and applications that were at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February are a good indication of what is to come in the future. And he said all these products feed into the internet, which will load the network with more traffic.
"Whether it was gaming or video or tablets or ESPN bringing 3D sports to TV, it's about video," he said. Chambers added that this video traffic, along with other data intensive applications for things such as health care, will require more bandwidth than anyone could have imagined a short time ago.
Cisco's announcement is more of an incremental upgrade to the company's existing product, the CRS-1.
However, Zeus Kerravala, a senior vice president at the market research firm Yankee Group, has said the announcement is still very important to the growth of the internet and future innovation of new applications.
"There is no way that a routing announcement could live up to the hype that Cisco created," he said. "But if you look down the road, when consumers want to watch multiple channels of high-definition video and 3D programming, and as more mobile apps come onto 4G wireless networks, companies like Cisco and its rival Juniper Networks need to push the envelope in terms of routing engineering."
Via CNET.com