Cisco's internet game changer is a huge router
Not quite the revolution promised, but the CRS-3 promises power and intelligence for cloud and video
Published: 10 March, 2010
READ MORE: Cisco Systems | Core Network | Mobile Content
Plumbers will always be in demand and always make money. But they shouldn't pretend to be rock stars. That might be a lesson Cisco should learn - in building up anticipation of its launch event yesterday, Apple-style, it only created disappointment that something more revolutionary was not on display. And that detracted from the very real strengths of what it did unveil - which was what, despite all its diversification, it does best, a massively powerful router, geared to the explosion of video over wireless and wired networks.
Apple may be able to launch an average device and convince us it has changed the world. Cisco launched an exceptional product, but not one that consumers long to have in their homes. The much rumored set-top box/media hub might have got more headlines for Cisco. Its promise, in the feverish build-up to its announcement, to "forever change the internet", was assumed to refer to an over-arching strategy spanning devices, cloud services, and wireless packet infrastructure. However, the main announcement was the CRS-3 Carrier Routing System, which may not "change the internet", but could certainly make the web perform better.
The new router promises more than 12 times the traffic capacity of its nearest rival, at up to 322Tbps. This kind of performance is indeed "the foundation of the next generation internet", as Cisco CEO John Chambers put it, if only because so much internet usage will be based on video, and a growing proportion of that travelling over wireless connections to handheld devices. The usual populist statistic was thrown in for color - the router enables the download of the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in just over one second - but a more meaningful metric would have referred to the entire archive of Walt Disney.
Just as important as raw power in the modern router is the intelligence. The CRS-3 promises high levels of network intelligence for security, and to assign and prioritize parts of the network dynamically to customers. Other key capabilities will revolve around self-healing and dynamic routing to improve quality of service. To support such progress, Cisco focused on new IP platform capabilities including Network Positioning System, which providers information to carriers from Layers 3 to 7, to identify the best path to the content or applications users are trying to reach.
Looking towards a world where much corporate and consumer data and apps will be held in the cloud, Cisco has also added a cloud-based VPN system to enable pay-as-you-go and utility-style network usage.
The first carrier to go public on having tested the CRS-3 is AT&T, which said it had used the product in a successful field trial of 100Gbps backbone technology - which Verizon will also start to roll out in the US this year. With major operators looking to 100Gbps in such short order, Cisco needed to steal a visible march on its router rivals, notably Juniper.
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