Cisco Carrier Routing System (CRS) and the Next-Generation Internet

We are all watching with interest the engineering of very high speed chips with multiple cores, and very high speed comms connectivity directly to those chips through optical connectors directly to end devices (like Light Peak). We are also watching increased broadband, including Fiber, directly to houses (like Fios, of course).

But what about the backbone of the Internet?  If the very near future sees computers which can send and receive 10Gig each, and multiple computers like that in every household, then what will that mean to the fabric of the net? And add to that the ever increasing speeds of handheld devices (using 3G, LTE or Wifi) and the continuous connection to data networks and the Internet and it just underscores the need for continual enhancement of the net.

We have a need for speed.  Not theoretical speed from labs, but real speed available for purchase and installation.

With that need in mind listen to John Chambers here on Youtube:

Wow.  Cisco has been preparing for the growth.  Growth to what? A router supporting  322TB of capbility.  Imagine a network connection where every video ever made can be downloaded in 5 minutes.  Isn’t that how you want to connect to your ISP?   The cloud needs this.

One of the most surprising things to me:  The estimated price point. At a very low $90K it is a bit big for the house, but every business who is serious about video and every ISP that wants to remain and ISP and every teleco will be able to afford these as foundational Internet elements.

For more on the CRS-3, see:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5763/index.html

And for more on the need for speed, see:



About BobGourley

Bob Gourley is the editor of CTOvision.com and is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Crucial Point LLC, a technology research and advisory firm. Bob was named one of the top 25 most influential CTOs in the globe by Infoworld in 2007, and selected for AFCEAs award for meritorious service to the intelligence community in 2008. He was named by Washingtonian as one of DC’s “Tech Titans” in 2009. Bob was named one of the “Top 25 Most Fascinating Communicators in Government IT” by the Gov2.0 community GovFresh.

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Here are some interesting facts about this type of technology. I am surprised that Cisco's announcement received so much press considering that the technology already exists. "In 2009, Juniper rolled out our vision for 'the New Network' along with truly revolutionary innovations in silicon, systems and software. We agree with Cisco that the Internet and networks themselves require fundamental change, but Juniper takes a different, open-standards approach that better benefits service provider economics and end user experiences. That's why we've been delivering 100GB-capable systems since 2007. The claim of 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system is based on a theoretical maximum of 72 interconnected CRS-3 chassis in order to achieve the 322Tbps total capacity " this will likely never be deployed in practice due to space, power, and manageability realities. With its new T-Series chipset announced in early February, Juniper will deliver a four Terabit system in a half rack configuration while the CRS-3 requires a full rack to deliver four Terabits.

Allan I appreciate your comments here. That is good context all of us should keep in mind. In any situation, before a tech buy, enterprise CTOs should do a good bake-off of competing requirements.

Not clear when CRS-3 will be ready to deploy or what security certifications will be needed for use in secure government environments but when it is ready for prime time it will surely make bandwidth a non-issue for information transport between major nodes. Of course CRS-3 will not solve the problem in DoD, the IC or Law Enforcement of the "last tactical mile" but as T1/3 technology showed it will make it worse initially joemaz

Joe in this and other related technologies (like that light peak device that will bring optical speeds direct to your processor) I'm worried about how it is going to accelerate malicious code into your box and accelerate your private data out of your box. These are things not being worked fast enough.