The CRS-3 provides as much as three times the throughput of Cisco's existing CRS-1 core router, more than 5,000 of which are now in use with about 300 carriers. It aims to help service providers handle rising video and mobile data traffic.

Cisco said the CRS-3 will provide new levels of intelligence for routing traffic including automated capabilities to set up virtual private networks over cloud services. The system, now in field trials, will be available in the fall at prices starting at $90,000.

The CRS-3 is powered in part by a set of six ASICs Cisco called the Quantum Flow Array Processors. The name harkens back to the processor in a Cisco edge router launched in March 2008.

The ASICs include packet, queuing, fabric and interface processors that fit on each line card in the system with as many as 16 cards in a chassis. The CRS-3 is Cisco's first router to span multiple cabinets.

Keith Cambron, president and chief executive of AT&T Labs, said AT&T tested the CRS-3 handling a mix of 100, 40 and 10 Gbit traffic on a commercial link between Miami and New Orleans. "I am confident it can handle the traffic load with the error performance we wanted, and no co-channel interference," Cambron said in the teleconference.

"In 2008, we deployed a 40G backbone with the Cisco CRS-1 and we are already seeing routes where 40G is not enough," Cambron said. "We are putting in multi-lanes of 40G in some places [but] we are still a few years from finalizing plans [for 100G lanes]," he said.

Cisco spent three years and an estimated 1.6$ billion developing the CRS-3.

By: DocMemory
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