Cisco Systems Inc. announced it has shipped 900 of its CRS-1 Carrier Routing Systems to more than 85 providers since it began distribution in August 2004.
The company attributes the growth in CRS-1 sales to IP traffic growth on global networks. According to data compiled by Cisco and industry analysts, Internet video produced six-times more IP traffic in 2006 than the amount of IP traffic that crossed the entire U.S. Internet backbone in 2000. By 2011, global IP traffic is projected to reach more than 26 exabytes per month (an exabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quintillion bytes).
BT and Sprint are among the providers that have deployed the Cisco CRS-1 as part of their IP networks.
“The consolidation of BT's various service-specific networks onto a single IP infrastructure, combined with the growth of Internet traffic due to advanced services like IPTV and collaboration, makes having a reliable, highly-scalable, IP/MPLS core critical,” said Matt Bross, CTO at BT Group. “Our aggressive 21CN service strategy, driven by the growing needs of our residential, business and industry customers, will increase traffic growth and we wanted to deploy a core routing system that would meet those needs now and in the future.”
“We are deploying the Cisco CRS-1 to support our dramatic growth in MPLS services, including our action to migrate customers from legacy non-IP-based technologies to our SprintLink IP and Global MPLS platforms,” said Iyad Tarazi, vice president of network development for Sprint. “In addition to our wireline investments, we expect to see exponential growth in wireless data for 3G and WiMax services, which also require significant investments in our IP core. The CRS-1 is well-suited to meet our needs, thus allowing us to support the long-term needs of our customers.”
Other publicly announced CRS-1 customers include Cable & Wireless, Comcast, China Telecom (ChinaNet), China Education and Research Network (CERNET), Deutsche Telecom, Korea Telecom, FREE, the National Institute of Informatics' SuperSINET research network in Japan, Neuf Cegetel, National LambdaRail, MTS Allstream, MTN, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center(PSC), SaskTel, Savvis, Softbank, Yahoo! BB, Swisscom, Shanghai Telecom, Strato Medien, Teliasonera, Terremark, Telstra and VTR.
The CRS-1 uses Cisco’s IOS XR Software and scales up to 93tbps. It also features the Cisco Silicon Packet Processor, a programmable 40gbps ASIC and the Cisco Service Separation Architecture. It comes in four-slot, eight-slot and 16-slot configurations – all with cross-slot compatibility.
Cisco Systems Inc. www.cisco.com
