If your iPhone is still sluggish a few years from now, don’t blame Cisco Systems.
The top networking equipment maker on Tuesday announced a new high-end router for telecom companies that it said could handle three times the internet traffic of its current model at the same $90,000 base price.
Put a few of them together–ok, 72–and you could handle a video call from every man, woman and child in China.
The announcement might not have lived up to its Apple-esque billing as an advance that would “forever change the internet.”
But Cisco marketing executive Mike Capuano said the CRS-3 had new architecture that quickly finds under-used parts of the network and delivers it to customers.
Cisco didn’t name any customers for the machines, which will begin shipping this summer. But it trotted out the head of AT&T Labs, who said his company had used the model in recent tests of a 100 gigabit-per-second commercial line between Florida and New Orleans.
AT&T’s Keith Cambron said the telecom power would need to deliver such speeds, up from the current 40 gigabit level, in the next few years.
While in the works for years, the product’s announcement follows Google’s news that it will test super high-speed broadband access for consumers.
Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers said that Google was a fine company–he particularly appreciates the help in generating bandwidth demand–but that Cisco intends to partner with the carriers, rather than compete against them.
Unfortunately for the public, that still leaves it up to AT&T and its rivals to figure out a way to get all that network capacity through the last mile to their customers.
