Cisco Announces CRS-3 Internet Router for ISPs

Cisco has announced its new CRS-3 Carrier Routing System. The internet router is intended for telecom providers and, according to the manufacturer, can handle up to three times more data traffic per second than its predecessor, the CRS-1.

The CRS-3, which was announced with the necessary fanfare by Cisco on Tuesday as ‘the basis for the new internet’, succeeds the Cisco CRS-1 but is partly backwards compatible at the hardware level. The system is equipped with one or more six-score QuantumFlow Array processors and, according to the network manufacturer, is up to 60 percent more efficient and twelve times faster than competing internet routers. Compared to the CRS-1 introduced in 2004, the throughput of the CRS-3 would be roughly three times higher and scalable to speeds of up to 322 terabits per second.

Cisco said the US telecom company AT&T has “successfully” used the CRS-3 in recent months to test a number of 100Gbps fiber connections as a workhorse. The increased throughput of the CRS-3, which starts at $90,000, would allow ISPs to serve households with internet speeds of up to 1Gbps. According to Cisco, such throughput speeds will be increasingly needed in the coming years because ‘killer apps’ such as high-quality video connections would take off. The CRS-3 will be available from the third quarter.