5/22/2006 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last week trumpeted a major carrier win for its CRS-1 router and new OC-768c/STM-256c optical interface.

Cisco announced that Yahoo! BB, one of the largest service providers in Japan, will tap the CRS-1/OC-768 combination to help support additional ADSL subscribers and deliver advanced video services.

Notwithstanding its value as a revenue source, analysts say the Yahoo! BB deployment is an excellent marketing opportunity for Cisco. The advanced video services Yahoo! BB plans to roll out will provide a demanding testbed for Cisco's router behemoth. "Although this level of bandwidth is in its early stages of deployment, it will be required to support massive deployments of VoD services and IPTV to consumers," says Jeff Ogle, a principal analyst for carrier infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis. "The actual deployment in a production network with plans for a nationwide deployment speaks well of the product's readiness and market demand for higher speed optical interfaces."

Ogle says Cisco's CRS-1 outfitted with the OC-768/STM-256c optical interface supplies capacity a-go-go -- at a price, of course. "The higher speed optical interfaces offer improved transmission speeds that can significantly improve the network efficiency as well as capacity in terms of performance and number of subscribers supported," he writes. "At the same time these higher speed optical transmission paths become the major network arteries and as such need to be provisioned with back up or redundant capability. This can lead to increased costs in terms of capital and wasted bandwidth."

In the long run, Ogle anticipates, "this speed of interface support will quickly become table stakes for core IP routers and the edge devices that feed the core with concentrated streams of user traffic." The big driver, of course, will be next-gen video services, he concludes, and "with the infrastructures now equipped to handle non-stop service delivery with high levels of quality, video deployments should accelerate, with equipment to deliver on the service providers' goals."

Because Cisco and arch-competitor Juniper Networks have both fielded 40G-ready entries, Ogle points out, competitors such as Avici, Alcatel, Siemens and Siena are under bona-fide pressure to respond with 40G-oriented offerings of their own. "Now that both IP core router market leaders have added the capability to their flagship platforms, it is quickly becoming table stakes for this market segment," he argues. And while Yahoo! BB is just one among hundreds of global service providers, Ogle says it's nevertheless an important deployment for Cisco.

"[Cisco] had already announced the availability of an OC-768c/STM-256c interface for its CRS-1 core router and recently launched a 'packaged' approach to address the raising bandwidth needs of its service provider customers," he concludes. "The actual deployment in a production network with plans for a nationwide deployment speaks well of the product's readiness and market demand for higher speed optical interfaces." -Stephen Swoyer