5/25/2004 -- At its 20th anniversary celebration, held today at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., Cisco unveiled the Carrier Routing System-1 (CRS-1), a new high-end router designed for telecommunications carriers.

If the new router’s code-name – i.e., “Huge Fast Router” -- is any indication, Cisco aims to deliver massive scalability with CRS-1. The networking giant even introduced a new version of IOS – dubbed IOS XR – that it says is designed for terabit-scale routing systems. Cisco says the CRS-1 boasts an overall system capacity of up to 92 terabits per second.

The CRS-1 is designed to enable large-scale delivery of high-bandwidth applications such as video on demand, online gaming, and real-time interactive services. It’s a multi-service router that can support data, voice, and video services over a converged IP network, Cisco officials say.

“For years, we always built a new network every time we had a new application,” said Mike Volpi, senior vice-president and general manager of Cisco’s Routing Technology group, in an online Q&A. “The turning point today is that we're not going to build a new network every time a new application comes along. Our customers want one network that's future-proof and past-proof. Take all those applications of the past--put them on one network….That's why it's fundamental for them to have a carrier-grade networking router that is flexible enough to accommodate these types of services.”

Cisco says that the new IOS XR software allows the CRS-1 to run more or less continuously, even during maintenance and upgrades, without service interruptions. IOS XR supports process-level in-service upgrades, and enables distributed processing by separating the control, data and management planes. The next-generation router also boasts self-defending network capabilities that can automatically identify potentially disruptive activities -- such as distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

CRS-1 is based on Cisco’s Intelligent ServiceFlex design, which lets carriers separate traffic and network operations on a per-service or per-customer basis. The next-gen router features Cisco’s new Silicon Packet Processor (SPP), a 40-Gbps ASIC as well as an OC-768c/STM-256c IP interface; it can support up to 1,152 40-Gbps line-card slots.

At the CRS-1 unveiling, Cisco touted testimonials from MCI – which used the new router to demonstrate what it claims is the fastest-ever IP intercity transmission across its IP backbone at 40-Gbps throughput – and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Cisco’s Volpi, for his part, conceded that “some people might look at the CRS-1 and think that it is overkill,” but stressed that the new router is designed to form the backbone of the broadband age. “[B]roadband is a huge component of the future of telecommunications companies. It really opens up the pathways to businesses and to homes to deliver a much broader range of applications than we've seen in the past. And with that comes huge challenges in terms of building networks that can actually deal with a significant increase in scale and bandwidth,” he said. “[A]s broadband continues to expand, … you're going to see a tremendous increase in bandwidth growth in the core of global networks. So, telecommunications companies have to then build a core network that can actually deal with that massive increase of bandwidth that shows up as a result of broadband and new applications.”

In this respect, Volpi claimed, the “CRS-1 is a product that we custom-built for this communications future, a router capable of handling whatever is thrown at it.” -Stephen Swoyer