9/26/2005 -- Cisco Systems Inc.’s Carrier Routing System (CRS) 1 bandwagon was somewhat slow getting started. Over the last few months, however, the networking giant has touted several high-profile customer wins for CRS-1 -- such as last month’s coup with Cable & Wireless, one of the United Kingdom’s largest carriers.

Chalk up another high-profile win for CRS-1, which last week found a taker in the China Education and Research Network (CERNET). Cisco says CERNET is the world's largest education network, with more than 20 million subscribers. It plans to tap CRS-1 to upgrade the capacity of its national backbone network and enhance network performance. It’s a non-competitive win for Cisco, however, as CERNET is currently an XR 12000 series shop.

Glen Hunt, a senior analyst for carrier infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis Inc., positions the CERNET win as, in effect, a validation of Cisco’s mega-bandwidth CRS-1 strategy. "CERNET will obviously be a great proving ground for the CRS-1 from an evolutionary standpoint, since it has outgrown its 2.5Gbps-standard backbone network in support of its rapidly growing customer appetite for more speed and capacity," he writes.

In this case, CERNET has a good idea of the kind of performance CRS-1 brings to the table. Last December, the organization tested Cisco’s next-gen router in a trial stretching from Beijing to Tianjin that achieved up to 40Gbps for real-time applications. "A network of this size in one of the most significant growth environments will be able to stress the capabilities of the CRS-1, which has quickly become the high watermark for IP core routers," he writes, noting that Cisco’s multi-terabit behemoth can support up to 92 terabits of throughput in its a maximum configuration (of 72 equipment cabinets).

More important still, notes Hunt, CRS-1 is finally starting to demonstrate some traction. Cisco claims to have sold at least 100 CRS-1 units since that product’s introduction last May, and the last few months have produced a spate of CRS-1 testimonials. "In spite of the obvious question of true need for a core router with 92Tbps of throughput, the CRS-1 is gaining some attention and market traction with several key customer wins, including Softbank BB Corp. of Japan, National Institute of Informatics, Japanese research network SuperSINET, and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center," he notes. "Cisco has announced trials with an additional 14 major global service providers, including Telecom Italia. Several of these customers outside of academia have the real potential to need a router of this size to support their infrastructure." -Stephen Swoyer