In a move that could be a boon for ISPs, companies with remote offices, and end-users and organizations craving faster streaming media, Cisco today unveiled a compact four-slot version of its CRS-1 routing line.
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This four-slot CRS-1 model delivers 320Gbps of total switching capacity in a 40Gbps-per-slot chassis. It’s aimed at providing quick deployment in locations such as regional POPs, MSO hub locations, and data-center peering sites. The purpose: to support the growing demands for IPTV, digital video, and other advanced business and residential IP services.
“Cisco developed the four-slot CRS-1 in direct response to requests from our service provider customers, who wanted to be able to deploy the 40Gbps CRS-1 with a smaller form factor and less capital expenditure per deployment,” said Tony Bates, senior vice president and general manager of the Service Provider Routing Technology Group at Cisco.
InfoWorld Contributing Editor Brian Chee shared positive predictions for the four-slot CRS-1. “Finally, this is the son (or daughter) of the old GSRs [gigabit switch routers] that have been at the core of many networks for many years. Juniper has been eating Cisco for quite a while because the GSR has become long in the tooth,” said Chee, author of the Geeks in Paradise blog and founder of the Advanced Network Computing Laboratory at the University of Hawaii’s Department of Information and Computer Sciences.
“This will most likely become the core switch/router for most future Cisco solutions,” Chee added.
Among companies expressing an interest in the new diminutive member of the Cisco CRS-1 family is Sprint, which plans to deploy it in Q4 of this year. “By creating a smaller form factor for the CRS-1 platform, Cisco is enabling us to lower costs and more efficiently handle the convergence of voice, video, data and mobility services, while still gaining the scalability, reliability and service flexibility that the platform provides,” said Iyad Tarazi, vice president of network development at Sprint.