Genachowski Applauds Innovations Like New Cisco Router
Cisco publicized Tuesday its next Internet backbone router. The company described its coming CRS-3 as having enormous capacity and laying the foundation for the future of the Internet with combinations of video, cloud computing, collaboration and mobile use. With the National Broadband Plan due out in a week, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski issued a written statement saying new “technologies like Cisco’s and investments by broadband providers are important steps” toward his “goal of connecting every community to a 1 GB network, through anchor institutions like schools and libraries."
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The new router will help get Internet access to everyone and support new online health and education services, among others, CEO John Chambers said on a webcast for analysts and reporters. He contrasted his company’s position with that of Google -- which won wide attention and FCC praise for saying that it will create a super high-speed fiber testbed. Google is “a wonderful company,” but Cisco is bringing the future of the Internet “to life,” Chambers said. Cisco works with providers and “will never compete with them,” he emphasized. Chambers also said the company is moving up from being just “a plumber” to becoming a “business partner” and service architect for its business customers. A Google representative said “it’s great to see efforts to make the Internet better and faster for everyone."
AT&T Labs CEO Keith Cambron took part in Cisco’s announcement. AT&T said it successfully field-tested the new router in “a standards-ready, single-flow, 100-Gigabit technology trial in a live network environment” in Florida and Louisiana. “AT&T’s network handled 40 percent more traffic in 2009 than it did in the previous year, and we continue to see this growth in 2010,” Lambron said. “Having leading edge experience in managing the largest global data network, we are pleased to continue our close working relationship with Cisco and its groundbreaking Cisco CRS-3 platform.”
James Losey of the New America Foundation said he didn’t back Cisco’s approach. “While Google’s announcement is about increasing infrastructure, Cisco is looking for ways a service provider can sell the same amount of bandwidth to more consumers, and often at a higher cost,” said Losey, who works for the group’s Open Technology Initiative. “With broadband prices on the rise, this is the wrong approach.”
The CRS-3 router will have a traffic capacity of 322 Tbps -- enough to handle more than 1 billion videos at the same time, to download the contents of the Library of Congress in a second, deliver every movie in about four minutes or allow every person in China to make simultaneous video calls, executives said. The router will have “12 times the capacity of our nearest competitor,” Chambers said. He was alluding to Juniper Networks, Mike Capuano, Cisco director of service provider routing and switching, said in an interview. The price will be $90,000 and up, and Cisco said it expects to make the router available in the third quarter.
Chambers said this is one of a series of unspecified announcements this year arrayed around a common architecture. They will concern technologies such as video, mobility and virtualization, Capuano said.
Cisco’s stock price dipped on the release of the news before bouncing back and after having risen almost 4 percent Monday in anticipation of big news. It closed unchanged on Tuesday. Cisco had sent out an advisory to analysts and reporters last month promising “a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments” and had put a countdown clock on its homepage. Chambers conceded that the development “may not be exciting to the average consumer.” Capuano defended the build-up. “This is game-changing in the service-provider industry,” he said. Other large U.S. service providers, their industry associations and Jupiter offered no comment in response to our inquiries.