Cisco today announced a new member of its Carrier Routing System (CRS) family of core routers, this one providing about 10 times the capacity of the founding product in the line, the CRS-1, which debuted in 2004.
The new CRS-X, which will be available later this year, is a 400 Gbps per slot system that can be expanded to nearly 1 Pbps (petabit per second) in a multi-chassis deployment.
The 400 Gbps line cards are paired with Cisco AnyPort technology. AnyPort is the facility that enables a Cisco access product to work as both a network access server (NAS) and a voice gateway, enabling the delivery of universal services on any port at any time, the company explained.
The CRS-X gets its capacity boost by incorporating Cisco’s newest transceivers. The line card uses a CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) photonic technology developed by Cisco called CPAK, introduced earlier this year.
CPAK was designed to reduce power consumption, reduce the cost of sparing, and increase deployment flexibility. For example, each interface can be configured for either single port 100 Gigabit Ethernet, 2×40 GE, or 10 x10 GE and either short-, long-, or extended-reach optics by selecting a specific CPAK transceiver, Cisco said. This flexibility simplifies network engineering and operations and helps ensure that service providers can meet the demand for 10 GE, 40 GE and 100 GE applications without replacing hardware.
Additionally, with the CRS-X, service providers can choose between deploying integrated optics or the new Cisco nV optical satellite, the company said. Both allow for a single IP and optical system that utilizes Cisco’s nLight technology for control plane automation. The nV optical satellite deployments operate as a single managed system with the Cisco CRS Family to reduce operational expense and deliver high-density 100 GE scaling.
Mike Haberman, vice president of network operations, Verizon Wireless, said, “The Cisco CRS provides Verizon Wireless with an intelligent core solution and the ability to scale up to 400 Gbps per slot, which will meet our service demands well into the future.”
