Plenty of details are left out, such as when the CTR might ship. But the document makes it clear that the platform is meant to be a step beyond the CRS-3 core router:

• The router would support 1Tbit/s per slot in the form of a card with ten 100Gbit/s ports. Whether this card would be available right away isn't clear.

  That would still fall short of the 12 100Gbit/s ports per card that Arista announced for its switches, but, depending on when the card arrives, it could be the best density for a core router. As a point of comparison, the Alcatel-Lucent 7950 Extensible Routing System got announced last year with a theoretical per-slot capacity of 1.6Tbit/s (800Gbit/s if you're not double-counting the traffic).

• It would double as an MPLS label-switched router, to provide the kind of Layer 2 "lean core" (Cisco's phrase) that some carriers are talking about. (See Verizon Builds an MPLS Metro with AlcaLu and Juniper Aims Big With 100G Optical.)

• It would be an ASIC-driven design, as usual. The network processor involved would carry 336 packet-processing cores on-chip and would handle both Ethernet processing and OTN framing.

Cisco declined to comment on any of this, but sources close to the company confirmed Thursday that that a new core-routing platform is planned for launch later this year.

Such a system would give Cisco an answer to the Leading-Lights-award-winning AlcaLu 7950, which Cisco initially disparaged as not being a core core router. (See Alcatel-Lucent Thumbs Its Nose at Cisco.)

Separately, the document appears to confirm plans to produce 10Gbit/s and 40Gbit/s versions of the CPAK interface -- that is, modules with ten 10Gbit/s ports or two 40Gbit/s ports.

CPAK is Cisco's home-grown optical interface module, built with silicon photonics and providing power and density levels compatible with the CFP2 standard. (See Cisco Defends Its 100G Project.)

— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading