2:00 PM -- SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) is adding a 100Gbit/s Ethernet interface to the MX 3D edge routers. It's slated for trials next year.

Stefan Dyckerhoff, executive vice president of Juniper's infrastructure group, announced the card this morning at Juniper's analyst day. And for a few precarious seconds, he held the (undoubtedly expensive) card up for the audience. I managed to catch only a blurry photo:

A 100Gbit/s card was part of the MX 3D announcement last October, with indications that it would arrive in 2010, I think. If that recollection is correct, the cards will be a little bit late. (See Juniper Takes Over the Network.)

Dyckerhoff mentioned this as a "first," with a couple of qualifiers. I think it's the first case of modular 100Gbit/s Ethernet interfaces on a vendor's separate core and edge boxes. (Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), which uses the 7750 Service Router as both, wouldn't qualify as separate.)

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading