In a note issued today, Kidron adds that the router, with up to 2.88Tbit/s of capacity by some metrics, probably won't ship until mid-2011 due to problems with the switching chipsets.
Kidron thinks the router will have a per-slot capacity of 120Gbit/s, which would appear to outdo the 100Gbit/s of per-slot capacity offered by the Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) T1600 or the Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) 7750 Service Router.
It would certainly best the CRS-1, which carries just 40Gbit/s per slot.
A 24-slot version of the router would therefore have 2.88Tbit/s capacity, although that figure doesn't address the switch-fabric capacity or the aggregate capacity of the router's interfaces.
Kidron also thinks a 12-slot version is in the works.
Just a couple of years late (give it 6-12 months more for the actual product delivery).
If you are curious, Huawei also claims they have a 100GE capable core router with a twist. According to their video, it is targeting the era of the "Ultra Boardband" )
What I find interesting is the sudden importance of per-slot capacity, here and on the ASR 9000 ... versus the CRS-1's emphasis on building a massive fabric.
Cisco makes a big deal out of the fact that people ridiculed CRS-1's scale back in 2004. But is this announcement an admission that the CRS-1 scales in the wrong dimension?
> What I find interesting is the sudden importance of per-slot capacity, here and on the ASR 9000 ... versus the CRS-1's emphasis on building a massive fabric.
Craig,
Let's not confuse creative marketing with revenue-generating product capabilities.
ASR9K started life with 40G/slot linecards and only now starts gaining 80G/slot blades. CRS-1 fabric does only 40G/slot, but can (theoretically) support many destinations for multichassis.
Practically scaling a multichassis beyond 8xLCC involves solving too many software, hardware and systest issues. That's why it takes several years between shipping a single-chasis and multi-chassis system, in which timeframe the newer generation of silicon becomes available rendering the old multichassis system useless. For analogy, imagine someone offering a room full of interconnected Cisco 7500 routers - not a good investment from space, energy and throughput perspective.
We all heard senior Cisco executives dropping "petabytes" here and there and I think Guinness record book still lists CRS-1 as a "92Tbps router", but this, of course, is pure nonsense for technically handicapped cat owners (somehow dog owners tend to know better).
So, technically, upping the ante for CRS-1 slot capacity is a significant achievement.
What's much less impressive is timing - Juniper T1600 has been shipping since 2007, which means that Cisco's new box risks becoming obsolete immediately after the first product shipments (2011?)
No one with any sense releases a new chassis without a plan to scale the slot capacity 3-4x in the future. Cisco didn't forsee 100 GE? I wonder if they will hatch yet another OS for the new box.
Juniper stands to pick up a lot of business from stranded CRS-1 customers.
note to self: don't pay for any Oppenheimer & Co reports on networking gear.
Abandoning the CRS-1 as the article/rumor implies would be beyond stupid and won't happen. Maybe a little research on the CRS-1 (like the parts list) would be enlightening for the author.
Dkh -- Great points, thanks for the post. Actually, it was the marketing I was talking about -- interesting to see which ultra-big dimension becomes important from year to year. I doubt we'll hear about "72-box multichassis" this time around, maybe for the exact reasons of practicality that you mention.
>What's much less impressive is timing - Juniper T1600 has been shipping since 2007, which means that Cisco's new box risks becoming obsolete immediately after the first product shipments (2011?)
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