Cisco Unveil New Tech to Double Internet Speed

Internet traffic is constantly on the rise, being likely to triple in the next five years. In order to cope with the growing demand, American networking equipment giant Cisco has unveiled some new technology designed to double Internet speed.

The company premiered the new core router technology last week, underlining that the routers will help ISPs and wireless carriers to offer their customers impressive speed for streaming videos, social networking and downloading apps at the same time.

The new routers, also known as the CRS-X, are designed to provide speeds of up to 400GB per second per slot. Every core router rack can be scaled up to 6.4TB per second, the entire system being able to offer almost 1 petabit per second.

To put it briefly: that is double the speed of any other similar products on the market. Cisco explained that one CRS-X router would be able to provide HV video streaming to every person in New York at the same time. A full setup can download the Library of Congress in a second. Which is quite impressive.

The CRS-X will be available later this year. Cisco said it has already received orders for the core router, with U.S. Verizon Wireless and Japan’s SoftBank planning to use the new routing technology.

Besides the insane speed, the CRS-X will also be able to handle four times more traffic and ten times more data than the CRS-3, the company’s previous core router, launched in 2010. Customers who already use the CRS-3 can easily upgrade to CRS-X simply by swapping out their cards.

Core routers are a crucial element of the Internet’s backbone, being in charge of connecting Internet users’ requests to websites such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc, and then relaying the data back to the users. Cisco holds about 65 percent of the core router market.

What do you think of the new technology? How excited are you about Cisco’s plans to double Internet speed?

[Image via lionnelweb]