Cisco has announced one of its recent and biggest advancement in its routing arena by adding CRX- X which stands for Carrier Routing System X which is 10 times more efficient than its prior version CRS-1 which was released in 2004. This Cisco CRX-X will now stand as the leader in the CRS family. The company in its official press release and company blog has said that Cisco CRS-X delivers 10 times the capacity of CRS-1 providing lasting investment protection for more than 750 customers and 10000 systems deployed worldwide.
So all those 750 telecommunication service providers and organizations present worldwide including some of the big players in the industry like Verizona Wireless and SoftBank Mobile Corporation that have deployed more than 10,000 CRS systems as the foundation of their network infrastructure are going to have a lasting business with them. So Cisco is now safe with its investors who have trusted them over a large period of time.
Coming to the product Cisco CRS-X will be made available in coming months which is a 400 Gigabit per second per slot system which can also be expanded to 1 petabit per second in a multi-chassis deployment.
They have said the following in their official blog regarding the new CRS-X routing system.
With today’s telecommunications service providers facing multiple challenges – such as limited scale, separate optical and Internet Protocol (IP) networks, and architectural constraints – the CRS-X expands the industry’s most scalable elastic core networking platform. With 400 Gbps per slot density, the CRS-X multichassis architecture delivers unsurpassed scale using a 400 Gbps line card with Cisco AnyPort™ technology. The line card uses complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) photonic technology, called Cisco CPAK™, 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. 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, the CRS-X improves the simplicity and scale of IP and optical convergence. Service providers can now choose between deploying integrated optics or the new Cisco nV™ optical satellite. 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.
Many Big Companies are happy with this announcement
Catharine Trebnick of Northland Capital Markets’s, who has an Outperform rating on Cisco stock, and a $26 price target, writes that growing pressure on carriers from cloud computing usage may prompt them to upgrade to the new Cisco CRS-X system:
We see carriers/cable operators/ content providers requiring core router refresh as result of an increase in traffic generated by Cloud services and machine-to-machine connectivity. We believe Cloud computing has redefined the way applications run on the network, exposing the underlying limitations of providers’ existing networks.
Catharine Trebnick also says that Cisco has nearly 54.5% of the “carrier routing and switching market,” according to data from ACG Research, ahead of Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) which has 19%, and Juniper Networks (JNPR) which is at 16.5%, and she observes the CRS-X’s specs seem to compare favorably to those vendors’ wares:
The CRS-X will support 64 100G ports per 7′ rack versus 40 on Alcatel- Lucent’s 7950 and the 32 by Juniper’s T4k. Cisco claims the CRS-X has 3x the routing capacity of Junipers T4k.
Raymond James’s Simon Leopold also gave an Outperform rating as well, predicting that the Cisco’s new device could prove challenging for not only Alcatel and Juniper, but also Infinera (INFN) and Ciena (CIEN), and fiber-optic component vendor Finisar (FNSR):
CRS-X will use Cisco’s internally developed CPAK optical interface, which represents a headwind for Finisar. Cisco promotes its architecture for Converged Transport Routers and cites deficiencies in alternatives (“Hollow core” – leveraging OTN and optical like Ciena’s 5400 and “Lean core” – leveraging MPLS like Juniper’s PTX), and argues that its converged solution of optical, MPLS, and routing with Cisco Prime management bringing the layers together. Similar to Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent combined its optical and routing units into a single organization, but it offers a two-box strategy (1830 and 7950). Optical integration matters, but we don’t know pricing. Cisco has offered IP over DWDM in the past, but high prices discouraged some carriers from using these interfaces, instead opting to plug the routers into long haul optical platforms; we suspect the CRS-X will go after this application more aggressively, which could pose a threat to long haul 100G competitors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, and Infinera.
Leopold, in assessing how Cisco stacks up to the competition, phrases the specs slightly differently from how Trebnick does:
The new CRS-X can support 64 100 Gbps ports in a standard seven-foot rack, which compares to 80 for Alcatel-Lucent’s 7950 and Juniper’s 32 on its T4000. In a multishelf configuration, Cisco claims it can support 1152 slots or 922 Tbps.
This article is inspired from Barrons and Cisco Official Blog.
Leave a Reply