Cisco today unveiled its next-generation router for service providers with a system the company claims can scale to terabit speeds.
Cisco rolled out the 12016 Gigabit Switch Router (GSR), which features switching capacity of 320G bit/sec. The previous high end of the 12000 line, the 12012, scaled to 60G bit/sec.
The 12016 is based on the same crossbar switch architecture as the previous generation 12000s, and features 15 I/O slots, a route processor slot and a switch fabric cabinet. Cisco also unveiled a single-port 10G bit/sec OC-192c packet-over-SONET line card for the 12016.
Each OC-192c packet-over-SONET line card forwards 25 million 40-byte packet/sec. When fully populated with 15 such cards, the 12016 switches 375 million packet/sec, Cisco claims.
Service provider Qwest is currently running a coast-to-coast OC-192 link between 12016 GSRs located between New York and Sunnyvale, Calif., says Kelly Ahuja, Cisco director of marketing for optical internetworking.
The 12016 can also handle up to 60 OC-48s, 60 OC-12s and 240 OC-3 ports, Cisco says.
"The competition is very different than in the past. There is the Lucent/Nortel/Alcatel factor, with each owning terabit routing companies now," says Craig Johnson, princiapl at The PITA Group in Portland, Ore. "And then there is a very strong crop of terabit start-ups that have actually made a dent in the overall market. Now will Cisco get 'its fair share?' You bet. Will the battle to get that share be harder this time around? You bet."
At the heart of the 12016 is a 64 x 64 nonblocking crossbar switch fabric that features virtual output queuing to alleviate head-of-line packet blocking common among crossbar fabrics. Virtual output queuing is necessary to deliver multicasting services, among others, Cisco says.
To scale to 5T bit/sec, Cisco decouples the switch fabric from the I/O shelves and scales it to 256G bit/sec. Cisco then surrounds this switch fabric shelf with 16 12016s, each capable of handling 320G bit/sec of switching capacity.
The resulting system is a 5T bit/sec virtual router that can handle 252 OC-192s, 1008 OC-48s and 4,032 OC-12s and OC-3s, Ahuja says.
Cisco will offer this 5T bit/sec system in the second half of 2000, Ahuja says.
Cisco has shipped more than 4,000 GSRs worldwide, as well as 2,000 OC-48 GSR ports, Ahuja says. Cisco is adding eight to 10 new GSR customers per week, he says.
"No matter what Cisco says about not 'needing to own the ISP/carrier core,' their key to success has always been the ownership of the core - both the enterprise and the ISP/carrier spaces," PITA's Johnson says. "And the key to account control will always be in being able to 'manage' the core of the network."
The 12016 costs $65,000 and will ship later this month.
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