Future of IOS may be seen in Cisco's new core router

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - Cisco's unveiling last week of a new core router marks a technological rebirth for the company 20 years after it introduced the world to commercial routing.

The CRS-1 router, introduced at a glitzy gathering in Mountain View, signals a departure from Cisco's traditional reliance on its aged yet ageless IOS software and more recent practice of acquiring vs. developing new technology.

The box is powerful: a CRS-1 system, also called the HFR, supports 92T bit/sec of bandwidth and each slot is capable of 40G bit/sec. The router features Cisco's first modular operating system specifically for carriers. The company's enterprise-borne, 17-year-old IOS is monolithic, meaning all processes are tightly intertwined and interdependent.

Cisco officials say they are evaluating pushing CRS-1 ASIC and software technology down deeper into its product line, a move that would gradually phase out platforms based on current-generation hardware and IOS software technology and mark a more dramatic reboot of the company's entire product portfolio. A modular operating system isolates certain processes so they can be stopped, started or changed without taking the entire router out of service; IOS could not do that.

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. - Cisco's unveiling last week of a new core router marks a technological rebirth for the company 20 years after it introduced the world to commercial routing.

The CRS-1 router, introduced at a glitzy gathering in Mountain View, signals a departure from Cisco's traditional reliance on its aged yet ageless IOS software and more recent practice of acquiring vs. developing new technology.

The box is powerful: a CRS-1 system, also called the HFR, supports 92T bit/sec of bandwidth and each slot is capable of 40G bit/sec. The router features Cisco's first modular operating system specifically for carriers. The company's enterprise-borne, 17-year-old IOS is monolithic, meaning all processes are tightly intertwined and interdependent.

Cisco officials say they are evaluating pushing CRS-1 ASIC and software technology down deeper into its product line, a move that would gradually phase out platforms based on current-generation hardware and IOS software technology and mark a more dramatic reboot of the company's entire product portfolio. A modular operating system isolates certain processes so they can be stopped, started or changed without taking the entire router out of service; IOS could not do that.

Corporations should expect a dramatic makeover of their Cisco routers, starting at the high end. Cisco has said that it is striving to put all of the products in its three lines of business - Commercial, Enterprise and Service Provider - on a common hardware and software architecture for feature, operational and management consistency, and lower cost.

While stopping short of pointing out the CRS-1 as the first example of that strategy, Chief Development Officer Mario Mazzola says it has the "potential" to usher in that era.

Cisco President and CEO John Chambers heralded the CRS-1's release, which was expected,  as "the new beginning" at Cisco. The router took Cisco four years and $500 million to build.

"This is the biggest jump we've taken in innovation since the router was introduced 20 years ago," he says. "This is a whole new generation of routing, not an extension. We have to start from scratch in hardware and software."

Chambers promised that the industry will see a "twofold increase in innovation" from Cisco in 12 months. "You haven't seen anything yet in terms of the capabilities," he boasts of the CRS-1.

"This is going to be the future of Cisco," says Frank Dzubeck, president of consultancy Communications Network Architects and a longtime Cisco watcher. "This is going to be the model."