Cisco Unveils 'Mini-Me' Version Of CRS-1

As part of several service provider-oriented announcements Sunday, Cisco Systems introduced a half-size version of its flagship CRS-1 router, a box that may help Cisco find more paying customers among the service provider and large-enterprise market.

The eight-slot CRS-1, priced for holiday shopping at $225,000 and up (half-off the full-sized CRS-1 list price), already even has paying customers, according to Cisco. The 'mini-me' CRS-1 announcement joined news of a reseller/joint development agreement with Fujitsu as the start of the news blitz that generally accompanies the company's annual analyst conference, scheduled for later this week.

"There are already some [CRS-1 half-size boxes] out there, in deployments," claimed Tony Bates, vice president and general manager of Cisco's carrier business division. "It just affirms the strong momentum for the CRS-1."

As part of the announcements, Cisco claimed customer wins for the CRS-1 architecture with two Japanese concerns: Softbank (provider of that country's popular Yahoo broadband service) and the SuperSINET research network, as well as the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center in the U.S. Telecom Italia is also in trials with the CRS-1, Cisco said.

Until Cisco can snag some bigger fish, however, the company still trails Juniper Networks in the mind-share race at the biggest service-provider level. According to recent research, Juniper's market share of the core router market is growing faster than Cisco's.To combat that situation, Cisco is enlisting heavy hitters like Fujitsu, which will resell Cisco's entire line of routers while also participating in what Bates called a "joint development arrangement" for future products. Most likely, Cisco will hope to win entree to Japan's burgeoning broadband market via the coattails of Fujitsu, a leader in all kinds of computing hardware, including servers and mainframes.

As to the half-size CRS-1, Bates rejected the notion that Cisco had made a mistake by touting the big-brother version first, even though its size, cost and newness kept it from attracting any paying customers who cared to be quoted.

"This is a long-term journey, and scale is going to be crucial," Bates said. "The CRS-1 is the foundation for next generation services, so it was always the intent to prove it out with the largest carriers first, then move it downstream."

Bates also took a swipe at last week's announcement by Juniper of its new top-end platform, the TX Matrix, which combines four of Juniper's T640 routers via a switching matrix.

"Four systems around a matrix doesn't give a long-term sense to a customer," said Bates, whose CRS-1 architecture claims to be able to combine up to 72 router chassis for a throughput of 92 Tbps, albeit an implementation not likely to be deployed anytime soon. The announcements were made Sunday U.S. time, in order to coincide with the start of the business week in Japan.0