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What Would You Do With a 92 TBps Router? 344

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hope-they-changed-the-passwords dept.
enodev writes "Cisco announces today it's new 'Carrier routing system' For a price tag starting at $450,000 it's able to route up to 92 Tbps. It also features IOS-XR and the first optical OC-768c/STM-256c optical Interface." update changed TBps to Tbps and suddenly things seemed less cool ;)
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What Would You Do With a 92 TBps Router? More

What Would You Do With a 92 TBps Router?

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  • I know exactly what I'd do (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:16AM (#9246604)
    I begins with 'p' and ends with 'r0n'.

  • More info.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mz6 ( 741941 ) * on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:16AM (#9246605) Journal
    Well, I was going to comment and see what, if anything, Juniper Networks [juniper.net] was going to come out with but I found a NYTimes article to answer it otherwise [nytimes.com]. Here's a snippet:

    "Juniper Networks has individual routers that are at least as fast, but the company cannot combine as many routers to ultimately produce the same speeds, according to Chris Nicoll, a telecommunications industry analyst with Current Analysis, a research firm."

    and more....

    "The new router design is the first developed by Cisco that allows several routers to be connected, according to the company. A single router would be able to transmit data at 1.2 terabits a second. But as many as 72 routers can be hooked together to send data at 92 terabits a second, far faster than any router sold now. In telecommunications, data transfer is usually measured in bits per second. A terabit is one trillion bits. "

    • Re:More info.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rhubarb Crumble ( 581156 ) <r_crumble@hotmail.com> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:21AM (#9246662) Homepage
      "The new router design is the first developed by Cisco that allows several routers to be connected, according to the company. A single router would be able to transmit data at 1.2 terabits a second. But as many as 72 routers can be hooked together to send data at 92 terabits a second, far faster than any router sold now."

      I have this weird image of a pile 72 routers being daisy-chained serially, with the insanely grinning salesman standing next to it saying "Look! If you connect them to each other they go twice as fast! It goes up to 11!"

      Now that gold-plated high-speed modem cable will finally come in handy!

    • Avici terrabit routers have been "combinable" for several years.

      Expensive, yes. tiny market share, yes. But they have been combinable.

      And if this new router "works" as well as their other routers, we're doomed.

  • what would I do? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrhandstand ( 233183 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:18AM (#9246616) Journal
    Route traffic.

  • Various uses (Score:4, Funny)

    by chendo ( 678767 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:18AM (#9246618)
    Horny bastard: Porn. Lots of porn.

    Script kiddie: OMG I CAN DOS PPL!!!!!!!111111111oneone

    Pirate: Warez, and other assorted treasures.

    CowboyNeal: Hey, we can use it to host slashdot!

  • I would be very, very pissed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:18AM (#9246622) Homepage
    ...because my home network equipment only has 100Mbps adapters, and I can't afford to upgrade them all.

  • I would (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Achoi77 ( 669484 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:18AM (#9246623)
    Sell it for $450,000. Then get a house.
    • You'd have to buy it for $450,000 first. Cut out the middleman and buy the house now.

    • Alternately (Score:3, Interesting)

      by appleLaserWriter ( 91994 )
      I'd rent it out to the government, and then use the resulting rent to make payments on:

      (1) a condo in NYC
      (2) a Maserati
      (3) a NetJets account

  • I know what I'm gonna do (Score:3, Funny)

    by 6Yankee ( 597075 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:19AM (#9246627)
    Hang it off the back of my 56k modem, what do you think I'm gonna do with it? Sheesh!

  • What Would You Do With a 92 TBps Router? (Score:5, Funny)

    by perrinkog ( 536087 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:19AM (#9246634) Homepage Journal
    "What Would You Do With a 92 TBps Router?"

    Pinky : "Gee, Brain what do you want to do tonight?"
    Brain : "The same thing we do every night Pinky. Try to take over the world!"

  • that could (Score:3, Funny)

    by cassidyc ( 167044 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:19AM (#9246642)
    pump out a lot of spam...

    Failing that with enough filespace it could server an awful lot of mp3/ogg/aac

    CJC

  • Not IOS though (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:20AM (#9246646)
    Interestingly however it does not use IOS. Which brings up several questions: is Cisco going to start replacing IOS with redesigned-from-scratch (watch out for second system effect!)? Or will they maintain two routing software bases, IOS and whatever the new one is called? Will this be an issue from either a marketing or technical/CCIE perspective?

    sPh

    • Re: Not IOS though (Score:4, Informative)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:39AM (#9246830)
      Did you bother to even look at the site? Nooo of course not. From the site:

      The Cisco CRS-1 is powered by Cisco IOS XR Software, a unique self-healing and self-defending operating system designed for always-on operation while scaling system capacity up to 92 Tbps.

      Click on "Cisco IOS XR" and you get:

      Q. What is Cisco IOS XR Software?

      A. Cisco IOS XR Software is the newest member of the Cisco IOS Software Family. Cisco IOS XR has been developed to address the requirements for scale, availability, and service flexibility which arise from the creation of converged packet infrastructures that consolidate voice, video, and data services. Cisco IOS XR Software has been specifically optimized to take advantage of the massively distributed processing capabilities of the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System.

      Why do you even bother posting? I wouldn't think it's for karma whoring - such a low UID isn't likely to partake in such things unless adicted. It certainly isn't to contribute quality material to the discussion, either.

      • Re: Not IOS though (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sphealey ( 2855 )
        Not sure I understand your complaint. I read the article in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, and also several web articles Monday night and Tuesday morning.

        Given that I had already read Cisco's press releases (which perhaps I should have specified), none of the material you quoted answers any of the questions I posed. I am interested in the community's answers, not Cisco's spin.

        sPh

    • Re: Not IOS though (Score:2, Informative)

      by vangilder ( 589215 )
      An article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday [wsj.com] mentioned that they were getting rid of IOS in favor of something more "user-friendly." Their big competition is Juniper and, in order to sell more boxen (routen?) they have had to answer to complaints about IOS. Also, the article mentioned that IOS wass getting to be around 15e6 lines of code, and was impossible to maintain. Yay for a free market where consumers can actually vote with thier wallet and compaines have to respond or someone else wil
      • I'd be very very suprised if they "got rid" of IOS. Cisco are already (and have for a long time) provided web-front ends for routers and switches (even thought the router one is primitive to say the least). There is also the configmaker tool to help ..um.. make configs :)

        The deal is: routing is complicated. Even your basic IP router IOS image has thousands of configuration posibilities. How simple can you make restributing routes between two routing protocols between half a dozen subnets while controlling

    • Re: Not IOS though (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mateito ( 746185 )
      What do you mean "Not IOS"?

      All your questions are answered here:

      http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5763/produ ct s_qanda_item09186a008022e09b.shtml

      • See previous response. For a long time Cisco was one of the most honest suppliers in the IT world, but even honest companies use spin control today. I am interested in discussion by knowledgable third parties, not the inital spin.

        sPh

      • Re: Not IOS though (Score:3, Informative)

        by sphealey ( 2855 )
        You know those crazy guys at the Wall Street Journal news division, always getting things wrong:

        Cisco is taking a gamble with its counterattack, scrapping the software included in nearly every Cisco product since the company was founded two decades ago in favor of a new operating system designed to make the router easier to maintain and manage. "This is probably Cisco's most important" new product for telecom carriers, says Gabriel Lowy, an analyst for Blaylock & Partners LP. "The core router company wa

    • IOS isn't suitable for service-provider products. A few years ago when I worked for Cisco they were just starting this project and were also starting to architect a new OS. Believe it or not they intended to call it CHAOS; Cisco High-Availabilty Operating System. Shoe phones not included.

    • It's a redesigned backend but they have redesigned the backend before most recently for the GSR's (the 12k line) I was implemeting them when they first shipped and while the front end is the same the bad end was rather different. This is nothing new for Cisco everything is pretty much C modules that get compiled for the new artitecture and/or written for the new hardware. It's realy not that hard to replace a software bit with hardware by just writting a wrapper module.

      A side note read the specs for the

  • hrm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by morgajel ( 568462 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:20AM (#9246650)
    Make a CD Case? [dailynews.com]

    actually, I just hook it up in my apartment and not tell anyone- then the next lan party I host not get complaints that my network is too slow.
    (bastards.)
  • My cable modem choked on just downloading those specs (and that pricetag)!!! O_o

    Now it's huddled in the corner crying about "too much pressure to perform" or some such crap! Thanks a lot you insensitive clod!

  • STM256! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by REBloomfield ( 550182 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:21AM (#9246666)
    "It also features IOS-XR and the first optical OC-768c/STM-256c optical Interface."

    I'm studying Optical transmissions at the moment, and just getting my head around how bytes were interleaved and mapped across AU's, TUG's etc in *one* STM was a stretch enough, (the diagrams are nuts), and now there's an STM2565! That's a bloody lot of multiplexing....

    Bet they're glad they don't use PDH anymore....

    • Re:STM256! (Score:5, Informative)

      by vyzar ( 11481 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:18AM (#9247274)
      You can be sure it will actually be STM-256c as opposed to plain vanilla STM-256.

      Almost NO datacomms equipment manufacturers support the non-concatenated versions of SDH above STM-1. I have bitten in the past by companies that said they support STM-4 when they actually meant STM-4c. And of course at the time the telcos only support STM-4 and NOT STM-4c.

      I suspect that the STM-256 support will be the same.

      (For the uninitiated STM-4 is a straight multiplexing of 4 STM-1s, each with their own header and payload sections. STM-4c is essentially one big STM channel with a single header section and a single concatenated payload section. STM-256c just extends this principle to more insane capacities).

  • Careful (Score:5, Funny)

    by choas ( 102419 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:21AM (#9246668)
    Now you guys please be careful not to /. Cisco :)

  • After Much Deliberation.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bfg9000 ( 726447 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:21AM (#9246670) Homepage Journal
    ... I'd sell it and buy an Aston Martin. I'm not THAT much of a geek -- big routers just don't attract the babes the way I'd like.
  • I I wasn't looking for a faster NIC, higher-quality cabling, a new ISP, and probably an all new place to live just to use the damn thing, I'd probably be looking for a way to sell it discreetly and anonymously -- because I'm certain I lack the means to acquire one legally.

  • Terabits, not terabytes (Score:5, Informative)

    by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:23AM (#9246689) Homepage Journal
    It's a small point, but the article calls it 92 Tbps, not 92 TBps. Which means its really 19 terabytes per second, which works out to some ungodly number of libraries of congress per fortnight. Either way, it's a lot.

  • Obligatory grammar nazi (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cisco announces today it's new 'Carrier routing system'

    It's "its," not "it's!" Sometimes I think the grammar behind this is starting to devolve... or at least I'm having difficulty parsing it now.

  • Get your units right (Score:4, Informative)

    by dsanfte ( 443781 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:24AM (#9246692) Journal
    Terabits/sec (Tbps), not Terabytes/sec (TBps).

    I'm not surprised some moron doesn't know his units, especially when it's mentioned in the article and placed in its proper notation. I'm surprised the EDITORS refuse to change it to be factual.

  • What I would do.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by michael path ( 94586 ) * on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:24AM (#9246696) Homepage Journal
    The first thing I'd do is set it up for use with my Cable Modem connection.

    Immediately, I'd notice it wouldn't work.

    Then I'd call up my technical support for the cable service, and tell them I couldn't connect.

    They would have me unplug the modem from the "PC", shut down my computer, and reboot it. It wouldn't work.

    Then they'd have me cycle the cable modem.

    Then they'd ask me if I had a router. I would say "Yeah, I do bitches! I got me a Cisco 92TBps. Cost me almost a half-mil, but it's sooo cool!"

    Then they'd tell me it was unsupported, to which I'd respond I would wedge that pizza box sideways up their asses.

    THE END
    • Hehe... I've always wanted to find myself in that situation with tech support for my DSL provider, just for the fun of it. (of course my router is a far more meager Cisco 4500, though that makes it small enough and practical to use) Though the service is reliable enough, and they seem to already know about problems when I do have brief outages, so I've never actually spoken with a human at their tech support. Probably a good thing, though.

  • I would just go about everything like normal. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hopelessness ( 742112 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:24AM (#9246702)
    I would pretend there were enough other people out there with high speeds to make this even remotely useful.

  • IOS XR is QNX (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who says you can't get performance from a microkernel [qnx.com]?

    This was the product whose internal development code name was HFR (Huge Fscking Router).

    Sweet!

    p.s.
    Note the other key word "self-healing".

  • slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by kjeldor ( 146944 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:25AM (#9246710)
    I would...
    for the first time ever...
    *gasps*
    attempt to slashdot slashdot.
  • Well, with all of that bandwidth, I would imagine that volumetric data feeds of realtime sources with collision detection at high rez could be sent uncompressed, both ways.

    This could be quite usefull in the medical field for say, exploratory surgeries. Collision detection could exist 3 dimentionally instead of the current 1D point sensors.

    Nurse Jameson, this is Dr. Peter North calling, is the patient prepped for the 'probe'?
  • I'd host a beowulf cluster of Unreal Tournament 2004 servers with 32-player maps.

  • Finding uses... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chuckcolby ( 170019 ) *
    I'd probably use it to prop open my door or somethng. Maybe set a coffee pot atop it. The problem with a Tbps router is that you'd need to feed it traffic.

    And why do we need to route this much traffic? Because over 60% of all email is spam. Because unpatched systems are getting trojans, which in turn are contacting their makers.

  • With a 95% confidence level, (Score:5, Funny)

    by gutterandthestars ( 782754 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:32AM (#9246768)
    90% of posts will be 1.1 standard deviations away from one of the following:

    0. "fist pr0st!!!!!111~"
    1. "92TBps of pr0n!!!"
    2. "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!"
    3. "I for one welcome our OC-768c/STM-256/optical Interface overlords!"
    4. "1. OC-768c 2. STM-256 3. ... 4. PROFIT!!!"
    5. "If IOS is based on unix, does that mean Cisco will have to pay SCO for licenses?"
    6. "I use BNC you insensitive clod!"
    7. "emacs does this
  • I would download the Library of Congress...

    and then porn.
    On a more serious note, I would very much like to setup my own "Internet Node". No need for me to pay for sattelite internet any more, the internet comes to me!
  • I would sell it on ebay!

    Nick Powers

  • Hook it to my analog modem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:39AM (#9246826) Homepage Journal
    What good does the router do with nothing to connect too..

    They dont work in a vacuum.

  • How do you test it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Boyceterous ( 596732 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:40AM (#9246841)
    How do they go about testing the full capacity for these? Would a customer ever know if was not quite getting full throughput?
    • I can just imagine cisco getting a call...

      "Hi, I just bought one of your 92T routers, and a few minutes ago, I only got 101,155,069,755,390 bits through in one of the seconds. Can you send me my two bits please?"

  • Well, I'd... (Score:3, Funny)

    by GeneralEmergency ( 240687 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:40AM (#9246842) Journal

    ...connect up a bunch of those Beowulf Clusters you /.ers are always on about!

  • What would Jesus do with a 92 TBps router? Route traffic, of course! Maybe that's what the afterlife uses to route new arrivals to their appropriate final destinations.

    Hmm. If Peter is just a sysadmin....?

  • Easy... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by ThrasherTT ( 87841 )
    Sell it for $450,000 and buy something useful, like a house.
  • Counter-Strike!!!!!

  • I'd... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fizban ( 58094 ) <fizban@umich.edu> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:46AM (#9246890) Homepage
    ...route all traffic to www.slashdot.org and slash the dot.

  • interesting story (or maybe not) (Score:5, Funny)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @09:48AM (#9246907)
    I had a silly asignment for a class of mine: look up and a router, tell me what it can do, and then compare/contrast the router you picked with one another classmate picked.

    Being the sadistic mothrefucker that I am, I hopped over to cisco's site at about 1am and saw this beast listed "Carrier Router System". I didn't recognize it as a "normal" Cisco offering, and 92Tb/s is really fucking fast. Though, beyond that, I didn't think anything of it. Cisco is just expected to have the fastest stuff out there, right? And to think, were I more up on my Cisco products, I could've submitted this to the front page. (And they could have denied me access, and posted someone else's submission 12 hours later, as tends to be the case around here :P)

    As it sands, those sorry sons-of-bitches in my IT200 networking course are going to hate me. They likely all picked SOHO equipment to compare/contrast and won't know up from down when it comes to comparing/contrasting. "What's 'Tbps' mean?" they'll ask.
  • ... maybe it will be enough for an 8 nodes Windows supercomputer [slashdot.org]. Obviously, if you want a 16 nodes Windows cluster, you will need a slightly more speedy hardware [lcarscom.net].

  • Top 10 (Score:5, Funny)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:01AM (#9247063)
    10. Tell all my mates. Note the names of the one or two who don't laugh at me, and remember to send them, and only them, Xmas cards this year

    9. Get a really really fast sniffer, so I can make sure there's no porn traffic going through my router

    8. Write out 92Tb as a decimal number, just because I know it'll look really impressive

    7. Use it to pick up chicks. Revert to old story about being in astronaut training program, as it would be just as successful and slightly less geeky

    6. It's optical, right? See what happens when I cross the beams...

    5. Sleep with it under my bed. Less painful than a vasectomy, and probably just as effective

    4. Paint go-fast stripes on it, put a "Turbo" sticker on it, then track down and razz anyone who spent $450k on the "old, non-turbo version" by mistake

    3. Use it to beat the living daylights out of everyone associated with "Big Brother". I really really hate that show

    2. Advertise it on eBay with a photo, no reserve, and a description of "some sort of computer network thingy"

    1. Buy 2 and see if they'll reproduce in captivity
  • Take the bible set it up as a loop between them. Create the worlds best game of broken telephone.

  • Time Travel? (Score:4, Funny)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:04AM (#9247111)

    Put some instant coffee inside to see if I could go back in time....

  • BSEG... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mr. methane ( 593577 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:08AM (#9247158) Journal
    conf t
    int pos 2/0
    *giggle*
    shut
    *cackle*
    no shut
    *snort*
    shut
    *ROFL*
    no shut
    "Sir, I can't see anything wrong with the network. It must (shut) be a problem (no shut) with your equipment.

  • Sell it and pay off my mortgage.

  • What would I do? (Score:3, Funny)

    by dentar ( 6540 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:20AM (#9247307) Homepage Journal
    Hook a modem up to it and start surfing!

  • Longhorn Requirement (Score:5, Funny)

    by cylcyl ( 144755 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:54AM (#9247788)
    In other news, MS says such routers need to be installed in every home to allow the downloading of Longhorn patches.

  • CISCO Using QNX (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kilkonie ( 178841 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:30AM (#9248317)
    I think the more interesting story might be what it's running.

    QNX Powers Universal Media Gateway for Next-Generation Digital Video Networks [qnx.com]
    QNX Software Systems today announced that the QNX® Neutrino® realtime operating system (RTOS) will be shipping as part of the Cisco uMG9850 QAM Module, a new quadrature amplitude modulation product designed to let cable operators use Gigabit Ethernet to deliver video-on-demand and other multimedia services efficiently and cost-effectively to TV set-top receivers.

    'Little OS that could' just might [com.com]
    "In a deal signed two years ago, Cisco (csco) chose QNX as its preferred real-time OS vendor as part of Cisco's 'ongoing efforts to increase the reliability and availability of data-voice-video networks.' Since then, not much seems to have materialized from the partnership."

    Cisco's HFR is here [nwfusion.com]
    "The IOS-XR operating system kernel was acquired from QNX Software Systems, a small Canadian developer of realtime operating system code to companies in the automotive, communications, defense, industrial automation and medical device markets. Cisco already ships QNX operating system code in its uMG9850 QAM digital video module for the Catalyst 4500 Gigabit Ethernet switch."

    Cisco Unveils the HFR [lightreading.com]
    " The transition is analagous to Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - message board) moving from DOS-based operating systems to Windows NT, says analyst Stephen Kamman of CIBC World Markets.

    Just as NT did, IOS XR could begin trickling down to lower-level systems, eventually permeating Cisco's entire portfolio, including edge and enterprise boxes. "The question is how quickly they can push that software through the product line," Kamman says."

    "The software is based on a kernel licensed from QNX Software Systems, but tailored for the job. 'We have made some pretty substantial modifications to [the QNX code] that are Cisco proprietary,' Volpi says."

    [Disclaimer: This is a very happy QNX Employee.]

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