The CRS-3 offers three times the traffic capacity of the its predecessor, the CRS-1, Cisco said, and promises to accelerate the delivery of new experiences for consumers, new revenue opportunities for service providers, and new ways to collaborate in the workplace. That's a lot of hyperbole, but analysts said it's believable.

"It's too bad Cisco led up to this router announcement with so much hype. People were expecting Armageddon or something. They had this countdown timer as if something big was going to happen," said Zeus Kerravala, a vice president at Yankee Group. "At the end of the day what Cisco announced was a big, fast router. But that's what Cisco does. We expect Cisco to release bigger, faster routers. It's what they built their company history on."

Lighting-Fast Router

The Cisco CRS-3 can handle up to 322 terabits per second. To put that speed into perspective, this router would allow the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just more than one second. Or every man, woman and child in China to make a video call -- simultaneously. And every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

The Cisco CRS-3 makes possible unified service delivery of Internet and cloud services. A Network Positioning System provides layers three to seven application information for the best path to content. And a cloud virtual private network for Infrastructure as a Service lets customers "pay as you go" for computing, storage and network resources by automating Cisco CRS-3 and Cisco Nexus Inter-Data center connections for Cisco UCS.

Those are the features and benefits on paper. But how does it work in the field? AT&T recently tested the Cisco CRS-3 in a successful completion of the world's first field trial of 100-gigabit backbone network technology, which took place in AT&T's live network between New Orleans and Miami. The results appear promising.

"We are entering the next stage of global communication and entertainment services and applications, which requires a new set of advanced Internet networking technologies. AT&T's network handled 40 percent more traffic in 2009 than it did in the previous year, and we continue to see this growth in 2010," said Keith Cambron, president and CEO of AT&T Labs. "Having leading-edge experience in managing the largest global data network, we are pleased to continue our close working relationship with Cisco and its groundbreaking Cisco CRS-3 platform."

Getting Beyond the Hype

After he removed his skeptic's hat and disregarded the hype Cisco created, Kerravala called the CRS-3 an "impressive piece of engineering." He still remembers when Cisco launched the CRS-1 and people thought it was a "crazy big box" with more bandwidth than customers really needed.

"The lesson we've learned over time is that no matter how much bandwidth you throw out there, we will find a way to consume it," Kerravala said. "Do most people care that Cisco has launched a big cool router? No, but I think what they'll care about is this: A number of years from now consumers will be able to watch multiple 3-D HDTV channels in their home and they'll be able to watch streaming media on their phone."