Watch out Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper, Cisco may be soon taking the covers off the long-awaited follow-up to its CRS-1 core router, the MSC 120.
From a feeds and speeds perspective, the MSC 120 could give Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper a run for their money. With 120 Gbps per slot, the MSC 120 would surpass either Juniper's T1600 or Alcatel-Lucent's 7750 Service Router which support 100 Gbps-per-slot of capacity. A 24-port version of the MSC would offer 2.88 Tbps of total capacity.
But it appears that competitors could have time to respond to the threat. While Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Ittai Kidron wrote in a research note that the new router could come out as early as next month, ASIC issues could push it back until the middle of 2011.
"We believe Cisco has recently discovered issues with the supporting ASIC design, which could require a material redesign of the platform," wrote Kidron. "This could delay product availability until mid-2011."
For more:
- LightReading has this analysis
- Network World also had this article
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