Tuesday, March 22, 2011

New Cisco Router Supports 322Tbps, Designed for Internet Video


New Cisco Router Supports 322Tbps, Designed for Internet Video

What can you do with 322 terabits per second? Cisco Systems says it's enough bandwidth to allow every person in China to make a video call--simultaneously. And if that's something you want to do, Cisco says it now has hardware capable of the task.

The company's newest large-scale core router, the CRS-3, is capable of handling such a speed, which Cisco said is 12-times as fast as its closest competitor and three times the speed of its predecessor. It has invested $1.6 billion in the product's design and engineering.


The CRS-3, announced today, is the product that Cisco last month said would "forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments."

CRS stands for "Carrier Routing System," a reference to the device's use by large telecom providers.

Tbps stands for terabits-per-second and a terabit is a trillion bits. Compare that to the megabits-per-second that today's highest-speed business and consumer broadband connections are measured in.

Among other 322Tbps tasks: Transmitting every motion picture ever made (5 minutes), downloading the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress (1 second), or transmiting the entire DNA sequence of 56,000 people (also 1 second).

Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers announced the new router on a Monday conference call, during which he said the CRS-3 would be available before the end of this year. Field testing is underway and pricing for the new router is said to start at $90,000.

While 322Tbps sounds like--and is--incredible bandwidth, the CRS-3 is merely a response to the growth of video over the Internet.

"Video brings the Internet to life,” said Chambers. “You are moving from a messaging platform to a video platform," Chambers said. He predicted the bandwidth required for Internet video would grow by 200-500 percent per year.

"The Internet will scale faster than any of us anticipate," Chambers said.

Aimed at Internet providers and telecom companies, the CRS-3 is a curiosity for most businesses, but one that demonstrates the demand for bandwidth shows no sign of slowing. Video will play an increasing role in filling the fiber optic pipelines of the future.

David Coursey has been writing about technology products and companies for more than 25 years. He tweets as @techinciter and may be contacted via his Web site.

Student used spyware to steal passwords, change grades

Omar Khan is expected to be sentenced to a month in prison for altering his school record
by Robert McMillan

A former high school senior from Orange County, California, has pleaded guilty to charges that he installed spyware on school computers in order to boost his grades.

Omar Kahan, of Coto de Caza, California, was one of two Tesoro High School students arrested three years ago in connection with the incident. The other student, Tanvir Singh, pleaded guilty in September 2008. Khan's guilty plea came as his trial was finally set to start this week.

Prosecutors say that in his senior year of high school, Khan developed a habit of breaking into school offices to steal tests and mess with the school's computers. He "installed spyware devices on the computers of several teachers and school administrators throughout his senior year," the office of the Orange County District Attorney said in a news release.

These passwords gave him access to the tests and the ability to boost his grades. Khan changed his Spanish, calculus and English grades from C's and D's to A's and a B+ and altered the grades of 12 other students, prosecutors said.

On April 18, 2008, he was caught cheating on a statistics test. That weekend he broke into the school's assistant principal's office and "stole the test in an attempt to destroy the evidence that he cheated," the DA's office said.

On April 21, he changed his transcript grades in the school's grade database and immediately asked for certified copies of his transcripts so that he could appeal rejection letters from the University of Southern California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Singh tagged along with Khan to steal an English test during a May 19 nighttime break-in. He has since served 200 hours of community service, a DA spokeswoman said.

Khan, now 21, is due to be sentenced on August 26. Though he had been facing a maximum of 38 years in prison on the felony burglary and public-record tampering charges, he's expected to be sentenced to 30 days in jail, 500 hours of community service, and ordered to pay about $15,000 in restitution.