Ottawa Development Centre Eases Fears That ISPs Won’t be Able to Keep up with Bandwidth Demands

Cisco’s Ottawa Development Centre has been instrumental in the production of innovative essential products.

Those part of the core routing and switching portfolio include the ASR1000 and the CRS-series routers that will keep the Internet functioning normally around the world in the years to come. One may remember last year that there were fears that Internet service providers would not be able to keep up with the increasing bandwidth demand.

The ASR1000 series router solves the challenges of overloaded WiFi and mobility networks by allowing offload of smartphone and tablet traffic to the Internet. The older CRS-1 is so fast that it is 12 times faster than anything else in the world at 322 terabits per second. That is a Guinness World Record.

The newer CRS-3 incredibly operates at triple the CRS-1’s capacity, so it can handle two simultaneous HD streams of an NHL hockey game per person in Canada. Every man, woman, and child in China could make a video call simultaneously. Every motion picture ever created could be streamed in just four minutes with the CRS-3.

These innovative routers serve as the foundation of the next-generation Internet. They are setting the pace for the rapid growth of video transmission, mobile devices, and new online services.

Cisco’s Ottawa Development Centre also develops multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) innovation for products worldwide such as the CRS, ASR, and Nexus. The company says that “MPLS enables Enterprises and Service Providers to build next-generation intelligent networks that deliver a wide variety of advanced, value-added services over a single infrastructure.” Cisco is also building 100GE fiber optical communication systems enabled by digital processor signal ASIC.

The technologies have been enabled by Cisco’s $435 million acquisition of StratumOne Communications in 1999 and the company’s $120 million acquisition of Canada’s Skystone Systems in 1997.. Both were synchronous optical networking companies.  Cisco is further helped by their 2005 $6.9 billion acquisition of cable-set top box maker Scientific Atlanta, and an $80 million acquisition of online video distributor Extend Media in 2010.

Cisco and the Province of Ontario allied together last year to drive IT innovation, economic development and research and development to the tune of 300 jobs over the next five years. The company has already employed 134 people, most of which are in the Ottawa/Kanata region. That is well ahead of the 2016 target according to the Senior Vice President of Business Markets Ron McDougall. He also says that Cisco invests 12% of its revenues into R&D—more than any other networking company in the world.

Cisco has further outlined a $455 million dollar R&D Canadian investment target of the $5.3 billion they do globally. That is for core routing and switching, collaboration, data centre, and video over five years since the fall of 2011.

The Government of Ontario has chipped in an additional $25 million for Ontario’s leadership in the development of transformational communications technologies. Further, The Ontario IT Innovation Initiative is helping the development of four world-class, leading-edge technologies. The proposed areas of focus are service provider routing, mobile internet, broadband, and video.

Benefiting from the innovative products in Canada are Bell, Telus, Rogers, and Shaw. Internationally, Cisco is assisting Verizon, Comcast, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, BT Group, and Deutsche Telekom AG.