Major Chinese Telecom and Network Operators Turn to Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System to Migrate to New IP NGN.

BEIJING -- Cisco Systems(R) (Nasdaq:CSCO) today announced that China Education and Research Network (CERNET), the world's largest education network, has successfully deployed the Cisco(R) CRS-1 Carrier Routing System to provide increased bandwidth and improved performance to more than 20 million Internet users in China. Also, Shanghai Telecom has replaced numerous routers powering its "super" point of presence "POP," or high-speed core Internet Protocol (IP) network, with the Cisco CRS-1, and ChinaNet 163, China's largest IP network, has upgraded its supercore network nodes with the Cisco CRS-1.

CERNET deployed the Cisco CRS-1 inits core network nodes in five cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Nanjing. The CERNET network links more than 1,000 major universities and research institutions in China.

Professor Li Xing, deputy director of CERNET Network Center said, "CRS-1 has greatly enhanced network performance with higher stability and reliability, and has upgraded network capacity from 2.5 gigabits per second (Gbps) to 40 Gbps. During a real-time observation we found that there was only an 18-millisecond delay in the network capacity reaching 9.5 Gbps on the 10Gbps link from Beijing to Wuhan. Such high levels of performance permits us to operate services with even the most stringent of quality of service requirements, and we believe that Cisco CRS-1 will create new opportunities for further deployment of new applications and advanced services."

Shanghai Telecom is the first telecom operator in China to adopt the Cisco CRS-1 Multichassis System, which can be scaled up to 72 line-card shelves, totaling 1,152 slots, providing room for system expansion to satisfy the company's needs for the next 10 to 15 years. Through years of development, Shanghai Telecom's high-speed IP network has been able to offer an increasingly advanced array of IP-based services and network connections to ChinaNet, China Telecom's national Internet network.

As China's largest Internet service network, ChinaNet currently offers services countrywide with more than 18 million broadband subscribers and a total capacity of 4,000 Gbps, accounting for more than half of China's bandwidth for Internet services. It's a core strategy for China Telecom to develop value-added services for the Internet.

Cisco CRS-1 transited the previous multi-router structure of ChinaNet's core network nodes in eight cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Xi'an, Chengdu, Wuhan and Nanjing. After integration, ChinaNet significantly enhanced the network capacity and improved management efficiency, enabling China Telecom to strengthen broadband business as well as laying foundation for the development of next-generation Internet applications.

"Today's telecom operators no longer need to build a brand new network for each new application. What they do need immediately is to develop an IP-based next-generation network, or IP NGN, which can adapt to present and future applications," said Thomas Lam, president, Cisco Systems China. "Cisco CRS-1 is helping operators advance the development of IP NGN, so that all current and future applications can be integrated on one network."

The Cisco IP NGN architecture will enable these providers to develop and deliver enterprise and consumer services over a single unified IP/MPLS network, enabling service continuity across multiple forms of network access and facilitating network, service and application convergence.

The Cisco CRS-1 is the first carrier-class routing system that scales up to 92 terabits per second, simplifying today's networks while protecting investments for decades to come. Cisco CRS-1 features continuous operation, IP service flexibility, scalability, multicast capability for digital broadcast video and optical integration. The platform received an InfoVision Award in the "Network Core Innovation and Advances" category from the International Engineering Consortium in October 2005.

At the close of 2004, 28 providers had deployed CRS-1 and 13 additional trials were underway. Announced customers include Cable& Wireless, China Telcom, the China Education and Research Network (CERNET), Comcast, the National Institute of Informatics' SuperSINET research network in Japan, SaskTel, SOFTBANK BB, Swisscom and Telstra. Announced trials include MCI, National Lambda Rail, NTT, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Sprint, Telecom Italia and T-COM (Deutsche Telecom).

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