Cisco NCS Router Targets ‘Internet of Everything’

The NCS system can handle petabits of data and can support trillions of events across a connected fabric, enabling it to move the entire Netflix library in less than a second. It converges IP and optical networks and can integrate with the Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco’s converged data centre offering and the company’s Dynamic Fabric Automation capabilities. This enables the NCS to dynamically direct data centre and networking resources as needed, according to Cisco executives.

The system also leverages Cisco’s Prime and Quantum solutions to enhance its virtualisation capabilities, making it easier and faster for service providers to ramp up or down their networking and compute resources as needed. If one part of the network can’t scale any further, the NCS moves control responsibilities to the UCS servers.

Fast Connections

The NCS also can work with Cisco’s Open Networking Environment (ONE) Service Provider Architecture, which offers software-defined networking (SDN) and network-functions virtualisation (NFV), which further helps with network scalability and programmability and helps reduce the overall total cost of ownership by 45 percent and power consumption by 60 percent.

The NCS 6000, which is shipping now, includes what Cisco officials said is the industry’s first 1-terabit-per-second line card and can transport up to 1.3 petabits per second per system. The NCS 2000 also is available immediately, while the NCS4000 will ship in the first half of 2014.

Cisco is looking to beat other vendors – such as Juniper Networks and Huawei Technologies – in building out the infrastructure for the Internet of Things. In addition, a range of other vendors – from IBM and Microsoft to Intel and Advanced Micro Devices – are also looking to make moves in the space. Intel executives at their Intel Developer Forum this month introduced a new line of low-power systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), called “Quark,” that will be smaller than the Atom platform and will be aimed at such areas as the Internet of Things and wearable devices.

Given the potential market, that makes sense. Cisco executives are predicting the businesses worldwide could see as much as $14.4 trillion (£9 trillion) in profits connected to the Internet of Things by 2020, and already have seen more than $613 million (£383m) this year.

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Originally published on eWeek.