Two days ago, the tech sector was all ears in anticipation of Cisco's announcement that was going to, in the company's words, "forever change the internet".  Yesterday, following the announcement of CRS-3, Cisco's new, powerful router that can move up to 322 terabits per second, there seemed to be an air of disappointment.  Cisco stock was down slightly following the news.  My sense is that the market has been expecting a new business/product line, as Cisco's been getting closer to the consumer (via the Flip) and these days, announcements like this have been Apple's provenance with very cool consumer devices.

However, I think the announcement is extremely important, as it brings us closer to an "always connected" environment.  Cloud computing and multimedia streaming have been two huge ideas over the last couple of years, and the reason is that they contain an enormous value proposition, through optimization of resources at the network level.  This is dependent entirely on the bandwidth of the network.  And the routers can be a big source of bottleneck on the network. 

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to experience Cisco's telepresence offering and I can vouch that it was like nothing I have seen before.  The experience was virtually indistinguishable from an in-person meeting.  The CRS-3 is a critical step in beginning the proliferation of the bandwidth that makes such an experience possible, the elimination of the router
bottleneck and is a big step towards "forever changing the internet".

To close out, I want to relay a few soundbites from the announcement in terms of what the new router enables (via Mashable):

– the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second

– every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously

– every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.