Cisco launched a major new product yesterday with the introduction of its new carrier routing system, designed to serve as the foundation of the next-generation Internet and support the swift growth of video transmission, mobile devices and new online services through this decade "and beyond".

The Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (CRS) reportedly triples the capacity of its predecessor (the Cisco CRS-1) with up to 322 Terabytes per second - described as being enough for 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; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

"The next generation Internet is upon us and we are confident that the Cisco CRS-3 will play a crucial role as service providers like AT&T deliver an exciting, new array of video, mobile, data center and cloud services," said Pankaj Patel, Senior Vice-President and General Manager of Cisco's Service Provider Business.  "The Cisco CRS-3 is well positioned to carry on the tradition of the Cisco CRS-1, become the flagship router of the future and serves as the foundation for the world's most intelligent and advanced broadband networks."

AT&T is reported to have recently tested the Cisco CRS-3 in a successful completion of the world's first field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology, which took place in the telco's live network between New Orleans and Miami.

The Cisco CRS-3 is currently in field trials, and pricing starts at US$ 90,000.