Internet for the Future

A few weeks back Cisco had its quarterly earnings call for Q1 of fiscal 22.?On the earnings call, our CEO talked about changes to the way we track and report revenue at Cisco, including creating a new category of reporting called “Internet for the Future” which now appears on our financial statements.

So what is “Internet for the Future”??Why make this change now??And what does “Internet for the future” mean for Cisco’s customers, partners, employees, analysts and investors?

To understand what Internet for the future is, we need to briefly review where we are today and how we got here.?The Internet is not new. It has been around in one form or another for 50 years. At a high level, the Internet is many different networks talking to each other.?The idea of an “Internet Backbone” or single unified network we all connect to is a fallacy.?The Internet is organized chaos - billions of devices talking to each other across the globe, delivering on the promise of an increasingly digital world. ?

Cisco is one of the companies that pioneered the modern internet - helping create order in chaos.?Many of the advancements that have helped deliver the digital experiences we enjoy today started in Cisco labs, and have been made better by contributions of millions of gifted engineers working for various organizations across the globe.?And, while it can be argued that we as a community have made huge strides in the past 50 years, much of the innovations to the way we build, deploy and operate networks in the past 20 years is really just minor incremental improvements.?Today’s networks offer much better scale, speed and reliability than the networks of the early 2000s.?Even so, the Internet has a long ways to go to reach its full potential.

As of October 2021, nearly 62% of the global population is connected in one way or another to the Internet.?This leaves almost 40% of earth’s population that still has limited or no access to the modern digital world.?This gap is often referred to as the digital divide.?The digital divide contributes to an imbalance of opportunity for people in underserved markets.?Internet for the future will helping to close the digital divide.

In addition to problems of access, bandwidth demand continues to exceed available supply.?For the past 30 years ISPs across the globe have been playing a game of catch up - building capacity in response to network congestion in an effort to provide the best experience possible to users at a reasonable price.?But modern service provider networks and internet peering points remain hopelessly oversubscribed. Internet for the future will radically lower the cost of bandwidth, eliminating the problem of oversubscription. ?

Finally, we’ve been fighting the laws of physics for decades at a photonic level to squeeze more and more bandwidth into fiber optic cables.?The reason we’ve done this is simple - lasers and fiber optic cables are the fastest and most reliable way to move data over long distances. And, building new fiber plant is expensive. Although we’ve found great ways to cram terabits of bandwidth into a single pair of fiber, what we haven’t done well is control the cost and complexity of optical technology.?Internet for the future will dramatically simplify how we build and operate optical networks.

Since 2016 Cisco engineers, physicists and business leaders have been quietly putting together the building blocks for a new way to design, build and operate inter-networks.?These building blocks include technology that Cisco has acquired, built internally, and partnered with others to create.?These building blocks form the foundation for the Internet for the future. ?

Some of the key building blocks for the Internet for the future include:

1. Cisco’s Silicon One chipset - the fastest networking SoC on the planet, capable of 25.6T throughput on a single chip.
2. Silicon Photonics - lowering the size, cost and power demands of optics
3. Pluggable Coherent Optics - 400G ZR and ZR+ in an industry-standard, QSFPDD dense form factor built with Silicon Photonics.
4. 8000 series routers - built on Silicon One and optimized for 100 and 400G speeds.
5. Compact Line System - extending the reach of 100G and 400G while reducing power, space and cooling requirements for long haul optical systems
6. Segment Routing - simplifying traffic engineering to deliver improved user experience for for the next generation of Internet users
7. Cisco Crosswork Controller - providing single pane of glass visibility and management and enabling network transition to Internet for the Future.

And much more…

These innovations and more to be announced will deliver a future-proof Internet that is simple and easy to operate, infinitely scaleable, and radically less expensive than the networks of the past.?In addition, these building blocks and more to come will help eliminate the digital divide - bringing the Internet to billions globally who are not currently connected.

So how do these building blocks come together to build Internet for the future?

We recently announced the Routed Optical Network Architecture. The routed Optical Networking architecture simplifies the traditional routing and optical network dramatically - removing layers of cost, complexity and redundancy.?Low cost, high speed 100 and 400G pluggable optics connect non-oversubscribed routers together across a light-weight DWDM plant.?Automation and visibility make the entire solution plug and play, and as easy to manage as an SD-WAN deployment.

Let’s take a look at an example of how the Routed Optical Networking architecture can simplify even a very basic network while at the same time lowering costs and improving overall performance.

A typical, single wavelength 400Gbps circuit between two data centers at 80 km apart will required not less than 2 routers, 6 lasers, 3 amplifiers, two multiplexers and two transceiver shelfs - 15 discreet devices.?In a typical network, the fiber plant, optical network and routing network may all be owned by different teams.?This means up to 3 teams must come together to perform an add, move or change to the circuit. ?

With Routed Optical networking, the same 400 Gbps circuit between two data centers at 80 km apart will required 4 fewer lasers and no transceiver shelfs. The eliminated equipment lowers power, space and cooling requirements and removes potential points of failure. Initial and ongoing costs to operate the network are also significantly reduced. Finally, in most cases the routing team can deploy and operate the pluggable optics, eliminating the need for multiple teams to come together to coordinate adds, moves or changes.

The difference is clear:

1. A simplified solution
2. Reduced cost to build deploy and operate
3. Faster time to market

But more important than the cost savings, are the implications that Routed Optical Networking and the Internet for the Future have to impact lives for good.?Lowering costs means budgets go farther allowing public and private sector organizations to offer orders of magnitude more bandwidth to current users, and to extend the reach of their networks to increasingly remote people. ?

And when will all this be available?

All of the key building blocks of the Routed Optical Networking architecture are available and shipping today.?400G ZR and ZR+ optics even have reasonable lead times - despite current global supply chain constraints.

But we’re not stopping here.?Cisco is committed to powering an inclusive future for all, and that starts with innovation. Look for a lot more to come from Cisco and the Mass Scale Infrastructure / Internet for the future team in 2022.