It’s very obvious that the future of the internet is more data and more devices. According to recent estimates from Nokia and Cisco Systems, the Internet traffic might triple over the next five years or so. According to Nokia Bell Labs, the global internet traffic per month would cross 330 petabytes (330 million terabytes) by 2022.
According to Nokia, a significant contribution to this traffic growth would be driven by three things: hundreds of billions of IoT devices, cloud-based services, and the upcoming 5G mobile networks. While Cisco predicts that there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020, Nokia reckons there will be the rise of connected devices from 12 billion in 2017 to 100 billion by 2025.
Of course, better hardware would be required to address the growing data needs. Hence, Nokia thinks that it’s the right time for a new range of high-end routers.
“We’re seeing a significant change in how networks are built. So we need new technology to build these networks, and we need a new routing platform,” says Steve Vogelsang, Nokia’s CTO for IP and optical network.
Recently, Nokia has announced the launch of a new commercial router chip, the FP4, which can process data up to 2.4 terabits per second (Tbps), making it six times more powerful than the chips currently existing. It’s based on the FP3 chip Nokia already uses but combines several of them into a single package.
The company added that the innovation uses the latest advances in silicon including 16nm FinFET Plus and multi-dimensional design. It’s the first chip capable of delivering terabit IP flows, a 10x improvement over the existing 100 Gbps links used to construct the internet backbone. A chip that fast also clears the road for petabit-class routers and clear-channel terabit speeds. This can be achieved by combining multiple FP4 chips on a single board to scale hardware to the capacity never imagined before.
In addition to powering new routers, these boards can also be used in routers as old as ten years, according to Steve Vogelsang.
Using FP4 network processor, Nokia has created the world first petabit-class router Nokia 7950 Extensible Routing System XRS-XC which can process up to 576Tbps in a single system via chassis extension and eliminate the need for switching shelves. According to the company, this is the highest capacity router till date. The chip also features technologies which help us reduce potential DDoS attacks.