Cisco to Unveil Networking for Internet of Things Sept. 24

Cisco Systems executives on Sept. 24 will unveil a networking system they say will underpin the infrastructure for the upcoming wave of the Internet of Everything.

For the longest time, networking was about speed and cost—increasing how quickly data could move around and between data centers, and doing so while continuously reducing costs. However, that’s changing, according to Cisco officials. While speed and cost are still important factors in networking, the real challenge will be the rapid increase in Internet traffic that will happen in the coming years, driven by such trends as cloud computing, mobility, video and machine-to-machine (M2M) connections, according to Pankaj Patel, executive vice president and chief development officer at Cisco.

“In my 20 years in networking, I have seen various market transitions in the networking industry and many of those were led with innovation on how to tackle the immense growth in bandwidth,” Patel wrote in a post on the Cisco blog. “And today we are at the crossroads of another such transition—and this time it is not just about solving the bandwidth challenge—as it is not just about growth in video, cloud, and mobility but also people connecting with various data , processes and things.”

By 2017, there will be more than 12 billion smart devices—from phones and televisions to tablets and smartphones—and more than 8.2 billion M2M nodes, as compared with 2.6 billion in 2012, he wrote. Each node and smart device will have its own profile in networking, compute and control environments.

“This is the emerging Internet of Everything phenomenon, where trillions of connected ‘events’ will be generated,” Patel wrote.

What Cisco will announce Sept. 24 will address the changing data center demands into the next decade, he said, and will include the company’s nPower X1 integrated network processor, which officials introduced Sept. 12. It’s a processor that has more than 4 billion transistors, can offer multi-terabit levels of performance and can handle trillions of transactions. It’s aimed specifically at the Internet of Everything, Cisco’s term for the Internet of Things.

Cisco for several years has been tracking the growth of Internet traffic, and executives have been vocal in what the Internet of Everything will mean. By 2020, businesses worldwide will see profits of $14.4 trillion from the Internet of Everything, and this year alone, they could realize more than $613 million, according to company officials.

At Cisco’s partner conference in June, CEO John Chambers said the Internet of Things will be the next major industry transition, and that he intends for Cisco to lead the technological push. The Sept. 24 Webcast should give the industry an idea of where the company is going in this market. Those interested in watching the Webcast should go to http://www.cisco.com/go/systemforioe.