Ten months after the hype first hit the interwebs, Cisco has started pumping electrons through the first live install of its NCS 6008 giant router, at Australian carrier Telstra.

Back in September 2013, the Borg described Telstra as one of the customers “deploying the Cisco NCS”, a statement which in retrospect could be described as optimistic.

Telstra last week blogged that its 1 Tbps-per-card-capable NCS 2008 has gone live on the Telstra Internet Direct network, which serves 'net bits to enterprise, government and wholesale customers.

“Our new super router is currently managing traffic on the busy Melbourne to Sydney path and makes Telstra the first Telco in the world to enable live network traffic on the next generation of routing technology,” the carrier gushes.

With eight cards, the system provides an aggregate 8 Tbps throughput.

The NCS 6008 consumes “60 per cent less power per gigabit of traffic” than the core routers it replaces, the carrier says, and has a smaller footprint. Its faster update and boot, Telstra says, will help reduce downtime.

Next for the upgrade will be international gateway sites, followed by other national-scale routes. ®