Cisco Tuesday announced a new router, the CRS-3, that it says is capable of delivering 322 terabits per second.

Now, we don't usually cover routers and similar enterprise hardware here in Gadget Lab, but this one's worth a brief mention. Let's leave aside Cisco's breathless hype (it will "forever change the internet" – yeah, we'll believe that when we see it). And nevermind the fact that, actually, there are only a handful of people with the technical skills and the equipment necessary to put Cisco's speed claims to the test, so they might as well claim it delivers 322 kajillion bits per second, because who would know the difference?

Those caveats aside, 322 Tbps is insanely fast. Just how fast? About a million times faster than your typical cable modem (literally). Or, as Silicon Valley Insider puts it, "fast enough to allow every man, woman, and child in China to make a video call at the same time."

That's fast.

You could also use speed like that to download the entire Library of Congress in about a second, fill up your iTunes library with over 4 billion MP3 files in about a minute, or download every movie ever made in 4 minutes, SVI says.

There's more: see SVI's article for a clever, quick presentation.

Cisco's New Router Could Let Everyone in China Make a Video Call at Once (Silicon Valley Insider)

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Photo: Conan the Librarian/Flickr*