[philk]

Good point but we need to consider the change in price as well. If the 2004 model cost five times as much then they're still roughly in line with Moore's law.

Also there's the possibility that the bottlenecks in bandwidth have been on the fiber side rather than the routing side. (I'm really not sure of this - can anyone advise?)

[jvdh]

Fiber can currently carry wavelengths up to 10Gbps in a standardized way. Standards for 40Gbps and 100Gbps are currently being written (and have been implemented).

These wavelengths can then be multiplexed 8 at a time into carrier groups, which can then be multiplexed 8 at a time into WDM (Wavelength-Division Multiplexing). So one fiber can currently carry 640Gbps, and this will soon go up to 2560Gbps with 40Gbps and probably also 6400Gbps with 100Gbps. I believe that the multiplexing for WDM will be doubled soon, but I'm not sure whether this can carry 816100Gbps wavelengths.

Judging from the amount of ports you see in the picture, the router must do something like that.

Note that WDM switches that can branch out 10Gbps Ethernet will probably cost a fraction of the price of this router and are only about 20U in size.

[Groxx]

Well, it says it "starts" at $90k, and there's enough vagueness in the article to allow for multiple products based on a new framework allowing up to 322Tbps. If you've got a link to actual pricing & options, I'd be interested.

However, if that's the price for that speed, you make a good point. $90k is practically downright cheap for that kind of throughput.

edit: just saw the source article. Definitely implies scaling options with 322Tbps for the top and $90k for the bottom, and smutticus' comment backs this up. I didn't see any stated prices, though, so we're back to W.W.M.D?