In an effort to respond to rapidly increasing Internet traffic, Cisco Systems Korea announced on Tuesday that it would release a new core routing system at the end of this year.

In a report released in May, the U.S.-based networking equipment maker predicted that annual global IP traffic would surpass 1.4 zettabytes by the end of 2017 ― a threefold increase from the current traffic. A zettabyte stores 1 billion terabytes of data, or about 250 billion DVDs.

In Korea, the IP traffic is expected to double within the next five years.

The reasons include increasing numbers of Internet users globally, adoption of faster broadband connection speeds, more devices connected to the Internet and the surge of consumer Internet video traffic, according to the report.

By 2017, the current global average broadband speed of 11.3 Mbps is expected to improve to 39 Mbps.

Meanwhile, the average broadband speed in Korea will rise to 94 Mbps in 2017 from the current 28 Mbps.

At the same time, video-on-demand traffic will nearly triple worldwide, according to data.

By releasing Carrier Routing System X (CRS-X), which can provide 10 times the capacity of the original CRX-1 released in 2004, Cisco hopes to provide unmatched economies of scale, improved network convergence and lasting investment protection for customers in Korea.

“We expect that Korean telecommunications companies will look favorably to our new core router, which in essence is built for the future,” said Wang Su-hyun, systems engineer manager of Cisco Systems Korea.

By Kwon Bum-joon (bjkwon@heraldcorp.com)