In March 2010, Cisco announced the introduction of the CRS-3 family. The switching capacity of this new product-line is increased more than three times as each switch-fabric line card can process 140 Gbit/s instead of 40 Gbit/s as in the old system. According to Cisco, the current users can upgrade to the CRS-3 system step by step and without serious outage as the chassis, interface-cards, management-systems etc. are the same. The main changes are in the switching-fabric and the option to use new interface modules supporting these higher speeds (14 or 20 × 10 Gb interfaces and 1 × 100 Gb ethernet interface).
For information about migrating from a Cisco CRS-1 to a Cisco CRS-3 chassis, refer to the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System to Cisco CRS-3 Carrier Routing System Migration Guide at the URL http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5763/prod_installation_guides_list.html