The Internet is rapidly becoming an electronic agent for commerce, entertainment, communication, and information retrieval. New network-enabled intranet applications and powerful desktop computers are driving an exponential increase in network traffic. Service Providers and Enterprises are rapidly deploying packet switching infrastructures to handle this tremendous growth in data traffic. The Cisco 12000 series is Cisco`s premier routing product family designed and developed for the core of service provider and enterprise IP backbones.The 12008 is a 2.5G/slot model that provides a 40 Gbps switch fabric and has eight slots that can be used to support interfaces ranging from DS1 to OC-48c/STM-16c. This model can support a maximum of 7 OC-48c/STM-16c POS interfaces for a total of 28 Mpps switching capacity.