Cisco, MIT look from lab to market

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Cisco Systems is teaming up with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop new communications technology that the company hopes to ultimately turn into products.

Cisco is sponsoring the MIT Media Lab's Digital Life Consortium, which will give the networking giant the ability to view the lab's projects and influence the direction of the work, Charles Giancarlo, chief technology officer at Cisco, said Wednesday. The company has been working with MIT on other projects since 2000.

As part of the expanded relationship, Cisco will gain exclusive rights to certain applications that emerge from the MIT research. Exactly which applications those are is still being discussed.

Cisco expects some of the research will help it develop actual products. The company spent $3.3 billion in research and development in fiscal year 2004. Most of that money was used for in-house product development, Giancarlo said. But, he added, the company is also committed to supporting academic research and collaborating with scientists to develop next-generation technologies before they are ready for commercialization.

"The research community is really good at exploring experimental technologies," he said. "At Cisco, we're more about product development."

Cisco has similar investments with other universities including the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University. The company also provides equipment for research efforts such as the National Lambda Rail fiber network, which is being built for exclusive use by the research community.

Some of the work being done in MIT's Digital Life Consortium addresses mesh networks, in which different devices on a network can communicate directly with one other, bypassing a central communications point. For example, a mesh network design could allow mobile phone users to make calls without routing them through a central tower, said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab.

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