We all have seen Cisco products before, the little purple/blue and black Linksys routers that broadcast wireless internet throughout millions of homes. But have you seen the routers that more or less power the internet? These are refrigerator sized routers priced up to a million dollars or more that connect everyone’s little Linksys router to the larger system of the internet. They are typically found at places like AT&T or other internet service providers. Cisco designs the routers in San Jose and manufactures them in Austin at Flextronics, the manfucaturing facility that we visited.
We were given a tour of the factory that makes these large routers from the stuffing of the $20,000 circuit boards to the final test. It was a large facility that was clean as can be. It was clearly one of the better organized and managed facilities that we have visited.
While the manufacturing facility was interesting, by far the highlight of the trip was a teleconference with LGO alumni who worked at Cicso in San Jose. However this wasn’t just a phone in teleconference, in was more like a teleport via Cisco’s Telepresence video conference system.
I first saw the Telepresence system on TV commercials. It consists of a conference room table. One on side of the table are chairs for participants, on the other side of the table are large flat screen TV’s and cameras. With the system on, while sitting at the table it feels as though you are in the same room as the people on the other side of the table, even though they could be half way around the world.
The system was amazingly real. During a conversation, I pulled out my camera and motioned to our hosts on the other side of the table (in San Jose, CA) requesting to take a picture. It was like they were right there. The main conversation continued as I was given permission to take the following pictures:
