Huge Hopes Sustain Cisco

Also, though the company is not likely to give much by way of details, investors will be curious to hear about the much-anticipated mega-router that Cisco has in test labs. Routers are large data-sorting devices that help speed Net traffic to addressed destinations.

Cisco's newest effort, internally referred to as a huge fast router or HFR, is an answer to rival Juniper's (JNPR) Gibson. The massive machine would sit at the core of phone networks and help distribute the ever-growing flow of Internet data.

According to trade news site Light Reading, Cisco has developed a new software or operating system to run the HFR. That, says CIBC's Kamman, suggests that Cisco may be planning a new crop of products to coincide with the new software.

But even the buzz around a big router will mean little if Cisco doesn't wave the all-clear flag for a spending recovery.

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