We know that the router wars are getting ugly when two of the largest players, Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks try to confuse the junta with press releases. A few days ago, Cisco Systems was quick to put out a press release about its big win in China, perhaps to silence the doubters on Wall Street. Here the a press release link. Cisco says it has won orders for Cisco 12000 series routers. It is a nice way for the company to say: see we can beat Huawei and ZTE Corp in the router game. Cisco 12000 are the backbone routers and are used for classic router type functions.

Maybe too quick: My sources told me that the reality is otherwise. What Cisco has won is some portion of optical switching. I am hearing that Juniper got a big chunk of the router business – both on the edge and core, while Huawei won a big portion of the router business as well. I emailed Cisco to get more details, and they stuck to the press release. Here is what they said: Cisco was selected as the only equipment provider for the nationwide business network portion of the CN2 and for backbone network of CN2 in major provinces in China.

This morning, Juniper announcse that it was one of the vendors selected by China Telecom. Juniper says, “it has been awarded the largest share of the contract for China Telecom’s next-generation backbone network. China Telecom, the country’s leading telecommunications provider, selected Juniper Networks routing platforms exclusively for its national core backbone and eight South China provincial backbone networks.”

Now the language of both the press releases is curiously similar, network descriptions are quite the same, and well they are both touting routers from two different makers. I am not sure what is going on, except Cisco was trying to spin us. And now I am doubting the Juniper spin, though they claim “largest share.” Does that mean Huawei won some business as well? And while doing research for this little piece, I found that most of the so called networking sites, and magazines, they do nothing but simply reprint press releases. So any FUD which emerges is passed off as the real thing.