Overview
- Cisco’s research prototype, unveiled Thursday, routes entangled photons without measuring them and translates between four encodings: polarization, time-bin, frequency-bin and path.
- The device runs at room temperature on standard telecom fiber at telecom wavelengths, so it avoids cryogenics and custom infrastructure.
- In a February field test with Qunnect, the team sent about 5,400 entangled qubit pairs per hour across a 17.6‑kilometer commercial link between Brooklyn and 60 Hudson Street in Manhattan, showing the approach works on noisy city fiber.
- Cisco says the switch can reconfigure in about a nanosecond and is designed to connect heterogeneous quantum computers and sensors, with collaborations that include IBM and Atom Computing.
- The company stresses it is still a prototype and several years from market, with work ahead on quantum repeaters, end‑to‑end software, and early uses like eavesdropper detection and synchronized decision tools.