Update: I have been able to confirm Dr Li’s new gig at Cisco, where he started working December 6, 2004 as Technical leader in the IOS XR-Routing group. He will be reporting to Mike Volpi, the senior veep incharge of routing group.

Talk about the return of the prodigal son. The man who made Cisco routers the industry standard, aka Tony “RouteMan” Li is rumored to be back at Cisco. Now this is not an episode out of The Bold and The Beautiful, but its pretty close. Cisco, Juniper, Procket and now Cisco… lets talk about coming full circle. What this means is that Cisco will finally get around to fixing its software issues and basically re-energize out of the box thinking at Cisco. They certainly have big ambitions for the company going forward, as per yesterday’s analyst meeting. I think this is going to be a big deal for Cisco. Wonder what happens to the other Tony …Tony Bates. Now I have not been able to confirm this but couple of folks pinged me, and there is word coming out Cisco campus that the “Return of Li” is going to be announced soon. I am down in San Diego and still trying to nail down more facts. Remember where you heard it first!