UPDATE 2-Cisco says core router sales rose in past 9 months

(Adds executive's comments, updates share price)

NEW YORK, April 1 (Reuters) - Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) said on Tuesday that sales of its high-end routers had accelerated in the past several months, helping to ease worries about slower technology spending.

For the nine months through March, Cisco said it had sold 900 CRS-1 core routers, which cable and phone service providers use in the center of their networks to direct their Internet traffic.

That is the same number sold since the product's launch in May 2004 through last June, the company said.

Each CRS-1 unit costs $500,000 to more than $1 million, depending on configurations. Most buyers are large phone and cable service companies such as AT&T Inc (T.N), Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O), Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE) and Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N).

Cisco executives attributed the accelerated sales to exponential growth of Internet traffic, due largely to the popularity of online video services that require faster networks.

"Things like Youtube, Facebook, MySpace -- these things are really ramping video traffic in ways that I don't think we could have predicted when we developed the router," said Cisco spokesman Wilson Craig.

Cisco expects Internet video traffic three years from now to be 20 times what it was in 2006, driving sales of routers and other network equipment.

Cisco shares rose 89 cents to close at $24.98, a 3.7 percent gain that was in line with a buoyant Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC.

Cisco shares are still down around 24 percent from six months ago, however, amid worries that a weaker U.S. economy was discouraging businesses from large-scale technology spending.

Kelly Ahuja, vice president and general manager of Cisco's core routing business, said customers across all geographies were reporting a rise in Web traffic.

"The economy is what it is but there are more users on the Internet and they're doing more on it," he told Reuters in a phone interview, adding that clients were also choosing the CRS-1 because it was easy to scale out if needed.

"I would say that we're winning more than our fair share of the business in terms of new opportunities," he said.

Rival network equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc JNPR.O sells a core router called the T1600 that competes with the CRS-1. Juniper shares rose 3.1 percent to $25.78 on Nasdaq.

In February, Cisco warned of a rapid slowdown in U.S. and European orders, and gave a disappointing outlook for the current quarter.

The overall network equipment industry is also seen under pressure as telecoms carriers merge. Avici Systems Inc, recently renamed Soapstone Networks Inc SOAP.O, said last year that it was discontinuing its core router development.

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Lisa Von Ahn, Richard Chang)