Cisco Systems is one of the world's top-tier networking gear providers, and its products are extreme popular among professionals and enterprise customers. In fact, they are so popular that counterfeit devices have started to emerge on the market.

The US and Canadian customs authorities have seized about $78 million worth of forged networking gear branded as Cisco Systems. The devices had been shipped from China and have been seized during an ongoing investigation into imports. The operation has started in 2005, and targets at eliminating illegal importation and sale of counterfeit networking gear, including switches, routers and network cards. The US Department of Justice claims that these actions will protect the customers from network failures because of low-quality networking equipment.

"Counterfeit network hardware entering the marketplace raises significant public safety concerns and must be stopped," Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher of the DOJ's Criminal Division, said in a statement. "It is critically important that network administrators in both private sector and government perform due diligence in order to prevent counterfeit hardware from being installed on their networks."

The operations have been coordinated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

According to FBI representatives, the agency named its ongoing investigation Operation Cisco Raider. The FBI has assigned nine FBI field offices as well as help from several other agencies in order to put an end to the counterfeiters' network. This is not the first action of this kind, as the US government has been working on this since 2003. Over the last two years alone, the FBI has executed 36 search warrants and seized more than 3,500 counterfeit network components with a retail value of more than $3.5 million.