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Cisco's ASR 5500 mobile packet core will help make networks more intelligent and allow operators to charge differently for various types of content.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- By 2015, more people will access the Internet from mobile devices than from conventional PCs. A year later, in 2016, 19 billion devices and gizmos will be connected to the mobile Internet -- not just your smartphone and tablet, but your washing machine, cars and clothes will be connected too.

That's a giant problem for wireless carriers, which are already struggling to keep up with surging data demand. Trying to innovate their way out of the crunch, the industry is using new tools and tricks to optimize every bit of infrastructure.

Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500) added a key piece to the puzzle on Tuesday, releasing a new tool that will let carriers sift through and prioritize the traffic flooding their networks.

It sounds pretty geeky -- "mobile packet core" product launches don't inspire iPhone-like frenzies -- but this back-end upgrade has some significant implications for everyday users.

The problem: Everyone has experienced the frustrating effects of wireless network congestion. Your video buffers forever, a website takes minutes to launch, or you can't get Google Maps to load when you're late to a meeting and don't know where to go.

Much of that pain comes from the way that today's networks give more or less the same priority to all kinds of traffic. Ads running on Angry Birds are treated the same as a Netflix (NFLX) video -- not a good thing, if a bunch of ads on other people's phones are causing your movie to stall.

The user experience would be noticeably better if the network were able to speed up streaming video at the expense of a slightly slower load time on an ad in a game. The typical wireless network doesn't know how to do that.

The solution: Cisco thinks it has a fix with its new ASR 5500 mobile packet core. It's a kind of gateway between the mobile network and the larger Internet that gives networks the intelligence to handle different traffic differently.

Verizon, for instance, could set different priorities for video services, phone calls and apps -- particularly during peak download hours -- to ensure that all services run as smoothly as possible. That way, Netflix or YouTube videos might not get interrupted if Verizon makes websites take a second longer to load.

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Cisco's new, smarter network for the Internet of things