Will Continue to Support, Enhance Harvard Test Winner
MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 19, 1993 -- Cisco Systems has lowered the price of its formerly highest-end router/bridge, theAGS+ -- the top performer in last year's Harvard Benchmark Tests-- and has spelled out a program for continuing support andenhancement of the product.
Brent Bilger, director of platform marketing, said, "These price reductions make the AGS+ the most cost-effective high-performance, high-density router available today. We expect it tobecome the preferred high-end router for applications where priceis paramount. This will be particularly true in networks usedprimarily for transferring information such as shared files and e-mail, and for sharing network resources such as printers and fileservers. In operational networks, such as those used to run afactory or a stock-trading floor, users will favor our new Cisco7000 with its variety of high-availability features."
The AGS+, Cisco's top-of-the-line router/bridge since itbegan to ship in 1990, was the industry's first multiprotocolFiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) router, earning Cisco aleadership position in the FDDI market. More than 15,000 AGS+shave been installed to date, some 7,000 of them with FDDIcapability. The nine-slot AGS+ offers up to 32 networkinterfaces, supporting a variety of local- and wide-area media andservices (Ethernet, token ring, FDDI, serial and High-Speed SerialInterface) to connect multiple sites in large, dispersed networks.
Cisco will continue to fully support and enhance the AGS+,Bilger said. Performance in transparent bridging, source-routebridging over FDDI and dynamic routing of the Novell IPX, BanyanVINES and OSI protocols will be significantly boosted during 1993.The maximum number of high-performance token ring ports will beexpanded from eight to 16, also in 1993, when the AGS+ begins toaccept four (instead of two) of Cisco's Multiport Token RingCards, introduced in July 1992.
In addition, the AGS+, which already offers extensive IBM SNAinternetworking capabilities, will support IBM Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (APPN) and the proposed multivendor standardAdvanced Peer-to-Peer Internetworking (APPI) during the 1993-94timeframe, as will other Cisco routers. Plans also call for theAGS+ to support an ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) interface,allowing it to become part of an ATM cluster.
In the Harvard Benchmark Tests, performed in October 1992under the direction of Scott Bradner, the AGS+ outperformed allother routers in IP routing, with 79,507 packets per second in theEthernet aggregate system test. The AGS+ also was the leader intoken ring routing, with 77,200 pps. And Cisco was the onlyvendor to test DS3 (45-Mbps serial line) performance, testing at59,200 pps.
"The AGS+ had as much as three times the performance, withmore media and more protocols supported, of any other router inthe Harvard tests," Bilger said. "With today's price reductions,we can offer this proven performance and functionality for anunprecedented value.
New prices for the AGS+, the ciscoBus controller and the FDDIInterface Card are effective immediately.
Cisco Systems, Inc., is the leading worldwide supplier ofhigh-performance, multimedia and multiprotocol internetworkingproducts, including routers, bridges, communication servers andnetwork management software. Cisco technology can be used tobuild enterprise-wide networks linking an unlimited number ofgeographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM SNA internetworks. Inthe United States, Cisco is traded over-the-counter under theNASDAQ symbol CSCO.
Posted: Jan 19 11:19:16 1993
