MENLO PARK, Calif., Feb. 23, 1994 -- Cisco Systems' multiprotocolrouters now include enhanced support for Novell IPX and are certified forcompliance with Novell NetWare networking products.
As a result of testing concluded last week at Novell Labs in Provo,Utah, Cisco routers running the company's current Release 9.21 softwarehave been certified as providing full IPX router functionality, and willcarry a "Novell Labs Tested and Approved" certification mark. Cisco joinedNovell's Router Development Program in January 1993, when it received theIPX router specification and compliance test program for internal testing.
Enhanced Support for Novell IPX
Cisco has enhanced support for Novell IPX in the areas of performance,security, prioritization, migration aids and WAN access.- Performance: Cisco routers with Cisco's silicon switch processingengine can forward Novell IPX packets at greater than 230 kpps.
- Security: Cisco routers allow filtering of traffic based on IPX sourceand destination addresses to provide greater granularity of control.
- Prioritization: Cisco routers can allocate bandwidth to different IPXdata streams so that network administrators can place higher or lowerpriority on traffic from different corporate departments or individuals.
- Migration aids: Novell supports many different encapsulation types onLAN media, therefore Cisco routers allow network administrators to supportdifferent versions of IPX on different hosts on the same LAN.
- WAN access: Cisco routers can now use Novell IPX traffic to initiatedial-on-demand access to a wide-area network.
Novell Certification
Certification completes the first phase of a three-stage partnershipagreement that Cisco and NovellPaulina Knibbe, Cisco software product manager, said, "While Ciscorouters have played a key role in NetWare environments since we begansupporting IPX in 1989, a large number of users who have made strategiccommitments to both Novell and Cisco wanted official assurance that the twocompanies' products will interoperate. Certification means that customersknow they won't have to take it upon themselves to resolve interoperabilityissues under conditions of heavy traffic or varying packet sizes or asnetworked servers are brought up and down."
Knibbe said Cisco will seek recertification periodically, as bothcompanies' software suites are evolved and enhanced.
"Novell Labs' certification of Cisco's Novell IPX implementationreinforces Cisco's commitment to maintaining the highest possible level ofinteroperability with Novell IPX technologies and products," said GerryMachi, vice president and general manager of Novell's NetWare EnterpriseProduct Division.
Posted: Feb 23 13:51:41 1994
