SAN JOSE, Calif. - November 11, 1996 - Toshiba Corporation of Japan, and Cisco Systems, Inc., today announced that they will work together to define standards for next-generation multilayer switching technology for high-performance Internets. This technology will be essential to assure the scalability of the Internet and the growing number of Intranets and to support millions of new users and real-time Multimedia communication.

The objective of the companies is to establish open global standards within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for Internet and Intranet communications.

The joint effort will draw on the two companies' state-of-the-art multilayer switching technologies: Cisco's Tag Switching technology and Toshiba's Cell Switch Router (CSR) technology.

Toshiba demonstrated a prototype of its CSR at Networld+Interop'96 London last week. The new high- performance technology will be installed at the test sites of the WIDE project, the large-scale, widely-distributed Internet network project being undertaken by one of Japan's leading Internet-projectconsortium.

Recently, Cisco Systems also announced its Tag Switching technology, which combines the performance and traffic management capabilities of layer 2 (data link layer) switching with the scalability and flexibility of layer 3 (network layer) routing.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Toshiba Corporation is an integrated manufacturer of electronics products and systems in information & communications systems, information media & consumer products, power systems & industrial equipment and electronics components & materials. In fiscal year 1995 ended March 1996, the company registered net sales of \5,120 billion and had 186,000 employees worldwide. Toshiba's WWW site is http://www.toshiba.co.jp/

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the leading global supplier of internetworking solutionsfor corporate intranets and the global Internet. Cisco's products---includingrouters, LAN and WAN switches, dial-up access servers and network managementsoftware---are integrated by Cisco IOS^TM software tolink geographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM networks. Company news andproduct/service information are available at World Wide Web site http://www.cisco.com/. Cisco is headquartered in San Jose,Calif.

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