SAN JOSE, Calif. - Nov. 4, 1996 - Ten companies today announced plans to work with Cisco Systems to define Tag Switching technology as an open set of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards for scaling the Internet and large corporate intranets.

These companies and a host of users and service providers are scheduled to meet Nov. 6 in Cambridge, Mass. to discuss the Tag Switching draft specifications submitted in September to the IETF. The group is seeking to establish a Tag Switching working group in the IETF, whose next regular meeting is Dec. 9-12 in San Jose.

"Tag Switching will allow us to scale today's router and switch backbonesto handle the amazing growth in Internet and intranet traffic," said John Curran, chief technical officer of BBN Planet.

The ten companies that initially plan to work with Cisco to standardize Tag Switching technology include switch vendors Optical Data Systems Inc. (ODS) and Whitetree Inc.; ATM network interface card manufacturers Adaptec Inc., Efficient Networks Inc. and Olicom; network management and analysis tools vendors Net2Net Corporation, Network General Corporation and Radcom Limited; and video interconnection equipment providers AG Communication Systems and NUKO Information Systems, Inc.

"Cisco welcomes participation from these industry leaders, and we encourage others to help refine and finalize the Tag Switching mechanism," said Ed Kozel, chief technical officer at Cisco Systems. "Customers will benefit from the fact that numerous vendors will have ownership in the standardization process."

Tag Switching is a new multilayer switching technology for scaling all aspects of corporate andservice provider networks. Tag Switching enables routers to support the advanced traffic management capabilities currently offered only by switched networks, while allowing switched networks to scale in the same manner as today's global router backbones.

Tag Switching technology is expected to be available for field trials on Cisco 7500 Series routers and Cisco LightStream(R) 1010 campus ATM switches in the first half of 1997. Versions for the Cisco StrataCom BPX wide area ATM switch are expected to be available later in 1997.

Drafts of the Tag Switching specifications submitted to the IETF are available at:

ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts

Within this directory, the specific submissions include:

• draft-rfced-info-rekhter-00.txt (Tag Switching Architecture Overview)
• draft-doolan-tdp-spec-00.txt (Tag Distribution Protocol specification)
• draft-davie-tag-switching-atm-00.txt (Use of Tag Switching on ATM)
• draft-baker-flow-label-00.txt (Use of IPv6 flow label to carry tag)

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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