SAN JOSE, Calif. - December 10, 1996 - Cisco Systems announced today that LDDS WorldCom, one of the nation's largest telecommunications firms, has selected Cisco's wide area StrataCom(R) BPX(TM)/AXIS(TM) Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) systems for a major network expansion to terabit capacity.
LDDS WorldCom has purchased an additional 18 StrataCom BPX ATM switches and 11 StrataCom AXIS shelves, bringing to 42 the total number of StrataCom BPX switches installed in LDDS WorldCom's network, each with a maximum capacity of 20 Gbit/s. The new ATM backbone will operate at speeds of up to OC 3, with further expansion to OC 12 planned in 1997. In addition to offering support for ATM and frame relay nationwide and in more than 20 countries worldwide, LDDS WorldCom is now able to support T1 and T3 frame/ATM access in more than 20 cities across the United States.
Cisco's standards-compliant, carrier-class StrataCom BPX ATM switches - the industry's first to be fully compliant with the ATM Forum's Traffic Management Specification 4.0 - have been key in enabling LDDS WorldCom to rapidly deploy new services to their customers, while continuing to maximize existing network infrastructures. The carrier has plans to further extend their service offerings by adding low speed (T1) ATM and Frame Relay-to-ATM Interworking to their existing portfolio of Multimedia services.
Backbone to the Internet
In addition to the ability to provision new services, a primary reason for the selection of the StrataCom BPX switches was to enable LDDS WorldCom to better support their increasing number of Internet Service Provider (ISP) customers, including Netcom, GridNet, Supercom,AGIS and ATMnet, who use the LDDS WorldCom network to transport their Internet traffic throughout the United States. Access to the LDDS WorldCom network will be via Cisco 2500 and Cisco 7500 routers, Cisco's AS 5200 universal access servers and a variety of third-party vendors. With the addition of the new StrataCom BPX's, LDDS WorldCom will have increased their capacity by a factor of ten over the past 12 months, and thus will have the ability to handle over one million packets per second across the US. With 42 StrataCom BPX in place, this will be able to scale to over 100 million packets per second and will enable LDDS WorldCom to support the phenomenal Internet growth over the coming years.
"Given the Internet traffic explosion our top ISP customers are currently experiencing, we were looking for a solution with unprecedented scalability, which would enable us to easily and cost-effectively expand our network in a timely manner as requirements dictate," said Russ Ray, vice president of engineering at LDDS WorldCom. "With Stratm Technology and Tag Switching, the StrataCom BPX switches can help us scale in addition to providing a high-speed, high-capacity, multimedia-capable backbone that is well-suited for the transport of voice and video for our non-ISP customers, too."
Key Deciders: Industry Leadership and Strategic Partnership
With full redundancy and hot-swappable modules, the StrataCom BPX met LDDS WorldCom's critical reliability and availability requirements. The ability of Cisco's switches to manage any hardware failures and software upgrades with minimal cell loss is critical in the industry and enables LDDS WorldCom to provide a robust and extremely reliable ATM service. "We liked the way the StrataCom BPX continuously monitors trunk utilization throughout our network, adjusting bandwidth to all connections, avoiding queuing delays proactively and virtually eliminating cell loss," said Robert Bentley, manager of data engineering at LDDS WorldCom. LDDS WorldCom is offering commercial available bit rate (ABR) services on all its T1 connections, making it the first end-to-end ABR network in the country."Following the acquisition of StrataCom, we have seen an increase in activity from our Service Provider customers, all looking to better deliver and differentiate their services on an end-to-end basis," said Jon Shantz, vice president of service provider marketing for Cisco. Cisco acquired StrataCom, a leader in wide area ATM solutions, in July of 1996. The addition of the StrataCom BPX and StrataCom IGX(TM) to Cisco's current ATM offerings brings together what now can be considered the most comprehensive end-to-end ATM solution available today.
LDDS WorldCom
One of the largest telecommunications companies in the United States, LDDS WorldCom offers domestic and international voice, data and video products and services to business customers, other carriers and the residential market. LDDS WorldCom operates a nationwide digital fiber optic network and has worldwide network capacity. The common shares of WorldCom Inc. trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market's National Market under the symbol WCOM. Company news and product/service information are available at World Wide Web site http://www.wcom.com.About Cisco
Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the leading globalsupplier of enterpriseinternetworking solutions,including routers, LAN and ATM switches, dial-upaccess servers and network management software. These products, integratedby the Cisco IOSTM software, linkgeographically dispersed LANs, WANs andIBM networks. Cisco news and product/service information are available atWorld Wide Web site http://www.cisco.com. Cisco is headquartered in SanJose, CA.Cisco IOS and Cisco Systems are trademarks, and Cisco and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks or registered service marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
Copyright ) 1996 Cisco Systems Inc. All rights reserved.
