RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC -- March 23, 1998 -- Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced the Channel Port Adapter (CPA), the latest addition to its industry-leading family of mainframe channel connectivity solutions. The CPA extends the range of Cisco's solutions by bringing affordable, yet fully functional, direct mainframe channel attachment to the Cisco 7200 series router environment.
The CPA on a Cisco 7200 series router provides extended local-area network (LAN)/wide-area network (WAN) access to mainframe computers running Internet Protocol (IP) and/or Systems Network Architecture (SNA) applications. The CPA is designed for customers that do not need the high-end performance, capacity and scalability of Cisco's Channel Interface Processor (CIP), but that require the features and functionality of Cisco's integrated channel router technology to replace IBM front-end processor (FEP) units, 3172 interconnect controllers or low-performance mainframe gateways.
Channel Port Adapter Key Benefits
The CPA module and Cisco 7200 series routers provide excellent performance and configuration flexibility at a very cost-effective price. The CPA and CIP modules have the same features and application support, enabling seamless migration for network expansion. Further, the CPA extends the capabilities of the highly popular Cisco 7200 platform for distributed mainframe networks in branch offices, redundant channel connectivity and LAN-WAN/mainframe traffic consolidation.
ViON Corporation, a systems integrator for the U.S. government, recently tested the CPA. According to Tom Frana, president of ViON Corporation, "ViON put Cisco's Channel Port Adapter through its paces, and it passed with flying colors. The features and functionality are very impressive at this price point, and we believe this will complement Cisco's existing product line nicely."
Selby Wellman, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's InterWorks Business Unit, said, "Cisco created the first channel-attached router because our customers wanted better network connectivity to their mainframes. We introduced the original CIP in 1995, and we now have thousands of installations, making Cisco the leading supplier in the channel-attached router market. The features, functionality and price point of the CPA will enable Cisco to serve an even greater portion of the mainframe market."
Channel Port Adapter Features
Designed specifically with performance in mind, the CPA hardware incorporates Parallel or ESCON interfaces, an onboard RISC processor, up to 32 MB of memory and 512K of cache memory. This advanced hardware design enables the CPA to support a wide range of software features, including simultaneous SNA and TCP/IP data transmission across the mainframe channel, IP Offload and TN3270 Server support. When combined with industry-leading Cisco IOS software and Cisco 7200 series routers, the CPA-7200 solution represents one of the most feature-rich mainframe channel products on the market today.
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