SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 31, 2000 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced that its 2600/3600 Multiservice Platforms have surpassed the 500,000-unit shipment milestone. High demand for the Cisco 2600/3600 family is driven by its high-performance modular architecture, with its wide array of Voice, WAN, remote access and LAN connectivity that allows both service provider and enterprise customers to cost-effectively deploy New World applications such as multiservice networking and virtual private networks (VPNs).

"Cisco's 2600/3600 family of modular access multiservice platforms are widely deployed in corporate wide-area networked (WAN) infrastructures, as reflected in this 500,000 unit shipping milestone," said Tere' Bracco, principal analyst of Enterprise Infrastructure at Current Analysis. "The modular capabilities of the products, which allow customers to easily migrate to voice/data networking, and broad customer acceptance places Cisco in an extremely strong leadership position in the emerging WAN multiservice and packet telephony markets."

Enhanced Flexibility Options for Investment Protection

Both service providers and enterprise customers have acknowledged their preferences for scalable platforms with flexible modular interfaces, allowing them to implement current connectivity technologies today, secure in the knowledge that they can take advantage of new connectivity options when they become available.

"We are continually evolving the Cisco 2600/3600 product line to offer leading edge connectivity technologies together with no-risk investment protection capabilities to meet our customers' diverse requirements," said Paul Lammerding, manager of product marketing in Cisco's MSABU business unit. "As a result, we have created a flexible product family, with a high level of modularity and diversity to address the wide range of needs for branch and regional offices. We continue to expand the options available, such as additional ATM connectivity, xDSL connectivity, remote access features and new T1/E1 Digital Voice connections with VoIP, VoFR and VoATM support. "

The most recent addition to this ever-increasing family (there are now over 70 modules available) are 4 new modules designed to increase the performance, density and flexibility of customers LAN and WAN connectivity. These modules offer 2 high speed WAN Interface Card (WIC) ports that can operate up to 8Mb/s and support integrated CSU/DSU serial connections, together with a choice of 1 or 2 10/100 Ethernet LAN ports, and/or a 4/16 Token ring LAN port, all on one network module. Prior to this announcement, the same functionality was only available utilizing 2 or more network modules.

These new modules give customers increased LAN/WAN flexibility and allows them to deploy new world applications without a chassis upgrade- highlighting the continued investment protection in the 2600/3600 chassis family.

"We have successfully deployed more than 400 units of the Cisco 2600/3600 family within the Instinet global network, said Joe Melfi, director of network planning, Instinet Corporation. "These new modules allow us to protect our investment in the 2600/3600 multiservice platform by delivering higher speed LAN connectivity and WIC performance without sacrificing open module slots which translates into an ideal solution." Instinet Corporation provides agency brokerage services to investment professionals worldwide and trades over 185 million shares per day in US equities. Instinet Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reuters Group PLC, and through affiliates is a member of 18 exchanges in Europe, North America and Asia.

Wide Array of Interfaces Compatible Across the Entire Family

The new modules enhance the cross-family capabilities of the 2600/3600 family, allowing all available WAN Interface Cards to be shared across the four varying density chassis available, allowing for simple and cost-effective growth of the enterprise WAN connections. These new modules also give the 2600/3600 family the ability to utilize the recently introduced range of multiservice Voice/WAN interface cards. These cross-family capabilities reduce sparing for large 2600/3600 deployments, and simplify support and maintenance concerns.

Availability

The new family of interface cards are available immediately, enhancing the functionality for the complete line of 2600, 3620, 3640 and 3660 multiservice routers.