San Jose, Calif. - March 1, 2000 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced products providing faster delivery of content across a network. Cisco Content Networking is fulfilling enterprise requirements for service acceleration as Internet traffic and Internet business applications become a more prevalent part of business processes.

As enterprises increasingly migrate to a true Internet-based business model, the three primary components comprising the Cisco Content Networking framework - intelligent network classification, intelligent network services and network devices, and device and policy management tools -- are being enhanced by various acceleration techniques contained in the newly announced products.

Intelligent Network Classification

Today customers can receive a new campus-based classification mechanism that offers the ability to classify certain application information across their network. Context-based access control (CBAC) is a packet inspection mechanism providing an application recognition capability. This provides improved security within a campus environment where separation of information according to certain user group is required.

Intelligent Network Services and Devices

The new Cisco Network Services Engine-1 (NSE-1), a high-speed processor engine available on the Cisco 7200 router, delivers Layer 3-7 services at OC3 rates using a new technology called Parallel Express Forwarding (PXF). The Cisco 7200 is a modular, high-performance router designed to deliver enterprise and service provider solutions for intelligent wide area network (WAN) edge services. In addition, new software-based techniques for improving application performance are provided with new distributed network services on the high-end Cisco 7500 router. New distributed QoS capabilities such as traffic shaping and queuing mechanisms for multiservice, distributed multicast for improved e-learning and distributed Netflow for accounting purposes are among the new services offered.

Caching is a crucial network service optimizing delivery of web content to users. Caching allows customers to conserve WAN and server-bandwidth. The new Cisco Cache Engine 570 is a mid-range product for small service provider PoPs and medium size enterprises providing WAN uplink bandwidth up to 22 Megabytes. The new Cisco Cache Engine 590 is a high-end cache for network service providers and larger enterprises providing support for DS-3 (45Mbps) uplinks. Storage for Cisco's Cache Engine 570 and 590 is expandable to 144 Gigabytes with the new 6-drive Cisco Storage Array providing increased bandwidth savings and higher performance.

With new advanced e-commerce features in Cisco LocalDirector version 3.3 software, customers can now intelligently bind user sessions to specific transaction servers. This is provided by cookie-persistence, secure socket layer (SSL) persistence and both upstream and downstream monitoring of site/server availability using the Dynamic Feedback Protocol (DFP). LocalDirector is the only product in its class to offer both advanced e-commerce features with traffic management accelerated to over 15 million packets per second when installed with Catalyst 6000 switches. Also new is Cisco's integrated IOS 12.0 server load balancing option for the Catalyst 6000 family of LAN switches. This all-in-one software solution provides load-balancing services optimized for data center and network service provider environments requiring load balancing in the same platform with advanced QoS, security and routing services.

Device and Policy Management Tools

The increased delivery of content requires accelerated deployment of management capabilities throughout the network. Enhancements to the CiscoWorks2000 Routed WAN Management Solution is bringing customers a performance troubleshooting application, Internet Performance Monitor 2.1 (IPM 2.1), that identifies and isolates congestion points throughout an enterprise network.Configuration and monitoring are tightly integrated in the new QoS Device Manager (QDM), which makes it easy to deploy QoS in the network. QDM performs device-level management of QoS functionality through a convenient web-based GUI. It manages the QoS parameters of possible key congestion points in the network, such as the LAN/WAN interface. QoS Policy Manager 1.1 (QPM), previously announced, manages QoS policies end-to-end across an entire network. QDM and QPM are complementary products that can be used independently or in combination depending on the network size.

Today's offerings allow customers to deploy e-commerce, supply chain management, customer care, and e-learning solutions at greater speeds with improved end-to-end performance, reliability and security.

More About the Products

• The Cisco 7200 NSE-1 is available in March. Initial services supported are Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ), Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED), Access Control Lists (ACLs), Network Address Translation (NAT) and Link Fragmentation and InterLeaving (LFI).
• New Distributed Services on the Cisco 7500 router are available over the next few months. New services available are ACLs, LFI, Compression Real Time Protocol (CRTP), Low Latency Queuing and IP Multicast.
• The Cisco Cache Engine 570 will be available in April. The Cisco Cache Engine 590 will be available in June.
• Cisco LocalDirector version 3.3 will be available in April.
• CiscoWorks2000 Routed WAN Management Solution containing IPM 2.1 will be available in mid-April.
• QoS Device Manager is free and is currently shipping in Cisco IOS software version 12.0.QDM supports the Cisco 7000 series routers today. Future support is expected soon on the Cisco 2600 router and Cisco 3600 router.