SAN JOSE, Calif., March 20, 2000 - Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today outlines efforts to drive widespread deployment of Internet broadcast capabilities for this emerging market. Cisco recognizes that the Internet broadcast market will reach its full potential as key industries join to deliver on the promise of television broadcast-quality user experience, provide backbone technology that scales and engage the audience with compelling content. To accelerate deployment, Cisco is delivering two additions to its suite of Cisco IOS. Multicast solutions and established an initiative to bring together the industry leading content providers, application vendors, application service providers (ASPs), hosting companies, Internet service providers (ISPs) and middleware vendors.
"Streaming content across the Internet is revolutionizing many aspects of daily life -- how we work, the way our children learn, and how we are entertained," said Dave Rossetti, vice president of Cisco's IP Internet Services Unit. "Service providers and content publishers are looking for efficient, high-speed distribution systems to transmit their content to Internet users around the world. Cisco has taken the next steps necessary to drive the Internet Broadcast market forward. We are providing additional solutions that improve access to content and optimize delivery, while making it easier to administer services. Cisco and its partners are leading the Internet Broadcast revolution."
Cisco IOS Multicast enables simultaneous transmission of content, including live video and audio, over the Internet to PCs at multiple sites-with no impact on bandwidth or quality degradation. The first to deliver an Internet multicast solution to market more than two years ago, Cisco has pioneered and continues to evolve the protocols required to implement this technology. Cisco's suite of multicast solutions, delivered by Cisco IOS Software, includes Core Multicast and Enhanced Multicast. Core Multicast provides an interactive multicast solution for campus networks. Enhanced Multicast delivers a scalable solution for interconnecting disparate networks that are multicast capable.
New Additions to Cisco IOS Multicast Suite
Today, Cisco introduces a new multicast solution, called Multicast-Lite, aimed at providing Cisco partners and customers time-to-market advantage in the development and deployment of support of Source Specific Multicast through Internet Group Management Protocol version 3 (IGMPv3) or URL Rendezvous Directory (URD). Both IGMPv3 and URD enable a user to easily join a multicast group and receive content transmitted to that group, while providing the network administrator with enhanced capabilities to manage multicast streams. On an IGMPv3-enabled network, the user accesses the group and receives the content via an application, such as Cisco IP/TV, or via a web page established by the content provider. On a URD-enabled network, the user accesses the group and receives the content via a web page established by the content provider. Multicast-Lite optimizes network resources for multicasting content from one sender to many receivers, which results in better bandwidth utilization. This scenario is estimated to be approximately 45 percent of multicast traffic over the Internet today.
"With Multicast-Lite, Cisco continues to be the only company with a comprehensive suite of multicast solutions," said Christine Falsetti, systems marketing manager at Cisco Systems. "Our goal is to provide our customers and partners with reliable, scalable and cost-effective solutions to deliver streaming video, audio and text to multiple Internet users simultaneously anywhere in the world - via a single Internet connection."
In addition, Cisco announces the availability of Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) as part of its Core Multicast solution. PGM, delivered by Cisco IOS Software, is a new generation of software that dramatically reduces network congestion while bringing an increased level of reliability to the transmission of business-critical information over the Internet. It provides improved message transmission over both private networks and the Internet. With PGM, a single data message or video stream, issued just once by a server or publisher, reliably makes its way through the network to thousands of users. PGM's "negative response" capability, which informs the network when packets are not received, enables network administrators to quickly monitor the "health" of the network and remedy issues in real-time.
All Cisco IOS Software-based platforms, including Cisco Catalyst family switches and routers, support multicast. Additional information can be found at the Cisco Multicast Solutions page.
Partner Initiative Accelerates Market Development
Cisco today also outlines a partner initiative to encourage the development and deployment of content, applications and solutions for the Internet broadcast market. Cisco is working on several levels of engagement with strategic alliance partners, entrepreneurial ventures and other companies to deliver such content and applications such as local university sporting and theater events online, e-tickets for Internet concerts, and multicast network monitoring tools.
Partners receive certain benefits such as early access to new Cisco products and technologies as well as additional marketing and research and development resources to speed delivery of Internet broadcast technologies to market. Partner proposals should be sent to the Cisco Internet Broadcast Initiative at ibi@cisco.com.
