SAN JOSE, Calif., June 26, 2000 - Cisco Systems Inc., the leader in networking for the Internet, today announced the availability of COPS QoS Policy Manager (QPM-COPS), a module providing customers with guaranteed performance of high-quality voice and video services by supporting the industry standard COPS (Common Open Policy Service) protocol. Through a directory-enabled architecture, QPM-COPS offers enhanced policy management capabilities for successful end-to-end deployment of QoS in the network.

As one of the key enablers supporting the Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data (AVVID), QPM-COPS enforces QoS services across the network to ensure network reliability and predictability of multiple types of traffic. Utilizing the COPS protocol, QPM-COPS provides enterprises with the ability to control the deployment of voice and video applications by policing demand for network resources.

"Having successfully implemented and utilized QoS Policy Manager in our network, we began to research advanced solutions and services that we could implement," said Quan Nguyen, Manager, Networking at McGill University. "With QPM-COPS, we are able to deploy and support a host of emerging technologies and services, and continue to guarantee network performance and availability."

Through its directory interface, QPM-COPS is able to share policy information with other directory-enabled applications. It gives customers the ability to utilize user and application information stored in the directory. QPM-COPS is an integral component of solutions enabling users to be assigned the same user-based policies no matter where they connect on the network. Additionally, QPM-COPS can publish information to enterprise directories according to the DEN policy schema in development in the DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force) and IETF.

Using an architecture featuring distributed QPM Policy Servers, QPM-COPS provides a scaleable and reliable infrastructure for deploying network-wide policies. Pre-defined service templates simplify the provisioning of differentiated services. Network administrators can provision service levels such as "Real-Time Traffic" or "Mission Critical traffic" network-wide and deliver these service levels to selected applications.

"QPM has been successfully used to deploy QoS for data applications," said Steve Woo, Director of Marketing at Cisco Systems. "Now with these enhancements, Cisco delivers to customers additional capabilities to intelligently manage QoS for voice and multi-media services."

Pricing and Availability

QPM 1.1 with QPM-COPS is available now for $9995 USD