Cisco Web NS 4.0 to bring significant benefits to e-business sites, Web hosters and ASPs, including comprehensive content delivery services

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 26, 2000 - Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today raised the bar in content networking by offering Web hosters and Application Service Providers (ASPs) advanced capabilities that streamline large-scale global networks, significantly reduce network response time, and optimize performance to preserve brand equity and customer loyalty. Cisco Web NS 4.0 defines a new service networking layer, which transparently and intelligently directs traffic to enable more efficient and cost-effective delivery of high-value Web content and next-generation e-services.

Unlike current Web switch offerings that are focused on simple filtering of uniform resource locators (URLs) in mapping content requests to the best local server, Cisco Web NS 4.0, based on technology acquired from ArrowPoint Communications, enables a content-smart Internet that performs content-based switching and routing, dynamic content distribution and replication, and the ability to rapidly deploy a global content networking infrastructure across the Internet.

Supported on the entire product family of Cisco 11000 Series Content Service Switches-previously ArrowPoint's Content Smart Web Switches-Cisco Web NS 4.0 provides the industry's most comprehensive and highest performance set of content switching features with the advanced intelligence necessary to solve new challenges facing Web businesses today. In addition, Cisco Web NS 4.0 enables new high-value service offerings and lowers operational cost and complexity for Web hosters and service providers.

"With Cisco Web NS 4.0, we are raising the bar for content intelligence," said Cheng Wu, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Content Switching Technologies Business Unit. "By empowering a content-smart Internet, Cisco gives customers a competitive edge through advanced content delivery and distribution services."

Major new content networking innovations in Cisco Web NS 4.0 include:

• Distributed, highly accurate and scalable proximity services that allow service providers to offer high-value content delivery networks (CDNs) for very large-scale global deployments

• User-tailored Web services that enable e-businesses to transparently direct users to servers optimized for their preferred device types, browsers, and languages, representing a new and valuable means of personalizing content delivery

• Content-request remapping-Cisco's unique implementation that allows customers to concurrently benefit from content switching and HTTP 1.1 performance gains by dynamically remapping user connections to the best servers based on each embedded content request and delivering all subsequent content across a single TCP connection

• Domain-specific request processing for newly merged online businesses, which transparently redirects clients from the original site URL to the new domain, increasing performance and customer retention, preserving brand equity, reducing hosting complexity, and collecting important traffic statistics

Internet-scale CDN services

Cisco 11000 Content Service Switches with Cisco Web NS 4.0 software provide the content switching intelligence necessary for Web hosters, service providers, and global carriers to quickly launch highly competitive CDN services, as well as deploy purpose-built CDNs, creating high-value service opportunities and enhanced site performance for their customers' global Web businesses.

Cisco expands its content networking offerings in Cisco Web NS 4.0 with support for Internet-scale proximity services. In addition to URL, user cookie, and network and server load and availability, the new proximity features in release 4.0 extend Web NS capabilities to ensure best site and server selection for all content requests based on a user's location. This is achieved by dynamically routing users to the closest server able to supply the specific content requested.

Powered by advanced Content Policy Engines within Cisco 11000 Content Service Switches deployed across CDN facilities, these virtual proximity services provide a distributed, highly scalable and accurate solution for very large, Internet-wide deployments. An enhanced version of Cisco's Content and Application Peering Protocol (CAPP) enables the distributed Content Service Switches to exchange global proximity information in real-time, ensuring complete and accurate proximity information is used for all content requests. Cisco's unique proximity services support 2 million network address blocks, more than 4,000 data centers and virtually unlimited numbers of servers, ensuring CDN scalability as traffic grows.

The new proximity features in Cisco Web NS 4.0 can be combined with other Cisco Content Networking products such as Local Director, Distributed Director, and the SightPath product suite to provide a more comprehensive solution for building and provisioning CDNs.

"NaviSite has long viewed a global approach to content distribution and deployment as critical to supporting the performance and reliability the industry is coming to demand," said Peter Kirwan, CTO of NaviSite. "The accurate and scalable proximity services in Cisco Web NS 4.0 are key in realizing the goal of constant, global content availability."

Content intelligence for business-critical sites

In addition to enabling Internet-scale CDNs, Cisco Web NS 4.0 provides three additional features that address Web user trends.

User-tailored Web services - A key challenge facing Web businesses is supporting the growing use of diverse new access devices such as Web-enabled wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), thin Web clients, and digital Web-ready set top boxes. Because competitive Web switch solutions cannot recognize these devices, they force users to learn and save URLs to access the same content for each different device they use, resulting in complexity and frustration. Only Cisco Web NS 4.0 provides user-tailored Web services that enable e-businesses to transparently direct users via a single URL to servers optimized for their preferred device types, browsers, and languages, representing new and valuable means of personalizing content delivery and enhancing ease-of-use.

Content-request remapping - Another critical issue for today's e-businesses is Web performance, and HTTP 1.1 is a protocol that promises to bring Web pages faster to users' browsers by embedding multiple HTTP requests in a single TCP connection. However, to benefit from content switching and HTTP 1.1 performance gains concurrently, Web switches must be able to select the best site and server for each individual content request (GET) embedded within each HTTP 1.1 session, and deliver the resulting content responses from multiple servers over a single TCP connection.

Competitive Web switches are unable to perform this complex content-request remapping. As a result, all requests embedded in an HTTP 1.1 object are sent to a single server, which may not contain all of the needed content, resulting in "server not found" errors or incurring additional latency when requests are redirected. Only Web switches with Cisco Web NS 4.0 dynamically form backend connections to the best server in the CDN for each embedded content request and deliver all subsequent content across a single TCP connection, thus fully leveraging the performance advantages of HTTP 1.1 while maintaining the benefits of content switching.

Domain-specific request processing - Consolidation of e-commerce companies through mergers and acquisitions continues at a rapid pace. E-businesses now require user-friendly access to their newly acquired on-line properties, as well as transparent URL access to the growing number of hosted sites, while maintaining the ability to track traffic statistics of each original site. Cisco Web NS 4.0 provides domain-specific request processing, which enable Web switches to receive requests for the original site and transparently redirect the client to the new domain, increasing performance and customer retention, preserving valuable company brand, reducing hosting complexity, and enabling accurate traffic statistics for both original and new site URLs.

Pricing and availability

Cisco Web NS 4.0 software, which runs on the entire family of Cisco 11000 Content Service Switches, will be available as a free software upgrade to customers with support contracts. Distributed site support and CDN features are priced at US$7,995 for the Cisco 11050 and Cisco 11150, and US$19,995 for the Cisco 11800, and are available to customers with Web NS advanced feature set support contracts as a free upgrade. The software is currently in beta and is planned for availability at the end of July.