SAN JOSE, Calif., February 21, 2001 - Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today announced that Henan Telecom, the Henan Province subsidiary of China Telecom, will be deploying Cisco's Dynamic Packet Transport (DPT) solution to dramatically enhance the scalability of its metropolitan area networks and to offer next-generation services such as broadband Internet access, streaming video and virtual private networks.

Henan Telecom, which offers telephone and data services in a province of 90 million people, is the first service provider in China to offer high-speed metropolitan area access throughout its service area. As a result of this initiative with Cisco Systems, broadband Internet access will be available in all 18 cities in Henan Province as of Spring 2001.

Henan Telecom also uses Cisco 12000 series Internet routers and Catalyst 6509 switches in its metro network and Cisco 12000 routers to power its IP backbone network which provides the high-speed connection between its 18 metro access rings.

"With Cisco's DPT we are not only able to scale more efficiently to meet our customers' growing demand for bandwidth and high-speed services, but we can do so with a high degree of reliability while simplifying our network operations," said Li Keli, manager, Data Network and Construction, Henan Telecom. Because DPT requires fewer network protocol layers than traditional multi-layer network architectures, it reduces network management costs and difficulty and significantly lowers overhead.

DPT is a resilient packet ring technology which, drawing upon Cisco's IP+Optical expertise, combines the intelligence of IP routing with the bandwidth efficiencies of optical rings. Designed primarily for metropolitan area networks, DPT delivers scalable Internet service, reliable IP-aware optical transport, and simplified network operations.

"This next-generation DPT technology will enable Henan Telecom to more quickly and reliably reach its customers, and avoid the bottleneck in the metro network that so many other service providers are facing today," said Graeme Fraser, vice president and general manager, Metro IP Access Business Unit, Cisco Systems. "We are delighted to be able to support Henan Telecom in building their next-generation metro IP network."

Currently over 150 service provider customers are utilizing Cisco DPT products and nearly 10,000 Cisco DPT ports have been shipped. DPT is based on the Spatial Reuse Protocol (SRP), a Cisco-developed MAC-layer protocol for ring-based packet internetworking. Cisco has submitted SRP to the IEEE 802.17 Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) Working Group for consideration as the industry standard.