SAN JOSE, Calif., May 22, 2001 - Cisco Systems, Inc. and Intel Corporation today announced they have entered into a marketing agreement to help accelerate Gigabit Ethernet network deployments.

The two companies led the industry's transition from 10 Mbps Ethernet networks to 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet. With the IEEE 802.3ab 1000BaseT standard* and the price/performance economics in place, customers can now migrate from 100 to 1000 Mbps in their network infrastructures, servers, and, in the future, desktops. Cisco and Intel's agreement is designed to help ease network migrations for midmarket (mid-size companies and enterprise branches with 100-999 employees) and enterprise organizations.

"Cisco and Intel share a common vision of pervasive bandwidth in midmarket and enterprise networks," said Larry Birenbaum, general manager and group vice president of Cisco's Ethernet Access Group. "By joining forces to promote 1000BaseT, we can accelerate the extension of Ethernet to Gigabit speed for server connectivity and copper-based networks that were previously constrained to 100Mbps."

"We felt it was critical to test our products for interoperability and provide service and support, so that customers can deploy Gigabit Ethernet over copper networks with confidence," stated Greg Lang, vice president and general manager of Intel's Platform Networking Group. "By combining market leading Cisco Gigabit Ethernet switches and Intel Gigabit Ethernet network adapters and silicon, we can enable our customers to make a smooth transition to high-speed networks."

To further support the adoption of 1000BaseT as a technology of choice for network infrastructure and server connectivity, Cisco has introduced a comprehensive Gigabit Ethernet solution for copper-based networks in a related announcement today, "Cisco Drives Transition to Intelligent Gigabit Ethernet Networks."