SAN JOSE, Calif., September 4, 2001 — Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today announced that its lab tests confirmed a 60 percent boost in site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) performance for its Cisco 7100 and 7200 series routers, using the new Cisco VPN Acceleration Module (VAM).
This announcement extends Cisco's technical and market leadership in the site-to-site VPN market and further enhances SAFE, Cisco's security blueprint for Cisco AVVID — the Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data.
This represents a 150 percent boost in session scalability and a 60 percent boost in performance, compared to the currently available VPN acceleration adaptors which support up to 90 Mbps of 3DES and 2,000 secure VPN tunnels. Customers can now achieve VPN throughput of up to 145 Mega Bits Per Second of Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) encryption while establishing up to 5,000 secure VPN tunnels.
"Using the Cisco VPN Acceleration Module, our customers will be able to extend network connectivity to more sites at faster data rates," said Ray Bell, chairman and chief technology officer at SmartPipes, an IP software and services company. "After testing, we've concluded that this product significantly enhances Cisco's high end offering, and will make it easier for our partners to deploy IP VPNs with demanding traffic needs."With the high tunnel scalability offered by the VAM, customers can seamlessly increase the number of VPN links as their network requirements grow. Coupled with the rich IP service delivery of Cisco IOS. Software, these performance features and the VAM's fast tunnel setup time make it one of the most scalable, high-performance acceleration solutions on the market for site-to-site VPN deployments.
For added convenience, Cisco is offering the VAM and Cisco IOS software VPN features with its high performance Cisco 7204 router in two customized bundles that are easy to deploy and cost effective. The new Cisco 7200 Series VPN package provides best-in-class site-to-site VPN solutions by combining the VAM's high-performance hardware-assisted encryption and compression with critical site-to-site VPN software services, such as support for routing, quality of service (QoS), multicast and multi-protocol traffic across the VPN. It also integrates firewall, intrusion detection, WAN services and service level validation. When combined with the ease of configuration and manageability delivered by the recently announced VPN Device Manager, the Cisco 7200 Series VPN bundles deliver a market leading combination of features tailor-made for accommodating the specific requirements of site-to-site VPN environments.
Pricing and availability
The Cisco VPN Acceleration Module is available today at a list price of $5,000 US. The Cisco 7200 Series VPN bundles, which include a Cisco 7204 router chassis with a high-speed NPE-400 processor, are also available today and start at $23,000 US.
