BRUSSELS, Belgium, March 22, 2002 - Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, and Brutili, a leading cable distribution and Internet provider in the French-speaking part of Belgium, today announced a collaboration to upgrade the Brutili network in order to meet increasing demand for both private and public Internet connections. To meet the demand Brutili is deploying an optical network based on the Cisco 7600 Internet Router, which is being installed by Cisco system integrator, Telindus.
Brutili has seen the demand for reliable and scalable private and business Internet connections growing dramatically. In order to raise transfer speeds for the future, Brutili has decided to upgrade its IP backbone using the Cisco 7600 Series and Cisco Catalyst 3550 and 2950 Series switches, with built-in redundancy on the entire network.
Brutili considered two offers for upgrading its network and chose Cisco. "Cisco's technology matched our needs and the solution was offered at the right price. Moreover, when considering a new installation you have to think about compatibility with the existing equipment and how much experience the system managers have with the products. Choosing Cisco meant that we would be working with familiar configuration and routing principles. As such there would be no need for additional training, and implementation could happen quickly. In this way, we aim to ensure that our customers will have a continuous service, even during the upgrade," says Jean-Michel Adant, director-general of Brutili. "Once the installation is complete, we will continue to count on the local technical support from Telindus and Cisco."
With more than 11, 000 residential customers, Brutili are the biggest supplier of cable access to the Internet in the French- speaking region of Belgium. They supply this residential market with cable connections for television and radio, broadband Internet access and line rentals in 28 boroughs of Brussels and Wallonia. For its corporate market Brutili has its own fibreglass network installed in the triangle formed by Brussels, Wavre and Charleroi. Over 400 companies use Brutili's Internet services, either by cable or directly through their fibreglass network.
"Due to the rapidly growing demand we considered changing our existing network to SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy, an international standard for synchronous data transfer over optical networks with a speed of 155 to 622 megabits per second), but it became clear that moving straight to Gigabit Ethernet would be a more cost efficient solution. The connection cards and data transfer for Gigabit Ethernet traffic were cheaper and our current network already had speeds of up to 45 Mbps. The step to 155 Mbps would have been too small to justify the investment, so we went straight to 1,000 Mbps," says to Jean-Michel Adant. When the full bandwidth of the Gigabit Ethernet is not needed, Brutili can work at a lower capacity. This reduces the transfer costs of the data traffic.
Cisco networking equipment include: The Cisco 7600 Series Router http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/rt/7600osr/ the Cisco Catalyst 3550 series switches; http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/si/casi/ca3550/index.shtml, the Cisco Catalyst 2950 series switches; http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/si/casi/ca2950/index.shtml.
The Cisco 7600 Series delivers high performance, high density WAN (wide area networking) connectivity, combined with high-touch IP (Internet Protocol) services at the network edge. It is one of the most scalable systems in the industry, delivering DS0 through to STM-16 and Gigabit Ethernet WAN connectivity, and at the same time protecting initial equipment investments.
