SAN JOSE, Calif. May 29, 2002 - Offering customers cost-effective, security-optimized converged network solutions, Cisco announced today new enhancements to its comprehensive virtual private network (VPN) solutions that will enable IP voice and video over an IPSec VPN. These enhancements and new solutions are part of Cisco's VPN initiative, which takes a practical approach to providing secure and resilient connectivity options for enterprise and service provider environments.
Announced today are new IP voice/video centric Quality of Service (QoS) designed for interoperability with IPSec, IPSec multicast support, and IP voice/video stream encryption available on all Cisco IOS TM VPN routers. These new capabilities broaden Cisco's existing portfolio of interoperable security solutions for multiservice networks. They include the Cisco PIX Firewall Family, which offers broad support for IP voice protocols with stateful inspection of Cisco IP voice and video streams. Additional security support is delivered through the Cisco Intrusion Detection System (IDS) Network sensors, providing intrusion protection across the multiservice network, and Cisco IDS Host Sensor, offering protection against attacks on IP voice infrastructure elements such as the Cisco CallManager.
Also announced today is VPN support on the Cisco 7400 router, a high-performance expansion to Cisco's head-end dedicated VPN router family.
The expansion of Cisco's VPN solutions further enhance SAFE, the security blueprint for Cisco AVVID (Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data). SAFE enables businesses to maximize security while successfully taking advantage of e-Business. More information is available at http://www.cisco.com/go/safe
Customers deploying IP telephony and video over an IPSec VPN require an end-to-end, interoperable infrastructure to support the secure delivery of toll-quality IP voice and video services. Cisco is one of the first vendors to offer a fully integrated end-to-end infrastructure and deployment model for this type of application.
"Cisco is committed to providing customers with converged solutions that securely deliver business-critical resources to the extended enterprise network," said Richard Palmer, vice president and general manager of the Cisco VPN and Security Services business unit. "This announcement is the first step in providing customers with comprehensive IP voice and video solutions, and associated VPN deployment models that increase employee productivity and provide overall cost savings."
Enterprise customers gain several operational efficiencies through an IP voice and video-enabled IPSec VPN deployment. It extends the network's reach to remote sites to deliver video services such as e-learning and video conferencing for increased productivity. Customers also benefit from a reduction in telephony and bandwidth expenses, infrastructure support and associated equipment costs for overall cost savings.
"The deployment of business-critical applications, such as IP voice, across a VPN network requires a secure and reliable supporting infrastructure," said Kevin O'Kane, chief executive officer of Lexent, a provider of specialized electrical services in metropolitan markets. "Cisco delivers cost-effective, robust VPN and security solutions that enable the rapid deployment of these new services to our geographically dispersed locations."
Service providers are also considering IP voice and video-enabled VPN services as lucrative additions to their services portfolio. Recognizing the growing demand for this service, Cisco is also announcing today a new Cisco Powered Network designation, "Multiservice VPN," for providers offering Cisco-based IP voice and video over IPSec and MPLS VPN services. This new designation currently recognizes providers that offer low-latency network bandwidth. This is a critical component for providing high quality voice and video-enabled VPN services as well as fully-managed voice and video-enabled VPN solutions. Sprint is among the first Cisco Powered Network members to receive this designation.
"As an existing Cisco Powered Network member, Sprint realizes the value Cisco-based VPN and security services provide our customers," said Randy Ritter, vice president of Product/Portfolio Management at Sprint. "Through the Multiservice VPN designation, Sprint can assure its customers with converged services that quality for critical applications is maintained and competing traffic is not compromised. This new designation demonstrates Cisco's ongoing commitment to partner with service providers to deliver remote working solutions and flexible VPN deployment models to meet real world business demands of enterprise customers."
Site-to-Site Scalability with Cisco 7400 Series VPN Router Solution
Cisco also announced today integrated VPN functionality into its Cisco 7400 series router, broadening its head-end VPN router portfolio. The addition of the Cisco 7400 series VPN router package offers superior behind WAN-edge VPN connectivity addressing specific requirements of site-to-site VPN environments. This solution integrates the broad services provided within this Cisco IOSTM router with high-performance, hardware-based VPN acceleration with the VPN Acceleration Module (VAM). It delivers VPN throughput of 120 Mbps of 3DES encryption, enabling customers to extend secure network connectivity to more sites at high data rates for enhanced scalability. Coupled with web-based management capabilities in the embedded VPN Device Manager, this new bundle provides a best-in-class site-to-site VPN solution.Pricing and Availability
The Cisco IP voice and video-enabled IPSec VPN capabilities are available today on all Cisco IOS VPN routers including the 1700, 2600, 3600, 3700, 7100, and 7200 series VPN routers. Deployment guidelines and support will be available initially for site-to-site IP voice and video VPN deployments in July. More details can be found at www.cisco.com/go/v3pn. The Cisco 7400 Series VPN Router bundle is available in June for $18,500 USD. For more information about the Cisco Powered Network, Multiservice over IPSec and MPLS VPN Designation visit http://www.cisco.com/go/cpn
