[c-nsp] New Cisco Products

[Brant I. Stevens]

Announced today...

Taken from http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2004/prod_113004b.html?CMP=ILC-001

 Cisco Increases Network Application Resiliency and Performance with More
Than 20 New Cisco Catalyst Switch Offerings

  New offerings enable customers to widely deploy higher levels of
integrated security and availability as well as network-wide 10GbE
and10/100/1000 PoE 

 SAN JOSE, Calif., November 30, 2004 - Cisco Systems, Inc.® today announced
new products and innovations for the Cisco® Catalyst® Switch portfolio to
address customer needs for higher levels of security, availability,
performance and investment protection.

 The additions to the Cisco Catalyst switch portfolio include Cisco Catalyst
6500 and 4500 Series supervisor engines with enhanced security, availability
and integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and/or GbE uplinks, as well as the
Cisco Catalyst 6500, 3750 and 3560 10/100/1000 Power Over Ethernet (PoE)
products. Also announced were high availability (HA) offerings and the
industry's first GbE-enabled IP Phone.

 "Networks must grow at the pace of business. To support their current and
future needs, companies are seeking to improve both the reliability and
security of their communications infrastructure," said David Willis, vice
president of Technology Research Services at META Group, a leading provider
of IT research, advisory services and strategic consulting. "Not only is
more capacity coming to the edge of the network, but more intelligence as
well."

 Leading Integrated Security, Availability and IP services

In today's network environment, the edge of the network faces increased
security and availability issues that increase the risk of downtime. To
address these issues, the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 32, with
Policy Feature Card 3B, extends core innovations to the network edge. Based
on the industry-leading Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 720
technology, the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 32 now allows
customers to cost effectively enable hardware based security features, such
as DoS mitigation to protect network application performance, and scaleable
support for multicast applications at the network edge.

 Designed to increase network and application availability, new Cisco IOS®
high availability innovations include Layer 3 Non-Stop Forwarding with
Stateful Switch Over (NSF/SSO) on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 and Layer 2 SSO on
the Cisco Catalyst 6500 and Cisco Catalyst 4500. These enhancements enable
sub-second failover capabilities for continuity of mission critical services
such as IP Telephony. Additionally, the new Generic Online Diagnostics
(GOLD) feature for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 series proactively detects and
addresses potential faults in the switch before they impact network traffic
and switch availability.

 In addition to high availability features and technology, Cisco is sharing
its 20 years of experience in building resilient networks by announcing new
advanced services, training and design guides to maximize network uptime.
Cisco is also announcing the Cisco Network Connectivity Center management
tool which identifies connectivity problems in realtime for faster network
troubleshooting.

 End-to-End 10 GbE over Existing Fiber

 Building on its 10GbE market leadership, the Cisco Catalyst switch
portfolio is extending 10GbE support to the network edge in its modular
switches. The new Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 32 is offered with a
choice of two 10GbE XENPAK-based or eight one GbE Small Form Factor
Pluggable (SFP) based uplinks.

 Additionally, new to the Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series is a Layer 2/3/4
Supervisor Engine V-10GE which offers dual wire-speed 10 GbE ports or four
GbE ports to maximize the flexibility of deployment options. The combination
of 10GbE and GbE ports on the same supervisor engine provides investment
protection in the LAN access- with an easy migration path to 10GbE by simply
adding 10GbE optical interfaces. Both the Cisco Catalyst 6500 and 4500
series supervisor engines also include integrated NetFlow for more
comprehensive network visibility, security and manageability.

 Customer Trends Drive Broadest 10/100/1000 and PoE Portfolio

 Customers are investing in IP telephony and increasingly deploying
10/100/1000 to the desktop. Today, Cisco is introducing the industry's first
GbE enabled phone, the Cisco IP Phone 7971G-GE, to allow unconstrained GbE
bandwidth from the network to desktops. Also, Cisco is announcing one of the
industry's most comprehensive sets of 10/100/1000 Ethernet switches with
IEEE 802.3af Standards Based PoE capabilities to complement and power the
new IP phone as well as other emerging network user devices.

 Additions to the Cisco Catalyst portfolio include new Cisco Catalyst 3750
with StackWiseTM technology and the Cisco Catalyst 3560 models that support
24- and 48-port 10/100/1000 with optional standards based PoE. These new
models will help enable broader 10/100/1000 and PoE deployment options with
integrated security, availability and quality of service (QoS).

 Also announced are new Cisco Catalyst 6500 LAN Access Interface modules
offering additional scalability, manageability and investment protection.
These include new 48-port 10/100/1000, and 48-port 10/100 modules with
enhanced QoS and cable fault detection capabilities for simplified
management, and a 96-port 10/100 (RJ21) module for high port densities in
compact form factors. All of these modules offer extended investment
protection through modular field upgradeable standards based PoE daughter
cards.

 Other additions to the Cisco Catalyst 6500 include a new 48-port 100BASE-X
module to support highly secure 100Mbps fiber deployments, a new 6000Watt
power supply for simplified high density PoE deployments and a Cisco
Catalyst Content Switching Module with integrated SSL (CSM-S) for datacenter
deployments.

 The breadth of today's announcements demonstrates Cisco's commitment to
enabling new applications, enhancing productivity and maximizing network
uptime, while preserving customer investments and advanced services options
across the Cisco Catalyst intelligent switching portfolio. For additional
information about the Cisco Catalyst Switch Portfolio updates please go to
http://www.cisco.com/go/LANswitching