Cisco 7500 Series Boosts Routing Muscle For Large, Evolving Corporate Networks; Delivers on company's CiscoFusion architecture.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 28, 1995--Cisco Systems today announced the Cisco 7500 series, a new line of high-end multiprotocol routers that provide an unmatched level of stability, security and control for large, evolving corporate networks. As part of this introduction, the company also announced major enhancements to existing high-end routers in its Cisco 7000 family.

The new Cisco 7500 router series extends the capabilities of the Cisco 7000 family and incorporates distributed switching functions. This builds on the company's CiscoFusion(TM) architecture and delivers the power to support emerging high-bandwidth applications and environments.

"New network designs involving LAN switching and ATM, and emerging applications such as networked multimedia, are requiring routers to provide new functionality and higher performance," said Richard Palmer, Cisco's director of marketing for high-end routing products. "The Cisco 7500 series, running Cisco Internetwork Operating System(TM) (Cisco IOS(TM)) software, provides users with the routing capabilities that are essential in building reliable and scalable networks in these environments."

Cisco's new 7500 series significantly extends the capabilities of the Cisco 7000 family through increased performance, availability and port density. The new routers expand bandwidth capacity by four times, provide redundancy for route/switch processing and increase maximum port density by 100 percent.

Greater stability, security and control in enterprise networks

With its increased performance and reliability, the Cisco 7500 becomes the premier platform for running the industry's leading internetworking software, Cisco IOS. Cisco IOS software enables users to manage access to network resources, allocate quality of service among applications, and offload value-added functions such as protocol conversion or data encryption from other devices. Cisco 7500 series routers and Cisco IOS software give enterprise and service provider organizations a reliable, highly flexible networking infrastructure to meet mission-critical networking requirements in several environments.

Optimized for multiple environments

The Cisco 7500 series' distributed switching functions enable LAN managers to provide the high performance routing necessary to support networks using ATM, multilayer LAN switching and virtual LAN technologies. This delivers on the company's CiscoFusion architecture, a blueprint for scalable, distributed internetworks that "fuse" the best of routing and switching. With CiscoFusion, organizations can build switched LAN internetworks powerful enough to support emerging high-bandwidth applications while maintaining the stability, security and control provided by network-layer routing.

Routers in the new series offer the industry's broadest support of high-speed ATM and WAN interfaces, which allows customers in the WAN environment to access multiple types of carrier service offerings as they migrate from Time-Division Multiplexed (TDM) backbones to ATM backbones.

In addition, the Cisco 7500 series can strategically consolidate IBM data center communications when coupled with Cisco IOS software and the Cisco Channel Interface Processor (CIP). With TCP/IP offload, SNA and APPN support, the CIP card enables the integration of SNA, NetBIOS, and TCP/IP networks into a single network. This reduces costs and gives users more control over traffic to and from the mainframe.

Cisco's 7500 series will give Internet service providers the higher performance, reliability and security they need to handle exponential growth and new applications. Currently, Cisco routers carry more than 80 percent of Internet backbone traffic, according to the Yankee Group.

Powerful combination of . . .

Performance

Cisco's 7500 series offers unequaled performance, with scalable system bandwidth exceeding two gigabits per second (Gbps). This performance is achieved through a new, distributed multiprocessor architecture consisting of three elements: -- the integrated Route/Switch Processor (RSP), -- the new Versatile Interface Processor (VIP) card and -- Cisco's high-speed CyBus.

With the new, high-speed CyBus, Cisco 7500 routers provide up to 2.1 Gbps of bandwidth, offering four times the capacity of the Cisco 7000's single CxBus(TM).

The Versatile Interface Processor (VIP) is the first router interface card to provide intelligent multilayer switching and run Cisco IOS software. Each VIP card in a Cisco 7500 series router can make local switching decisions, based on routing information received from the RSP, and independently perform other Cisco IOS functions.

The Cisco 7500 Route/Switch Processor boosts performance of the route and switch processing functions by utilizing a high-speed RISC engine and custom ASICs.

Availability

In dual-RSP configurations, the Cisco 7500 can take advantage of memory and switching functions in the secondary RSP, which also can take over if the primary RSP goes off-line. This, together with the dual power supplies offered on 7500 series models, maximizes applications and system availability.

Density

The Cisco 7500 series includes three new models. The Cisco 7505 provides five chassis slots and 1 Gbps of bandwidth with one Route/Switch Processor (RSP) and one power supply. The Cisco 7507 and Cisco 7513, with seven and 13 slots respectively, provide more than 2 Gbps of bandwidth and optionally can be equipped with dual RSPs and power supplies.

All models accommodate the full range of interface processors already supported by the Cisco 7000 series: Ethernet, Token Ring, Fast Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), serial, High-Speed Serial Interface (HSSI), ATM, channelized E1/T1, and IBM channel-attachment.

Existing Cisco 7000 family enhanced

The new Versatile Interface Processors developed for the Cisco 7500 series also can be installed in Cisco's existing high-end routers, the Cisco 7000 and Cisco 7010, providing increased port density, mixed media options and more packet memory. This significantly enhances the Cisco 7000 family and its ability to support increasing traffic in wide area network applications.

"Because Cisco 7000 interface processor cards are forward-compatible with the Cisco 7500, customers can re-deploy existing IPs to the Cisco 7500 to gain its higher aggregate route/switch processing performance," Palmer said. "At the same time, Cisco 7000 users can take advantage of the higher port densities and mixed media configurations supported by the new Versatile Interface Processor cards, which can be operated in the Cisco 7000." -0-

Pricing and Availability

    Cisco 7500 series pricing and availability are as follows:

Product                         Price (U.S. list)       Availability
Cisco 7505 base system                  $10,900(a)      Immediate
Cisco 7507 base system                  $19,900(a)      Immediate
Cisco 7513 base system                  $28,900(a)      Immediate

(a)Software options range from $4,000 to $8,000

Versatile Interface Processors
VIP - 4 Ethernet/1 Fast Ethernet        $17,000 4th Quarter 1995
VIP - 2 Fast Ethernet                   $16,000 4th Quarter 1995
VIP - 1 Fast Ethernet                   $12,000 4th Quarter 1995
VIP - 4 Ethernet/4 Serial               $17,000 1st Quarter 1996
-0-

Port adapters supporting ATM, FDDI, HSSI, ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI), data compression and encryption will be available in 1996.

Today, Cisco Systems also announced new pricing associated with existing models in the Cisco 7000 family. Base prices for the Cisco 7000 and Cisco 7010 now are $15,900 and $6,900, with software options an additional $2,200 to $4,000. Previously, the two models listed for $19,900 and $11,900, with software options ranging from $2,500 to $6,300.

Cisco Systems, Inc. is the leading global supplier of enterprise networks, including routers, LAN and ATM switches, dial-up access servers and network management software. These products, integrated by Cisco's Internetwork Operating System(TM) (Cisco IOS(TM)) link geographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM networks. Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and in the U.S. is traded under the NASDAQ symbol CSCO.

CONTACT: Cisco Systems, Inc.

Steve Bauer, 408/526-4433