Cisco Systems Rolls Out a New Class of Multi-Gigabit Application-Aware Enterprise Switches.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 25, 1999--

New Catalyst 6000 Family Enables Scalability From 32 Gbps to 256

Gbps and Can Recognize, Classify and Prioritize

Mission-Critical Traffic

Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced the Catalyst(R) 6000 family of intelligent multi-gigabit enterprise switches that delivers an application-aware architecture consistent across the high-end Catalyst family. With throughput that scales up to 150 million packets per second and support for Cisco IOS(R) software, the Catalyst 6000 family gives network managers the speed, capacity and intelligence necessary to successfully integrate data, voice and video applications in a multilayer enterprise environment.

"While some organizations may choose to just over-provision bandwidth in the LAN with Fast/Gigabit Ethernet, they need to consider a future where voice and other multimedia will ride the data network," said David Passmore, research director at NetReference, Inc. "The types of intelligence and QoS features provided by Cisco's Catalyst 6000 family ensure that the network infrastructure will enable a broad range of applications, including voice."

The Catalyst 6000 family rounds out the Catalyst family of products and is a key component of Cisco's integrated data, voice and video strategy for the enterprise. For further details on the voice enablement on the Catalyst 5000 family, please refer to today's announcement entitled, "Cisco Systems Announces Voice Capabilities on Catalyst 5000 Family of Multilayer Switches."

The members of the Catalyst 6000 family include the Catalyst 6000 series and the Catalyst 6500 series, which scale from 32 Gbps to 256 Gbps respectively. This common architecture maximizes users' investments through the use of interchangeable switche.

The Catalyst 6000 family integrates Cisk. Cisco is also announcing support for advanced long-range Gigabit Interfaces Converters (GBICs) across its platforms to enable consistent network services at Gigabit speeds up to 100 kilometers. This allows customers to use a common Ethernet-based architecture across both local area networks and Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs).

The Catalyst 6000 family can support high densities of up to 384 10/100 Mbps port or up to 130 gigabit Ethernet ports. In addition to the consistent Catalyst software, both series of multilayer switches can support the same set of supervisors, interface line cards, and have a common multilayer architecture that supports extensive network services. These solutions give customers a wide range of price/performance options as well as solid investment protection for deployment end-to-end across a campus network. Additionally, all the 10/100/1000 Mbps line cards also have the ability to support up to 8 EtherChannel(R) links (at 100 or 1000 Mbps) simultaneously for up to 16 Gbps connection between switches.

Addressing multi-gigabit backbone/distribution and server aggregation environments, the Catalyst 6000 family complements other Catalyst family members like the Catalyst 4000 and Catalyst 5000 family in wiring closets and Catalyst 8500 series of switches/routers in the network core.

Application-aware Intelligence

As enterprises migrate toward application-aware networks, adding differentiated services to the infrastructure becomes paramount. Using Cisco IOS software and the CiscoAssure architecture, the Catalyst family delivers differentiated services for mission critical networks on a per-application basis. With CiscoAssure, network policy can be applied based on Layer 2, 3 and 4 information, including specific users, IP addresses, or applications and span from the wiring closet to the backbone.

For increased flexibility and support of mission critical, unicast and multicast/multimedia applications, each port on the Catalyst 6000 family is capable of supporting multiple transmit queues, all of which have configurable thresholds. Weighted random early detection (WRED) and weighted round robin (WRR) can be applied within each queue to maximize utilization of available resources and minimize packet loss and delay - particularly for premium-class traffic including LAN-based IP telephony.

As users continue to examine the consolidation of data, voice and video onto a single infrastructure, new solutions must provide high density 10/100/1000 connectivity, application-aware intelligence and investment protection for the future. Cisco's Catalyst 6000 will give customers the flexibility, performance and vital network services at Layers 2, 3 and 4 to support mission-critical applications.

New Class of Products for Reliability, Resiliency and Performance

To increase network reliability, the Catalyst 6000 family supports multiple levels of network resiliency and serviceability. To insure high system availability at the device level, the Catalyst 6000 family supports redundant supervisors, load-sharing power supplies, fans, system clocks, uplinks and switch fabrics (in Catalyst 6500 series). All system elements are hot swappable to ensure maximum system uptime.

For those customers who choose a dual Supervisor configuration, Cisco's Fast-Switchover will transfer switch control to the redundant Supervisor within seconds for mission-critical applications requiring maximum network availability.

For network-level resilience, the Catalyst 6000 family supports automatic recovery from failure using Spanning Tree per VLAN, and load-sharing for faster link convergence using Cisco's Fast EtherChannel (FEC) or Gigabit EtherChannel (GEC) technologies. Furthermore, FEC or GEC has been extended to include the ability to aggregate ports from different line cards for increased redundancy and higher-bandwidth links. The Catalyst 6000 family can also load balance across redundant Layer-3 paths and supports Hot Standby Routing Protocol (HSRP), providing fast cutover to a backup system in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Extending Gigabit Services to the Metropolitan Area Network

To provide customers with long-range gigabit solutions that can span up to 100 kilometers, Cisco now offers new Gigabit Interface Converters (GBICs) for 1000BASE-ZX that are hot swappable and compatible with the current installed base of Cisco's Catalyst gigabit products. These new options allow consistent delivery of gigabit networking services in both LAN and MAN environments.

Customers are continually trying to reduce overall cost of ownership by centralizing data centers and server farms off-site and then connecting them back into the campus via gigabit Ethernet. Now, with these new long-distance options and Cisco's gigabit portfolio, users only need to swap in new GBICs not a whole new switch.

Consistent Management and Security

When used with CiscoWorks 2000, Catalyst-family switches can be configured and managed to deliver end-to-end device, VLAN, traffic, and policy management. Another management feature on the Catalyst 6000 family is user tracking. This gives network administrators extensive visibility to track and authenticate users down to the their physical port number. User tracking can be used for troubleshooting and security purposes.

Security is further supported with secure port filtering which enables individual ports to be accessed from specified workstations. The Catalyst 6000 family also supports TACACS+, RADIUS, Access Control lists, IP permit lists, user authentication and MD5 Route authentication.

With the addition of the 6000 and 6500 series, the Catalyst family continues to scale its performance and intelligence to provide leading-edge connectivity for world-class enterprise networks.

Pricing and Availability

Both the Catalyst 6000 series and Catalyst 6500 series each have a 6 and 9-slot version: Catalyst 6006, 6009, Catalyst 6506 and 6509. The Catalyst 6000 series starts at $18,985 and that http://www.cisco.com.

Catalyst,demarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.