Cisco Unveils Next Phase of Cisco 7000 Family of Internet Routers; Cisco 7300 Series, Cisco 7600 Series Offer Multiprotocol Routing Capability with OC-48 Scalability.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 12, 2001

Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO) today bolstered its next-generation routing portfolio, adding new mid-range capabilities to its lineup with the introduction of the Cisco 7300 Series Internet Router and enhancements to the Cisco 7600 Series Internet Router. These new products deliver high-performance application combinations and services for enterprise and service provider customers and offer multiprotocol routing that scales to OC-48 speeds.

Part of Cisco AVVID, the Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data for enterprise customers, Cisco's mid-range optical routers are designed for the network edge where rich high-performance services are implemented to enable profitability and enhanced business agility. Cisco provides these capabilities with its newest advances, the Cisco 7300, and additions to the Cisco 7600 Series -- the Cisco 7603 and Cisco 7606. The Cisco 7300, Cisco 7603 and Cisco 7606 also create opportunities for service providers to offer high-value, differentiated services, and for enterprises to develop the advanced network infrastructure necessary to succeed in high-traffic enterprise environments. As part of the Cisco 7000 family of routers, these new mid-range routers reduce network complexity and cost of ownership by enabling consolidated delivery of multiple, simultaneous applications, such as voice over IP, virtual private networks (VPN), and Layer 7 content recognition and switching, on the same high-performance, extensible platform.

"The Cisco 7300 and new additions to the Cisco 7600 further enhance Cisco's solutions in the mid range, where flexibility and breadth of services implementation within modular and multiprotocol platforms are required by enterprise and service provider customers," said Deb Mielke, Principal, Treillage Network Strategies, Inc. "With the size and modularity of Cisco's new mid-range routers, customers will be able to grow their networks incrementally allowing them to avoid large initial capital expenditures and to work within tight budget constraints."

Evolution of Mid-Range Routing -- Cisco 7300 Series Internet

Router

The new Cisco 7300 extends the mid-range routing portfolio by providing multiprotocol routing capabilities that scale to OC-48 speeds with high availability and built-in Gigabit Ethernet ports, which reduce the cost of LAN connectivity. The Cisco 7300 uses a centralized, high-performance routing engine, NSE-100, to deliver a wealth of hardware-accelerated, Cisco IOS-based services and protocols over a range of modular interface offerings. The Cisco 7300 also utilizes Cisco patented Parallel Express Forwarding (PXF) IP Services processing technology, and a robust high-availability design.

"We expect the Cisco 7300 to become an valuable offering for the service provider edge applications," said Matti Swan, R&D Group manager at Elisa Communications. "The product will allow service providers to offer Quality of Service at the edge of the network in a redundant and compact platform. When combined with other Cisco edge products, service providers can now find a cost efficient solution."

New Additions to the Cisco 7600 Series Internet Router

Part of the Cisco 7600 Series Internet Routers, the Cisco 7603 and Cisco 7606 are small-form-factor, high-performance routers that deliver optical speed local area, wide area, and metropolitan-area networking with high-touch IP services at the network edge and in the Internet data center (IDC).

-- Cisco 7603: The Cisco 7603 delivers high performance with a forwarding rate
of 15 Million packets per second (Mpps), and 32 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of
bandwidth in a compact, modular chassis. With a powerful combination of speed
and services, the Cisco 7603 is optimal for deployment in applications where a
small number of interfaces is needed, for example, in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 point
of presence (POP) where space is critical and varying speeds of aggregation are
necessary, or in the metropolitan area to provide high-performance Ethernet
aggregation and uplink.

-- Cisco 7606: The Cisco 7606 is a six-slot unit modular chassis and provides a
forwarding rate of 30 Mpps and 160 Gbps total throughput. Whether deployed as a
high-speed wide area network (WAN) aggregator or for metropolitan Ethernet
aggregation and uplink, the Cisco 7606 meets requirements for redundancy, high
availability, and rack density.

"After evaluating the Cisco 7603 we are impressed with the flexibility it offers," said Jon Miller, director of core network development, InterNap. "With this router Cisco has done a great job of balancing performance, interface types, interface density and small form factor. For applications where footprint and performance might otherwise be at odds, the Cisco 7603 hits the mark."

Both the Cisco 7603 and Cisco 7606 also are ideal for high-end enterprises requiring fast-forwarding rates and high-speed connectivity in conjunction with rich IP services. Enterprises can protect their capital investments by utilizing the Cisco 7600 and taking advantage of many Cisco 7200 and Cisco 7500 port adapters for terminating DS0 to OC-3 connections.

Cisco 7600 Series routers can scale WAN connectivity from DS0 to OC-48 and LAN connectivity from 10-Mbps Ethernet through 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Cisco also continues to enrich the Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) capabilities on the Cisco 7600 platform. The Cisco 7600 Series was Cisco's first platform to support Ethernet over MPLS, and now will support MPLS, MPLS Quality of Service (QoS) and MPLS VPN, allowing service providers to offer differentiated services, to allow quality guarantees, and to build scalable and unified networks for their different enterprise customer requirements.

Pricing, Availability and Other Information

With expected availability in October 2001, the Cisco 7300 Internet Router has a base system price of $36,000, which includes the Cisco IOS and 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports. Additional interfaces start at $25,000. The list price of the Cisco 7603 Internet Router base system, including the Cisco IOS and 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports, is $45,000, with expected availability by the end of September 2001. The list price of the Cisco 7606 Internet Router base system, including the Cisco IOS and 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports, is $55,000, with expected availability in October 2001.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems (Nasdaq:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco news and information are available at http://www.cisco.com.

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