Cisco and Frontier Software Announce Plans for Advanced Management of Switched Networks.

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 1995--Cisco Systems and Frontier Software today announced plans for expanding their relationship to support RMON2 across Cisco's Catalyst family of LAN switches, giving customers advanced switch management.

The two companies will also deliver a comprehensive line of SwitchProbed analyzer products for monitoring and analyzing traffic in switched internetworking environments.

Catalyst switches currently utilize Frontier's unique EnterpriseRMONd architecture that supports functions such as user-configurable monitoring of custom domains and roving port monitoring, allowing dynamic support for all selected RMON groups and the ability to monitor any network traffic through the application layer for selected port(s). The EnterpriseRMON architecture has been designed to easily accommodate emerging standards such as RMON2. This means Catalyst users can easily incorporate new technology with a simple software upgrade.

"We are pleased to be expanding our relationship with Frontier Software and their award-winning technologies as we move into the next era of switched management," said Jayshree Ullal, Director of Marketing for Cisco's Workgroup Business Unit. "Since we started working together in 1994, Frontier has been an integral piece of our switch management strategy."

The new RMON SwitchProbes monitor high-speed switching traffic for FDDI/CDDI, Token Ring, Ethernet and Fast Ethernet networks. The probes incorporate Frontier's EnterpriseRMON agent to provide enhanced capabilities for monitoring network and application layer protocols.

"The Catalyst family of LAN switches with EnterpriseRMON and together with SwitchProbes deliver unprecedented network management for complex switched environments," said Nathan Kalowski, Vice President of Marketing for Frontier Software. "In addition, Frontier is also excited to be working with Cisco on delivering further enhancements to EnterpriseRMON to support VLAN topologies."

EnterpriseRMON is future Key to VLAN Management

While RMON2 will standardize monitoring for network layer and application layer traffic, it does not address the important issue of how information is aggregated for VLAN topologies. VLANs can consist of users who are combined as a logical LAN but are physically attached to different switches. EnterpriseRMON complements RMON2 to uniquely provide aggregation of RMON attributes by MAC, subnet, and net address. The agent grouping concept allows the viewing of information by port, groups of ports, and by address type. A major issue for the future will be in providing the ability to apply all the RMON attributes for any domain for any selected VLAN. Thus, in addition to the agent and address grouping, and RMON2 support, EnterpriseRMON will support 802.10 and ISL for VLAN views and diagnostics from Cisco's VLAN Director.

Availability

RMON2 agents will be integrated across the Catalyst LAN switching family by the first half of 1996. SwitchProbes from Cisco will be available in December of this year. U.S. list price ranges from $3,500 to $19,000, depending on the LAN technology.

About the Companies

Cisco Systems, Inc., headquartered in San Jose, Calif., 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 (IOS), link geographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM networks. Cisco is traded under the NASDAQ symbol CSCO. -0-

Frontier Software is the technology leader in the development of the RMON standard and RMON-based distributed diagnostic systems. The company is an active member of the IETF RMON committee and has been an active contributor to establishing the RMON (RFC 1271/1757) and RMON2 standard. Frontier's products include the NETscout family of intelligent SNMP/RMON LAN/WAN Probes and management console analysis software tools. Introduced in 1992, NETscout was the first RMON based distributed diagnostic product line available in the industry. In 1993 Frontier was the first to deliver RMON management for WANs and received Data Communications "Hot Product" award for Network Management. In March 1995, Frontier announced the industry's first RMON based probe for CDDI/FDDI. Recently, NETscout was awarded the Application Excellence Award for Network Management from Faulkner Communications, Internetwork Magazine's 1995 Standards Achievement Award, and Tester's Choice from Data Communications Magazine. Frontier is a privately held company growing at 100%+ per year.

CONTACT: Nathan Kalowski, Frontier Software,Inc.

508-244-4000/[e-mail]

or

Amanda Jaramillo, Cisco Systems,Inc.

408-526-7391/[e-mail]