Cisco providing end-to-end components for imaging network at Radiological Society annual meeting.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 21, 1994--Cisco Systems is providing about $300,000 worth of equipment to establish a high-performance network for exchanging medical imaging data at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago, Nov. 27-Dec. 2.

The RSNAnet, deployed in McCormick Place Exposition Center, will feature an ATM backbone anchored by Cisco's HyperSwitch A100 ATM switch and three Cisco 7000 routers, each equipped with an ATM interface processor (AIP). The routers will provide an ATM connection to the Internet, as well as Ethernet and FDDI connections to workstations and an FDDI backbone.

Cisco's Catalyst workgroup switch will provide high-speed (100 Mbps) connections to the RSNAnet and to workstations using the company's CDDI (Copper Distributed Data Interface) and FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) adapters.

Steve Drew, RSNA assistant executive director for Informatics, said: "There is a lot of interest in the radiology community for networks that can transport medical and clinical information, including images, at high speed. As a leader in network connectivity solutions, Cisco is providing end-to-end components that meet the demanding requirements of the RSNAnet."

More than 60 vendors of medical imaging systems are expected to be connected to RSNAnet, as well as many academic institutions. In addition, several terminal clusters will be available to attendees throughout McCormick Place to provide electronic mail and Internet access for attendees.

Data carried on the network will include MRI, CT, nuclear medicine, ultrasound, digitized radiographs, radiography and other images.

The RSNA annual meeting is expected to draw more than 56,000 attendees, including radiologists, medical physicists and other health care and technical specialists. The RSNAnet will allow meeting participants to access and retrieve medical images, and participate in an imaging study management demonstration that integrates image acquisition devices and workstations with hospital image and information management systems.

Cisco's HyperSwitch A100 ATM switch, introduced in August, lets users create high-speed switched internetworks that eliminate congestion problems in corporate backbone internetworks. As the first ATM switch to support the Phase 0 Private Network Node Interface (P-NNI) protocol adopted by the ATM Forum, HyperSwitch is the only complete ATM solution based on ATM Forum standards.

Catalyst is the first LAN switch with an embedded Remote Network Monitoring (RMON) agent. This feature facilitates detailed analysis of data-link statistics, decode of network packets and switched network traffic flow to let network managers troubleshoot or fine-tune switched network segments.

Cisco Systems Inc., headquartered in San Jose, is the leading global supplier of internetworking products, including routers, bridges, workgroup systems, ATM switches, dial-up access servers, software routers and network management software. These products are used to build enterprise-wide internetworks linking an unlimited number of geographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM SNA networks.

Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS) technology, found in more than 250,000 installed Cisco units and in the products of over 20 partners, is the de facto industry standard for data transmission. In the U.S., Cisco is traded over the counter under the NASDAQ symbol CSCO. A member of the S&P 500 and Fortune 500, Cisco in fiscal 1994 logged sales of $1.2 billion.

CONTACT: Cisco Systems Inc.

             Steve Bauer, 408/526-4433
             Ulevich & Orrange, Inc.
             William Orrange or Janis Ulevich, 415/329-1590