NEW CISCO TECHNOLOGIES ENABLE MANAGED SHARED SERVICES OVER MPLS.

Cisco Systems, Inc. has introduced the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of technologies for enabling managed central services over Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) virtual private networks (VPNs). These new technologies deliver greater simplicity and functionality to Layer 3 MPLS VPN architectures, enabling service providers to move beyond providing connectivity services to offering their customers value-added services. Services such as unified messaging, content hosting and managed Internet access now can be implemented and managed across multiple MPLS VPNs more simply and cost-effectively.

Cisco is delivering four new technologies for MPLS VPNs -- multicast, Network Address Translation (NAT), On Demand Address Pools (ODAP) and VPN Select. Services once inside the enterprise network can migrate into the service provider's network, providing new revenue opportunities for service providers while lowering deployment and management costs. Enterprises benefit from increased flexibility in outsourcing services management.

"MPLS VPNs provide several opportunities for service providers," says Irwin Lazar, senior consultant of The Burton Group. "Today's announcement demonstrates how the deployment of MPLS VPNs can enable service providers to offer new managed IP services as well as increase network efficiencies and contain costs in order to take advantage of growth opportunities."

"Cisco's MPLS enhancements have given us improved network efficiencies and added functionality for our IP VPN customers," says Charles Salameh, vice president of New Cisco Technologies Enable Managed Shared Services Over MPLS Page 3 Bell Managed Solutions, Bell Canada. "The MPLS solution is easily integrated into our infrastructure and offers tremendous interoperability that, in the end, provides operational savings to us as a carrier while allowing us to seamlessly deliver new services to customers."

Previously, services would have to be replicated across all VPNs in order to connect employees, partners and customers with the services. In addition to the inefficient use of network resources, managing all these separate VPNs can be complex. With these challenges in mind, Cisco is expanding its widely deployed MPLS VPN solution to include the following four technologies in Cisco IOS Software: Multicast VPNs, NAT and ODAP for MPLS VPNs, and VPN Select.

The Multicast VPNs functionality minimizes configuration time and complexity, increases network scalability, and provides the ability to easily build enterprise-friendly services such as virtual multicast networks. Without native multicast support, many existing networks cannot handle wide-scale distribution of large data, voice, and video streams for such applications as multimedia, financial transactions and telecommuting. By reducing packet replication in the MPLS network, this feature allows for very scalable distribution of data, voice, and video streams.

Both the NAT and ODAP for MPLS VPNs capabilities allow the cost-effective use of service provider resources while ensuring availability of a broad service set to the enterprise client. The enhancements to NAT extend address translation for private IP addressing to MPLS VPNs, allowing access to shared services from any VPN without losing the VPN association or compromising connectivity. ODAP automates the expansion of IP address pools for VPNs, enabling service providers to more effectively manage IP address spaces across multiple VPNs. With NAT and ODAP for MPLS VPNs, service providers can ensure their enterprise customers that the integrity of existing enterprise addressing schemes will be maintained once managed inside the service provider network, and that they will have access to the same robust functionality as in the enterprise environment.

Cisco has also added support for broadband access with the new feature VPN Select. VPN Select allows remote users with high-speed links to connect to the corporate VPN irrespective of their access providers. For the first time, service providers now can offer scalable corporate connectivity to broadband users over an MPLS VPNs.[sections]