Cisco has introduced 14 access routers, including a family of
devices, designed in part to help branch and remote offices take
advantage of security, high network availability and priority for
the most important and sensitive applications they use.
The company also rolled out a set of interfaces and
performance-enhancing features for models in its 7000 series of
routers that are deployed at the edge of enterprise and
service-provider networks.
In the past, some Cisco products have offered security features
such as VPN (virtual private network) capability and IPSec (IP
Security) encryption but have forced customers to choose between
enabling those features and achieving optimal performance. The
enhancements announced yesterday make that trade-off unnecessary.
The Cisco 3700 series routers are designed to allow enterprises to
combine in one box wide-area network routing, low-density
switching, IP telephony and a voice gateway for linking traditional
phone systems with a data network, according to Dave Frampton,
senior director of product management at Cisco.
Cisco's IP phones can be plugged into switch ports on the devices,
and a power supply can be included in the box that will power the
phones through the network cable, removing the need for a separate
power cord.
An interface module for the 3600 and 3700 Series routers, the
latest members of Cisco's 2600 and 1700 access router lines and
three new broadband routers for small and remote offices will ship
by the end of May.
Hardware and software enhancements to the 7000 Series routers are
designed to boost performance and to offer more advanced services
such as quality of service, security and high network availability.
They include availability of Cisco's AToM (Any Transport over MPLS)
technology, which lets carriers converge multiple transport
technologies such as Frame Relay and ATM (Asynchronous Transfer
Mode) on to an IP MPLS core.
The company announced enhancements to the Cisco 7300 and 7600
Series routers that will ship by the end of this month and the
latest offerings for the Cisco 7500 Series that will be out by the
end of June.