Attacking Cisco's router strength

Electronic News, Feb 2, 1998 by Carolyn Whelan

Cisco has long-term plans to develop layer 3 switches but can't provide a specific date. In the meantime, it is pushing other technologies outside the router space--including ATM and frame relay--which it considers superior to switch routers due to the complexity of applications that will be routed on the network.

"Layer 3 switching does not immediately denote value to users from an applications point of view," said Peter Alexander, Executive Director of Marketing in Cisco's Multiservice Access Business. "It only focuses on IP performance."

Analysts say that Cisco isn't pushing Layer 3 because it could take sales away from its existing products.

Last Tuesday Cisco announced the second of five phases of its data/voice/video integration strategy for users to network and interoperate over ATM, voice over frame relay and voice over IP. Phase two focuses on rolling out new multiservice, wide-area network access products that it says helps corporate customers reduce costs, deploy new business applications and improve network performance. Among new product releases, announced last week, are the MC3810 Access Concentrator, and new features on the Cisco StrataCom IGX WAN ATM switch, which consolidates data, voice and video onto a carrier class backbone. The access concentrator market is forecast to be a $2 billion one by the year 2000.

The Concentrator, designed for regional and branch office applications, combines IOS software routing functionality with compressed, switched voice and clear-channel video across Frame Relay and ATM services. It connects to any standard private branch exchange or video conferencing systems. Cisco says the MC3810 transports voice across enterprise infrastructures at a fraction of the bandwidth and cost of traditional multiplexers or Public Switched Telephone Network switches, for savings of 30 to 50 percent, according to Cisco. It operates at 56kbps to 2.048Mbps, and provides up to 24 channels of voice with compression down to 8kbps using eh G.729 CS-ACELP algorithm. Priced at $4,390 with routing, analog voice and voice compression capabilities and a Frame relay trunk, the concentrator will ship in February. It is based on the 860 Power Quick chip from Motorola.

Cisco attributes some of its data/voice/video innovation to Texas Instrument's TMS 320 C54250 MIP DSP chipset, which, Cisco says, has a lot of capacity for advance algorithm at less cost. Doubling DSPs for eight times the compression of public networks was key to enabling new applications and improving voice recognition, Cisco added.

The new software on the IGX voice module helps compress voice signals at one-half to one-eighth the uncompressed rate, enabling bandwidth and cost savings, according to Cisco.

The company also announced new features and capabilities on its Lightstream 1010 multiservice ATM switch, which it says will enable corporate networks to run multiservice applications involving voice, video and data streams. The new products are an outcome of Cisco's acquisitions of StrataCom and Ardent Communications Corp. in 1997. Ardent designs and distributes access equipment for integrating voice video and data on public or private frame relay or ATM networks. Cisco plans follow on announcements in March at CBit.