NERD ON THE STREET

Cisco Systems announced products and promises recently that constitute the third phase of its data, voice and video integration strategy. Cisco's IOS will serve as the delivery vehicle for voice over IP, voice over Frame Relay and voice over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). There will be new gateways for: switching protocols; IP-to-ATM; low-speed access to broadband backbone switching; and circuit switching. Among the products to come are the Cisco 2600 series modular access router for remote branch offices, a new gateway from circuit-to-packet and cell switching. The company also heralded the Cisco Voice Manager, a Java-based management tool for management of the networked voice environment. Cisco's new link for low-speed access to backbone switching is the high density, Universal Switching Module for Cisco's IGX ATM switch. And the new IP-to-ATM gateways include ATM port adapters for the Cisco 7500 and 7200 series of high-end routers. The company's Cisco 2600 and 3600 series routers, MC3810 multi-service access concentrators, and IGX and Lightstream 1010 ATM switches will support the Q.SIG PBX network signalling protocol, ISDN basic rate and primary rate interfaces (BRI and PRI), and public ISDN gateways by the end of this year. Cisco has also boosted its multimedia strategy with the acquisition of Precept Software, of Palo Alto, California. Precepts's IP/TV application can send live or pre-recorded digital video and audio to many users over an IP-based LAN or WAN. More information is available via http://www.cisco.com.

With security in mind, the ATM Forum recently put forth a draft document concerning encryption that includes the new ATM Test Access function specification. This new spec could lead to products that enable users to remotely review streams of ATM voice, video and data cells, which means improved control over ATM performance.