Cisco Systems announced significant product additions and enhancements to its metro Ethernet switching portfolio. The announcement includes:
- the introduction of the Cisco Catalyst 3750 Metro Series, a new line of fixed configuration, customer-locate switches that can be used to deliver differentiated metro Ethernet services, such as Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs with service SLAs. The Catalyst 3750 features redundant AC/DC power and flexible software options.
- a new 48-port Mixed-Media Gigabit Ethernet module for the Cisco 7600 Series and Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series. The module features 48 "mix and match" Small Form-factor (SFP) optics to address a full range of media types and distances. In addition, this module features 40 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) switch fabric connections and 9K Jumbo Frame size support and is upgradeable to Distributed Forwarding Capability (DFC3A). Also, new Cisco IOS features such as VLAN Translation and Class of Service (CoS) Mutation allow deployment of Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN service capabilities.
- product enhancements to its Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series switches, including new Cisco IOS 802.1Q tunneling capabilities. This new Cisco IOS enhancement can be combined with the recently announced Cisco IOS MPLS Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) on the Cisco 7600 Series and the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series, enabling service providers to scale their transparent LAN services to support more customers over broader geographic areas.
