At CeBIT 2004, Cisco Systems announced a series of integrated security and manageability upgrades for its key Catalyst switching portfolio. The enhancements include a new "smartport" capability across the Catalyst product family aimed at enabling faster and easier configuration of many advanced features, such as QoS, security and availability. Cisco expects the smartports will greatly reduce the time and complexity of advanced feature deployments while achieving implementation consistency across multiple switch devices. The new security features include DHCP snooping , Dynamic ARP Inspection that helps to prevent DoS and man-in-the-middle attacks, and IP source guard, which helps prevent IP address theft. Additionally, Cisco offers its own extensions to 802.1x to provide more granular user-based authentication and network access control.
The Catalyst rollout also includes:
- new Catalyst 6500 software enhancements for several Integrated Advanced Services Modules, including the Content Switching Module, the SSL Services Module, the IPSec VPN Services Module and the Network Analysis Module 1 and 2. These enhancements, enabled with software upgrades, provide additional security, application awareness, and visibility of network traffic.
- a new web-based management tool for the Catalyst 6500 Integrated Service Modules,
- a 48-port SFP fiber-based gigabit Ethernet module,
- an enhancement to the Cisco Supervisor 720,
- a new 10-Slot chassis and Supervisor Engine for the Catalyst 4500,
- 10Gigabit Ethernet uplink capability for the Catalyst 3750
- new 10 Gigabit Ethernet XENPAK optics that support multi-mode and copper interfaces
