Cisco switches prepped for voice
Network World:
San Jose
Next year Cisco will add voice to its LAN
switches, letting customers take advantage
of a new class of applications and save
money by putting voice and data on the
same network.
In the second half of 1999, Cisco will roll out
new versions of its Catalyst 8500, 5000 and
4000 series switches that can handle call
processing and LAN telephony gateway
applications. Customers will be able to set up
distributed call centers, voice-enhanced PC
conferencing systems and customer service
help desks with the new switches, says
Mario Mazzola, senior vice president of
Cisco's Enterprise line of business.
Cisco is not the only internetwork vendor
attacking the LAN telephony market. Rival
3Com recently formed a $100 million joint
venture with telecom giant Siemens (NW,
Dec. 14, page 10).
But while 3Com is relying on voice expertise
from a telecom stalwart, Cisco appears to be
going it alone. Specifically, Cisco has been
bolstering the packet forwarding, priority
queuing and quality-of-service capabilities of
the Catalyst line to reduce latency, delay
and jitter for voice traffic. Cisco is also
enhancing the switches' ability to forward
traffic in real time for video applications, he
says.
The company is also integrating into the
Catalyst line PBX and call processing
technology obtained from its October
acquisition of Selsius Systems, Mazzola says.
"The switch fabric, internal delays and
priorities, and global jitter of the platforms
have been worked out in such a way that all
these platforms will be capable of supporting
call processing-related applications, "
Mazzola says.
Cisco will roll out its voice-enabled Catalyst
switches in phases. Next summer, Cisco will
unveil products for branch offices of 20 to
400 users, he says. The firm will unveil more
scalable platforms for larger enterprises in
2000.
"Our perception is that we will be able to
scale up to 50,000 users," he says.
Adding voice to the Catalyst switches will
open up the $18 billion to $20 billion PBX, call
center and voice messaging market to those
products, Mazzola says.
Reliability is key to making it possible,
Mazzola admits. The jury is still out on
whether packet-switched data
infrastructures can provide the same
reliability that circuit-switched nets have
delivered for decades (NW, July 20, page
27).
Perhaps reliability is the reason users have
only dipped their toes into the voice/data
convergence waters. "Right now, Kodak is
not interested in integrating voice and data
networks onto a single wire," says Eric Pylko,
global systems coordinator at Eastman Kodak
in Rochester, N.Y., a large Cisco Catalyst
switch customer. "We have one or two pilots
going with Cisco 3810s at remote offices."
Cisco MC3810s are multiservice access
concentrators for integration of data, voice
and video onto public or private frame relay,
ATM or leased-line nets.
[Copyright 1998, Network World]
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