"High performance corporate Intranets and Internet access based on multivendor standards
are being implemented today as the next generation of networking needed by many of our
customers," said Lutz Hahne, general manager of IBM's Networking Hardware Division.
"3Com's Fast IP, Cascade's IP Navigator, and IBM's award-winning Multiprotocol Switched
Services, each best-of-breed products, together bring a new dimension to enterprise-wide
switched networks. These products solve today's traffic congestion problems and provide
tomorrow's multimedia and network computing solutions," Mr. Hahne continued. "Quality of
Service and virtual LANs, across the entire enterprise network, will now be possible. IBM's
leadership in providing standards-based products will continue in IP switching with IBM's
ARIS (Aggregate Route-Based IP Switching), which has been submitted to the IETF."
Together, the three companies address a significant portion of the LAN and WAN markets,
making this a natural relationship. 3Com Corporation commands a 40 percent share of the
Ethernet network interface card market worldwide (source: International Data Corporation)
and 46 percent share of the desktop switch market worldwide (source: Dell'Oro Group). 3Com
software runs on more than 40 million desktop computers. Cascade Communications Corp. is
the worldwide Frame Relay market share leader, as reported by Vertical Systems Group, a
leading communications industry research firm. An estimated 70 percent of all corporate data
in the world resides on IBM servers.
Technical Highlights
3Com, Cascade and IBM will deliver the industry's first end-to-end IP solution by
integrating their respective IP solutions using industry standards, specifically: the Next Hop
Resolution Protocol (NHRP) and IETF RFC 1953 for LAN-to-WAN IP switching
integration; and the NHRP, IEEE 802.1Q, and the IEEE 802.1p for LAN-to-LAN IP
switching integration.
IBM and 3Com also announced today that they will offer seamless IP switching in LAN
infrastructures in the form of standards-compliant specialized client software, which resides
in servers and desktop clients. This software will provide enhanced network intelligence about
available paths through the network and will ensure that the fastest path of transmission
through the network is always taken, once appropriate security policies are applied by
devices, such as routers, in the network. |
