Press release: Cisco's New LAN Extenders
William Chops
To: everyone-at-cisco:;
Subject: Cisco's New LAN Extenders
Company contact: Agency contacts:
Randall Sutherland William Orrange
Cisco Systems, Inc. Janis Ulevich
(408) 526-8847 Ulevich & Orrange, Inc.
(415) 329-1590
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NetWorld+Interop 94 -- Booth #524
CISCO'S NEW LAN EXTENDERS
MAKE REMOTE ACCESS SIMPLER, MORE AFFORDABLE
ATLANTA, Sept. 12, 1994 -- Cisco Systems has introduced a family of
remote access devices that extends corporate internetworks out to the
smallest, most cost-sensitive sites where ease of use and low price are
most critical.
Cisco's LAN Extenders -- based on a new two-port hardware platform,
the Cisco 1000, plus specialized multilayer switching software -- are
designed for remote offices that generate limited client-server traffic
over the WAN link and require only a single wide-area connection to a
central site. Unlike competitive solutions, Cisco's does not require a
costly high-end router at the central site but lets the LAN Extenders
connect into economical low-end units such as the company's Cisco 2500.
The LAN Extenders come in two fixed-configuration models, each
providing one Ethernet (10BaseT or AUI) port and, for leased-line WAN
communication, one serial port: V.35 on the Cisco 1001, X.21 on the Cisco
1002. At $1,595 they are Cisco's lowest-priced stand-alone remote access
devices.
While its initial implementation is as a LAN Extender, the Cisco
1000 will serve as the platform for other Cisco software technologies such
as Frame Relay and ISDN interfaces.
Completing the LAN Extension Equation for Lowest Overall Cost
Kevin Kennedy, Cisco's director of access products, said, "While
solutions similar to LAN extension have been available for several years,
they have required an expensive, high-end 'host' router at the central
site. This made the total cost of implementing these solutions prohibitive
for smaller users, and the market didn't really take off.
"Cisco's LAN extension is the first implementation to let the
remote device connect to a range of full-fledged routers -- the Cisco 7000
series, 4000 series, even the low-cost Cisco 2500s -- bringing down the
central-site cost as well."
Power It Up and Forget It
"LAN extension can significantly lower costs as the corporate
internetwork is extended to give more users access, whether in Fortune 1000
firms that require links to small outlying sites or smaller companies
connecting a few offices across town," Kennedy said. "With LANs supporting
20 or fewer users, WAN network traffic is low enough to make LAN extension
a viable internetwork technology. And this approach is so simple that all
the user has to do is connect a couple of cables and power it up -- then he
can forget about it because it's managed from somewhere else."
He added that the concept is a natural extension of the
CiscoFusion(TM) architecture, introduced in February as the foundation of a
scalable, secure and easy-to-use enterprise internetwork. CiscoFusion lets
organizations build intelligent switched internetworks with routing at the
center and an array of multilayer switching devices (e.g., ATM switches,
workgroup switches, LAN Extenders) and other routers deployed outward.
How LAN Extension Works
The LAN extension architecture employs a full-function Cisco "host"
router at a central site and LAN Extenders at the remote sites. The host
router makes the actual routing decisions about which types of network
traffic will flow to the remote site, reducing unwanted WAN traffic and
preventing the "broadcast storms" that can occur in fully bridged networks.
At the remote site, the LAN Extender decides only whether to
forward a given packet to the central router or to ignore it. This
decision is facilitated by capability that goes beyond simple layer 2
switching (bridging) to include the layer 3 switching functions of
filtering (based on protocol type) and prioritizing (to give specific
protocol types precedence over others). Because a small remote site does
not generate high levels of WAN traffic, broadcast traffic back to the host
router is not an issue.
Reducing Costs in Four Ways
The use of LAN Extenders reduces costs associated with equipment
purchase, deployment, administration and WAN links. Configuration is
easier than with traditional routers because only access lists and priority
queues need to be configured; LAN Extenders do not have protocol-specific
addresses. Installation, a matter of connecting LAN, WAN and power cables,
is easily done by non-technical remote-site personnel, initial
configuration being downloaded over the WAN from the central site. Because
the LAN Extender's serial and LAN interfaces appear to the central router
as local interfaces on its own ports, all reconfiguration and management
can be done on the central router via Telnet, or via SNMP using CiscoWorks
or other management applications. And protocol filtering reduces traffic,
saving on WAN link costs.
The LAN Extenders support all protocols that run on the connected
LAN, including IP, IPX, AppleTalk, DECnet, Banyan VINES and XNS.
Communication across the WAN link is via PPP. Security is provided by the
central router using Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS) access
lists, and by verifying that the MAC address supplied by the LAN Extender
matches that in a central configuration file.
The LAN Extenders will be available in October. The central router
must run LAN extension host software, which is included in the IP, Desktop
and Enterprise Software sets of Cisco's IOS running on Cisco 2500, 4000 and
7000 series routers.
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