Cisco Systems ships product maximizing Webscalability; DistributedDirector product offers...

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 1997--Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) today announced it is shipping DistributedDirector, the first Cisco IOS(TM) software application designed to enable global scalability for all IP-based network services.

DistributedDirector provides

dynamic and transparent IP traffic load distribution between multiple dispersed servers. Using routing table intelligence in the network infrastructure DistributedDirector transparently redirects end-user service requests to the nearest responsive server. As a result, end users benefit from reduced transmissions costs, increased access performance and maximized server availability.

DistributedDirector is complementary to the Cisco Local Director product, which provides the same functions for multiple servers in a single location. As a combined offering, they firmly establish Cisco as the leader in global IP service scaling solutions.

"DistributedDirector represents an important milestone for Cisco since it is the first stand alone non-routing, non-switching Cisco IOS software application," said Alex Mendez, vice president of Cisco IOS software marketing at Cisco. "The delivery of this product further affirms Cisco IOS software as the premier platform enabling network services to enterprise customers as well as Internet service providers. DistributedDirector offers a truly unique solution to global network service scalability challenges."

"We expect Cisco's DistributedDirector to be an integral and strategic component in scaling MSN, The Microsoft Network and our internal networks in 1997," said Arne Josefsberg, director of MSN Network Services at Microsoft Corp. "We are very pleased with DistributedDirector's robust functionality and flexibility as exhibited during our battery of tests, simulating both Internet and intranet environments. One key feature for which we see immediate application is the DistributedDirector's ability to reliably redirect traffic to online servers."

"DistributedDirector provides advanced load redirection capabilities, which we find very useful in handling the high traffic demands of our customers," said Mark Shull, vice president and general manager of Network-Centric Solutions at BBN Planet in Palo Alto, Calif. "As customers move their business applications to the Internet, we view network-intelligent redirection as an essential element in distributing transactions among our nationwide, high-performance application hosting centers."

"We're enthusiastic about the promising capabilities of DistributedDirector," said Steve Strange, director of Information Systems for Infoseek, one of the Internet's leading search and navigation providers located in Santa Clara, Calif. "As one of the most frequently visited sites on the Internet, we're excited about DistributedDirector's potential to help us intelligently distribute millions of requests across topologically dispersed servers, and to provide high quality service to our rapidly expanding user base."

"Using Cisco's DistributedDirector, our Internet Data Center clients can now take advantage of increased server access and availability," said Shandra Sekhar, president of Exodus Communications in San Jose, Calif. "The Exodus mirroring solution, which utilizes the DistributedDirector system, assures our customers that their Internet traffic will be reliably redirected to the optimal destination even in the event of a server or network failure."

"Cisco's DistributedDirector makes it possible for us to deploy our Global Virtual Service (GVS) architecture due to its intelligent redirection decisions and server availability checks," said Pushpendra Mohta, vice president of Internet Services at TCG CERFnet in San Diego, Calif. "Distributed Director provides a crucial element in TCG CERFnet's global fault tolerant content distribution strategy that powers our high performance Web SuperSite architecture. Since it enables transparent distribution of services across geographically dispersed servers, DistributedDirector eliminates traditional geographic single points of failure."

About DistributedDirector

DistributedDirector can act as a Domain Name Service (DNS) caching nameserver or as a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) session redirector, on a per host name basis. When used in DNS caching nameserver mode, DistributedDirector provides transparent service distribution for all IP traffic. In this mode, DistributedDirector returns an IP address of the best server to the client's local DNS, independent of the particular Internet service requested at that IP address.

DistributedDirector maps a host name to several possible IP addresses and uses the intelligence in the network infrastructure to dynamically determine the best IP-address-to-DNS-name binding for a given host name, based on client-to-server topological proximity. DistributedDirector also has the ability to only run HTTP traffic, when used soley in the HTTP mode. In this mode, DistributedDirector masquerades as the requested Web server and returns an HTTP-specific status code to redirect clients' browsers to the topologically nearest Web server.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available at http://www.cisco.com . -0-

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CONTACT: Cisco Systems Inc.

Marcy Schrader, 408/527-2406

maschrad@cisco.com