Cisco enhances its access router family

Cisco Systems has rolled out two additions to its 2600 line of access routers that will let users route between 10/100Mbps Ethernet virtual LANs.

The 2600 series routers support Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, token ring and mixed LAN environments. The routers also support multiservice data/voice integration, which allows users to consolidate data, voice and video traffic to reduce costs, enable new business applications and improve network efficiency, Cisco says.

The modularity of the 2600 series lets users add services and capacity as their needs change, protects existing investments and simplifies the deployment of new network services, Cisco claims.

The Cisco 2620 and 2621 access routers are the first in the 2600 line to support 10/100 autosensing Ethernet and VLAN capabilities. They are targeted at branch offices and mid-size businesses.

Cisco also announced a data compression option for the 2600 series that allows customers to reduce recurring WAN costs. Firewall capabilities providing secure access to the Internet or virtual private networks (VPN) were also added.

The Cisco 2620 and 2621 feature one and two autosensing 10/100 Ethernet ports, respectively. Both models also have slots for two WAN interface cards (WIC), one network module and an internal Advanced Integration Module (AIM).

For firewalling, the routers now support the Cisco IOS Firewall feature set software, which includes IP Security tunnelling, Contextbased Access Control, Java blocking, protection from denial-of-service attacks, real-time alerts and audit-trail logging.