Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced the Cisco Cache Engine, a carrier-class, dedicated Internet appliance designed to scale the Internet infrastructure by eliminating repeated transmission of redundant Web content.

The Cisco Cache Engine stores WWW pages locally, enabling Internet service providers (ISPs) and enterprises to reduce wide area network (WAN) usage costs by decreasing the number of times they must utilize their WAN connections. At the same time, enterprise network users and ISP customers will experience quicker response to Web content requests. This capability will allow ISPs to differentiate their services.

"Cisco is committed to providing products and solutions that enable its customers to maximize their Internet infrastructures," said Christine Hemrick, vice president and general manager of the Internet Appliances and Applications Business Unit at Cisco Systems. "By offering the Cisco Cache Engine, Cisco is providing leading-edge technology that enables customers to improve overall network performance and scale their existing infrastructure to support additional users."

The Cisco Cache Engine is the industry's first highly scalable caching product that requires no client configuration, making it transparent to the user. Up to 32 cache engines can be combined to form a cache farm, providing both highly scalable performance and fault tolerance. A fully configured 32-cache engine farm can support up to 500,000 users at a single point of presence and store approximately 25 million Web pages.

Cisco Cache Engines can also be deployed in a hierarchical fashion, saving bandwidth at Internet backbone Network Access Points (NAPs), service provider Points of Presence (POPs), and enterprise central and remote office locations. Once a Cache Engine is populated by an initial Internet content request, subsequent requests for the same Web page are delivered locally.

Caches are also updated frequently according to the time-sensitivity of their content. The Cisco Web Cache Control Protocol, a new standard feature of Cisco IOS software, redirects traffic to the Cache Engine rather than to the originally requested Web server. The new protocol will be initially supported on Cisco 7200 and 7500 series routers with 10BaseT or 100BaseTX interfaces.

The Cisco Cache Engine, which incorporates Intel's high- performance Pentium processor technology, is easily configured and managed using any standard Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.

The Cisco Cache Engine is a key addition to solutions Cisco currently offers for scaling the Internet, including high-speed scalable routing and switching technologies, and the Cisco LocalDirector and DistributedDirector for Internet server and content load balancing.

Pricing and Availability

The Cisco Cache Engine will be available in September 1997 and is priced at $30,000. Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available at http://www.cisco.com .