Santa Clara, California-based Cisco Systems Inc has announced the Catalyst 5000, a modular switch said to bring switching, routing and virtual local area network capabilities together in one system. The switch integrates routing and switching, using the Cisco Internetworking Operating System, to facilitate communications across different virtual local area networks, and is said to enable up to 1,024 switched virtual local area networks to be handled without switching performance degradation. The offering also features multi-layer switching with the company’s Internetworking Operating System, ensuring network security through fire walls and packet filtering, while enabling users to route, manage and control sensitive traffic logically. The Catalyst 5000 has five slots, says Cisco. A supervisory Engine Module controls access to the switching backplane, which can then switch more than 1m packets per second. The module supports local and remote network management and two Fast Ethernet ports, which can be used for connection to a local server or cascading of other Catalyst 5000s, says the company. The remaining slots in the chassis can be used for a mix-and-match of hot-swappable switching modules, adds the firm. Interfaces supported by the system include switched Ethernet, 100Base-T, Token Ring, 100VG-AnyLAN, Asynchronous Transfer Mode and Fibre Distributed Data Interface. On the traffic management side, the product is said to support extensive input buffers across its switching modules. These function in conjunction with buffer management software, eliminating packet loss during peak traffic periods, says Cisco. Multiple levels of data prioritisation are also supported, with each interface separately user-configurable as high or low priority, says Cisco. In addition, the switch supports RFC 1271-compliant remote monitoring across all ports, enabling users to manage, administer and control traffic monitoring centrally for all switched local networks simultaneously, says the company. The chassis will ship for $6,250, with the Supervisory Engine Module coming in for $8,745, and the 24-port Switched Ethernet Module for $12,500. All will be available in June. The 12-port Switched Fast Ethernet Module, Asynchronous Mode local area network emulation module and FDDI Switching Module will ship in July, all priced at $12,500. The Token Ring Switching Module will be out in the first quarter next year, with pricing announced nearer the time.