Menlo Park, California-based Cisco Systems Inc has introduced new software, christened Hot Standby Router Technology, to bring ‘fast’ re-routing to the desktop. Cisco claims that the innovation will overcome the limitations that host-based network software imposes on a host’s ability to adapt to changes in network topology. According to the company, the problem that networks have faced is that TCP/IP hosts are usually configured to use a default gateway. This is fine and good until the gateway becomes unavailable because of, say, being down for scheduled maintenance, being struck by a power failure or by lightning or whatever, says Cisco, whereupon the host will be unable to use an alternate path without manual intervention. Hot Standby Router Technology, on the other hand, is said to enable another router transparently to assume the functionality of the router that is temporarily unavailable, reportedly assuring immediate re-routing without any host changes. According to the company, Hot Standby Router Technology will work on Ethernet, Token Ring and FDDI local networks, and can run in conjunction with the OSPF, IS-IS and IGRP routing protocols. The feature is already shipping as a standard part of Cisco’s Internetwork Operating System router software. Cisco routers covered by a Cisco software maintenance agreement can receive an upgrade to the new software release free, says the company.
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