Following its technology deal with Olicom A/S, Cisco Systems Inc has released a Token Ring switch aimed at the workgroup switching market. The Catalyst 2600 is the company’s first switch to provide low-cost Token Ring switch ports that can be used for ring segment micro-segmentation or dedicated, full-duplex attachment of file servers and workstations. This is designed to provide increased bandwidth to both servers and end users’ workstations, with lower latency for time-sensitive applications . The Catalyst 2600, based on the IEEE 802.5r standards work, provides dedicated Token Ring station attachment and full-duplex data transmission. This allows for dedicated switch port connections to busy file servers and other high-performance devic es. It can be used in a source-route bridged network environment to collapse ring segments across a high-speed backplane, flattening the number of hops in the bridged network. It can also be attached to a Catalyst 1600 backbone switch, in 32Mbps full-duplex mode, enabling high-speed interconnection capabilities between Catalyst 2600 workgroup switches. For customers that implement collapsed backbone networks using Cisco 7000 series routers, the company says the Catalyst 2600 provides a cost-effective way of micro-segmenting user and server rings. It is managed by Cisco-View. The Catalyst 2600, in its basic configuration of 16 ports, sells for $10,000. Two feature modules are also available – the four-port copper Token Ring and the two-port fiber Token Ring, and each goes for $1,600.
