Redwood City, California-based Cisco Systems Inc has squeezed ahead of the competition with support for dial-on-demand, a feature that enables routers to establish circuit-switched connections as required. The company says that the capability will become a standard software feature from the end of April and that existing users will be able to upgrade. Those on a maintenance plan get it free, those that aren’t will have to shell out $500. European prices are not available yet. The software relies on the V25bis standard plus extensions devised by Cisco and Ascom AG to communicate with the network attachment devices. But despite the standard being announced only last August, Cisco reckons that it will place calls successfully on not only the public telephone network and Integrated Services Digital Network, but also switched digital services from the likes of AT&T Co, British Telecommunications Plc, France Telecom, MCI Communications Corp and US Sprint. V25bis is implemented in the majority of synchronous modems. A router calls up a switched service whenever it receives a bridged or routed internet packet that must be sent to a destination on the other side of the dial-up line. When transmission is completed the line is automatically dropped. Similar devices are expected from Wellfleet Communications Corp and Proteon Inc before the end of the year. Cisco, as is its wont, has a four-phase plan for the implementation of support for switched circuits, and these announcements bring us to phase two. Phase three will include a native Basic Rate ISDN Interface, designed to improve control of signalling and call set-up. Phase four, planned for the first half of next year, will extend this to Primary Rate 30B+D ISDN interfaces, enabling the router set up simultaneous calls to different locations; there’s still no word on when routers will be able to use nX64 services.
