Menlo Park, California-based Cisco Systems Inc is to resell AT&T Co’s UniverCell 4×4 Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching technology from mid-1994. The switch will be used by Cisco to consolidate traffic from routers to create collapsed Asynchronous Transfer Mode backbone networks. According to the company, Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching will be offered as part of a complete router cluster offering conceptually similar to a DEC VAX cluster for the campus or building core network. The switch will be released in conjunction with an Asynchronous Transfer Mode Interface Processor for the Cisco 7000 range of high-end routers. Cisco corporate marketing manager Jeff Paine said the tie-up with AT&T made sense, as it was not viable for the company to develop its own Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching technology, both in terms of the level of investment required and the time it would take to deliver product to market. AT&T has the switch that fits our low-end performance requirements, and a history of Asynchronous Transfer Mode co-operation with us, so the move was a natural one, says Paine. He also intimated that AT&T’s NCR Corp unit and Cisco will consider integrating each other’s technology into their respective products, but declined to go into details. Moreover, he added that this was just the first of a number of reseller announcements that the firm will be making in this area.
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