Cisco rolls services into one ball of wax >BY DENISE PAPPALARDO, East Coast Bureau Chief

Networld+Interop '96 this week will see Cisco Systems introduce its Tag Switching protocol that integrates Internet protocol routing and switching onto the vendor's 7500 routers and StrataCom BPX/Axis switches. The protocol is designed to let carriers and ISPs better manage their IP traffic.

When added to a router or switch, Tag Switching lets the device apply a tag to traffic flow based on layer 3 routing protocols, said Andrew Greenfield, director of service provider marketing at Cisco's wide area network switching division (formally StrataCom). The tags are then interpreted and switched based on their sub-net information. This speeds up the process typically associated with routers looking up each IP address.

Though Tag Switching may prove a viable method of combining routing and switching, its 1997 availability and lack of standard approval may cause problems for carriers.

And because the new protocol applies to only two products in Cisco's entire line of switches and routers, it may create problems for ISPs or carriers that want to deploy the technology throughout their networks, said Don Miller, director and principal analyst of networking service for Dataquest, San Jose.

While Cisco is bringing its Tag Switching protocol to the Internet Engineering Task Force for standard approval, one interexchange carrier is concerned about the lack of a formal standard.

"We are a standards-based company," said Chuck Posten, manager of broadband services at WorldCom. "This is not standards-based, and that makes us nervous."

Cisco also is rolling out enhancements to the BPX/Axis switches, including BMX DS-3, OC-3 and OC-12 modules and Tag Switching.

Enhancements to the Cisco 7500 routers include VIP2 distributed switching and buffer memory, route/switch processor 4; Tag Switching and channelized T-3 interface.