Westcon starts shipping latest products in Cisco 2600 product range

Westcon, a South African value-added channel provider of networking technology products, has announced the immediate availability of the latest additions to the Cisco 2600 product range to the African dealer and VAR channel.

The networking systems manufacturer has added two new modular multiservice routers to its flagship platform for small and medium branch offices. The Cisco 2650 and Cisco 2651 routers are designed to support multiple bandwidth-intensive and latency-sensitive applications concurrently, including new-age web and e-business applications, broadband WAN services, and converged voice/data networking infrastructures.

John Hindley, Westcon`s business unit manager for Cisco Systems, points out that the Cisco 2600 family is one of the most popular fast-growing products in Cisco`s portfolio, with more than 500 000 units already shipped, Westcon has contributed over 500 units to this figure. The new models round off the Cisco 2600 family as an integrated solution for the entire range of customer environments, adds Hindley.

Says Hindley: "As part of Cisco`s portfolio of end-to-end networking solutions, the Cisco 2600 Series allows businesses to extend a cost-effective, seamless network infrastructure to the branch office. The Cisco 2600 series supports field-upgradable modular components, allowing customers to easily change network interfaces without upgrading the entire branch office network infrastructure. The AIM slot of the Cisco 2600 platform also protects customers` investments by allowing them to plug in advanced services such as hardware-assisted data compression and, hardware-assisted data encryption. "

The Cisco 2600 series integrates firewall, modems, compression or encryption devices, and other equipment found in branch office wiring closets into a single, compact unit, providing a space-saving solution that can be managed remotely using network management applications such as CiscoWorks and CiscoView.

In addition, the Cisco 2600 products allows network managers to reduce long-distance interoffice calling costs and provides a platform for applications such as integrated messaging and Web-based call centers.

The Cisco 2600 may be deployed in both Voice over IP (VoIP) and Voice over Frame Relay (VoFR) networks using the Voice/Fax module. When used with the new packet voice trunk module, a single Cisco 2600 Series can support 60 simultaneous voice calls as well as routing and other services.

The range meets the needs of multiservice enterprises and their managed service CPE providers by providing a host of reliability features, multiple WAN connections, and the ability to migrate from data- only to voice and data, and also to packet-based voice and data infrastructure.

The Cisco 2650 provides a single auto-sensing 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, while the Cisco 2651 features dual 10/100Mbps ports to support applications such as firewall and intrusion detection.

Both platforms offer increased Flash and DRAM memory support for access control lists, routing tables and dual software-image back-up support for Cisco IOS.