Cisco offers Internet products

Cisco Systems Inc. has introduced products that address Internet security, the increased demand on Internet servers and connecting Novell Inc. NetWare users to the Internet.

The company is targeting government entities that need secure and high-performance network services, Internet service providers and midsize agencies that need straightforward access to the Internet, said Tony Moraros, product line manager for Cisco Advantage.

The new Cisco Advantage product line includes three product sets: Private Internet Exchange (PIX), an Internet firewall product; Local Director and Distributed Director, a World Wide Web building toolkit; and Internet Junction, a gateway software product for NetWare users.

On the security side, PIX offers firewall security between a company's servers and the Internet. PIX also lets companies keep their private, unregistered Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and connect those addresses through a gateway to public, registered IP addresses.

"PIX can provide a secure, encrypted channel over the Internet between two private Internets," Moraros said.

Local Director and Distributed Director help users build multiple Web sites that appear to the user as a single address, thereby reducing server access delays.

Local Director distributes user requests among multiple Web servers at a site, and Distributed Director spreads the load among servers in geographically dispersed locations to reduce delays in accessing a Web server.

Cisco's Internet Junction gateway software connects PCs on a NetWare local-area network to the Internet without requiring network managers to install TCP/IP networking software on every PC.

Users can download a two-user license of Internet Junction for free from Cisco's home page at http://www.cisco.com.

The new products are a "smart move" by Cisco to expand its market coverage. They signify the company's realization that there is "more to information networking than routing across backbones," said Jamie Zartman, program director for Global Networking Strategies at Meta Group Inc., Westport, Conn.

Cisco Advantage will soon be available on BTG Inc.'s governmentwide Electronic Computer Store contract with the National Institutes of Health. The product line also will be available on the General Services Administration schedule starting April 1.