For network virtualization Cisco touts -- what else? -- the Cat6500

By Phil Hochmuth, NetworkWorld.com, 05/11/06

Cisco this week began a marketing push to sell the Catalyst 6500 switch -- Cisco flagship enterprise platform -- as the key to virtualizing network services. Cisco is tying these capabilities closely to its SONA concept, with hints at new LAN virtualization products this fall.

What Cisco is promoting are a handful of available features in the Catalyst 6500 and IOS, including Generic Route Encapsulation (GRE), Virtual Route Forwarding (VRF-lite) Network Admission Control (NAC) and MPLS.
Cisco is promoting these tools as a way to better segment and deliver corporate network services. Beyond Layer 2 VLANs, Cisco says, GRE, VRF-lite and MPLS can add more security, access control and fine-tuned delivery of services such as VoIP, WLAN access and bandwidth, video and corporate applications.
Cisco is making noise about the virtualization features in the Catalyst 6500 as its competitors are coming out with gear that also offers virtual routing and secure, segmented network domains; Extreme, Nortel and Foundry are among the vendors touting these features in their LAN core products.
In a meeting with Cisco product managers, the vendor also dropped "more-to-come" hints about new products in the area of virtual networking, maybe due out this fall. Network World's read on this: expect to see some sort of blade and management interface software or module for LAN and services virtualization. Cisco users have for a while been able to employ MPLS, GRE and other tools, but it's taken CCIE-level know how to get these services running smoothly. A product or management application that packages these features in easy-to-deploy modules would fall in line with Cisco's past strategies for pushing new, advanced services to the network admin masses.

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