SAN JOSE, CA -- Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO), a leader in networking for the Internet, today announced further expansion of its product portfolio into the metro market with the new Cisco 10720 Internet Router. Coupled with the Cisco 12000 Series Internet Routers and Cisco's resilient packet ring technology, Dynamic Packet Transport (DPT), the Cisco 10720 enables service providers to cost-effectively expand their IP networks into the metro to deliver profitable services, while optimizing existing infrastructure investments and reducing operational complexity. The Cisco 10720 enables service providers to immediately deliver high-speed Internet access, transparent LAN services and profit generating IP services such as IP virtual private networks (VPNs), voice over IP (VoIP), and content-aware networking. The Cisco 10720 Internet Router is the latest addition to Cisco's next generation Internet routing portfolio and the industry's first Internet-class metro IP access edge router. The Cisco 10720 extends the service provider "footprint" into the metro by IP-optimizing optical transport with Cisco's market-leading resilient packet ring technology, DPT, integrating full IP routing and services and delivering intelligent high-speed Ethernet subscriber interfaces for building simple, scalable and reliable metro IP access networks. Currently Cisco has over 13,000 Dynamic Packet Transport ports and over 170 customers worldwide. As the leading Internet backbone in Europe, Ebone has co-operated with Cisco in defining requirements for the new system and has also beta-tested early versions. Accordingly, Ebone thinks the Cisco 10720 will become an important building block in the ever-increasing global IP infrastructure. "It is exciting to see Cisco continue to innovate by extending the service provider edge into the metro enabling providers like Ebone to bring rich IP services to the metro. We see the metro market as the next frontier, a critical area for us in meeting the exploding demand by our customers for delivering scalable Internet services simply, reliably, and cost effectively," said Frode Greisen, vice president and chief Internet officer, Ebone. "Cisco's Metro IP solution allows us to roll out services quickly for just-in-time provisioning. Being able to offer Ethernet-based Internet services allows us to address migration from LAN-to-LAN and frame relay to a higher speed service." Building upon Cisco's heritage in delivering high-end routing solutions to academic research networks throughout the world, the Swedish University Network (SUNET) is poised to deliver a sophisticated solution that will enable of widely dispersed universities to operate more efficiently using the Cisco 10720 Internet Routers to connect all campuses throughout the country. "Cisco's new 10720 Internet Router is the only cost effective access router available today that can connect to our backbone via OC-48/STM-16 DPT to multiple campus networks, allowing us to deliver multi-gigabit access capacity to each university in Sweden," said Hans Wallberg, manager of SUNET. "Our goal was to build a network that is highly reliable and resilient that integrates full IP routing technologies and delivers intelligent Ethernet subscriber interfaces. Only Cisco can help us do this efficiently and simply and, most importantly, cost effectively." For more information visit www.cisco.com