Fujitsu and Cisco Form Strategic Alliance for advanced Internet Protocol networks

December 7th, 2004

Joint Development of Next Generation High-End Routers Will Deliver Improved Quality and Accelerated Feature Development

Fujitsu Limited and Cisco Systems, Inc. announced that they have reached a fundamental agreement to enter into a strategic alliance focusing on routers and switches that will enable service providers and enterprises to build advanced Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Under this collaboration, Fujitsu and Cisco will carry out joint development of high-end routers, plan future cooperation in routing and switching, and collaborate on continuous quality improvement, enhanced support and service.

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Router:
A router is a computer networking device that forwards data packets toward their destinations through a process known as routing. Routing occurs at layer 3 of the OSI seven-layer model.
Routing is most commonly associated with the Internet Protocol, although other less-popular routed protocols remain in use.
In the original 1960s-era of routing, general-purpose computers served as routers. Although general-purpose computers can perform routing, modern high-speed routers are highly specialised computers, generally with extra hardware added to accelerate both common routing functions such as packet forwarding and specialised functions such as IPsec encryption .
Other changes also improve reliability, such as using battery rather than mains power, and using solid-state rather than magnetic storage. Modern routers have thus come to resemble telephone switches, whose technology they are currently converging with and may eventually replace.
The first modern (dedicated, standalone) routers were the Fuzzball routers.

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"Partnering is a strategic imperative for companies such as Cisco and Fujitsu to address service providers' and enterprise customer requirements," said Mike Volpi, senior vice president of Cisco's Routing Technology Group. "Forming a strategic alliance with Fujitsu enables us to combine resources so we can deliver on those requirements with value-added, industry-leading networking solutions."

"Telecommunications service provider networks must support the highest quality service levels and be built upon the best technologies available," said Chiaki Ito, corporate executive vice president, Fujitsu Limited. "Together, Fujitsu and Cisco have unparalleled technology depth, and through the joint development and other collaborative efforts we are embarking upon, we will be able to address service providers' needs with even higher quality systems and innovative solutions."

IP-based networking products such as routers and switches are central elements of future network infrastructures, and the performance and quality of these products will have a major impact on network systems overall. This is especially true for telecommunication service provider networks, where they will play a vital and essential role in determining the service and quality levels that providers can offer.

Through this agreement, the companies will take advantage of Cisco's worldwide leadership in IP technologies and Fujitsu's industry-leading expertise in high-reliability and high-availability technologies to quickly and continually bring to market world-class networking products. The alliance will initially focus on the Japanese market in these key areas:

1. The companies will collaborate on development of Cisco's IOS-XR operating system for multi-terabit routers. This is the first time Cisco has joined with another communications equipment manufacturer in router operating system development. By combining their engineering knowledge, Fujitsu and Cisco will be able to accelerate the development of features critical to Japanese service providers and large enterprises.

2. Fujitsu will offer Fujitsu and Cisco co-branded routing products running IOS-XR to telecommunications service providers in Japan. Capitalizing on the technological expertise it has accumulated in its telecommunications equipment business, Fujitsu will respond to the strict quality demands of Japan's telecommunications service providers by offering networking systems with even higher levels of reliability. Fujitsu plans to release the first co-branded product in the spring of 2005.

3. Fujitsu will offer telecommunications service providers and enterprise users comprehensive network solutions that combine specific networking products with servers and other computing equipment, based on a roadmap of both companies' router and switch product offerings.

4. The companies will work closely together on test and integration processes to ensure carrier class quality requirements are met as well as offering service and support to ensure highest level of customer success.

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Internet Protocol:
The Internet Protocol (IP) is a data-oriented protocol used by source and destination hosts for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork.
Data in an IP internetwork are sent in blocks referred to as packets or datagrams (the terms are basically synonymous in IP). In particular, in IP no setup is needed before a host tries to send packets to a host it has previously not communicated with.
The Internet Protocol provides an unreliable datagram service (also called best effort); i.e. it makes almost no guarantees about the packet. The packet may arrive damaged, it may be out of order (compared to other packets sent between the same hosts), it may be duplicated, or it may be dropped entirely. If the application needs reliability, this is added by the Transport layer.
Packet switches, or internetwork routers, forward IP datagrams across interconnected layer 2 networks. The lack of any delivery guarantees means that the design of packet switches is made much simpler. (Note that if the network does drop, reorder or otherwise damage a lot of packets, the performance seen by the user will be poor, so most network elements do try hard to not do these things - hence the best effort term. However, an occasional error will produce no noticeable effect.)

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