Cisco Systems has introduced two new products designed to blow away the network traffic: the Catalyst 6500 Series VSS (virtual switching system) 1440 and the Catalyst 4500 E-Series. Though the devices belong to the same family, they are aimed at different markets and consequently have distinct features.

The Catalyst 6500 Series Virtual Switching System 1440 is working in a tight relationship with a software engine which allows virtualization of the switching hardware - the Virtual Switching Supervisor Engine 720 with 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Catalyst switches to support virtualization give a single scaling system with a dazzling capacity of 1.44 Terabits per second. The approach not only increases the network speeds and access times, but also facilitates the network management, as switches can share a single routing instance as well as a single IP address.

The Virtual Switching System proves itself useful when the active component of a network fails. The amount of time necessary for the passive component to take over the network activity and stabilize the traffic ranges from 20 to 40 minutes. If combined, the two network components can interchange in about a few seconds, fast enough to suppress any inconvenience generated by a traffic interruption.

Moreover, Cisco has announced that "the Catalyst 6500 VSS 1440 delivers deterministic, subsecond Layer 2 link recovery through interchassis stateful failovers and the predictable resilience of multichassis Etherchannel technology".

A new feature introduced in the 6500 VSS 1440, called Cisco Smart Call Home service, provides permanent monitoring of the system. Upon failure, the service generates support requests and automatically sends them to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center.

The second product, Cisco Catalyst 4500 E is designed for small to medium offices and lacks the virtualization feature. However, the advantages of using this new family of network components are obvious, since it delivers a speed of 320 Gigabytes per second in a centralized and flexible architecture, which makes it the perfect candidate for intensive traffic networks, such as voice-over-IP services, high definition television and data centers. The Cisco CenterFlex technology allows port-level hardware resource tuning for all the services that enable Unified Communications.

The devices are already available on the specialized market with prices that range from $1,649 (16-port switch) to $11,300.