November 10, 2004 London -- Cisco Systems announced that COLT Telecom Group plc is delivering its new pan-European managed Switched Ethernet VPN service built upon Cisco's multiservice optical transport platform. Launched by COLT today as part of its high-performance Ethernet service portfolio, the Switched Ethernet VPN service offers customers a high level of security and service flexibility with "burstable" bandwidth features.
Cisco worked with COLT to define the new virtual private network (VPN) service based on market research of Cisco's customer base. The research showed significant demand for a high-performance service in the 100-Mbit/sec to 5-Gbit/sec range with the ability to allocate additional network resources to accommodate peaks in data traffic. COLT's Switched Ethernet VPN service delivers any-to-any connectivity with high levels of security over dedicated fiber rings for applications requiring high-performance and low-latency links, such as real-time data backup, offsite disaster recovery solutions, and data center consolidation.
COLT's Switched Ethernet VPN service is deployed over Cisco technology using the Cisco ONS 15454 Multiservice Provisioning Platform and Cisco Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology, Cisco MDS 9000 series Multilayer Storage Area Network (SAN) switches, and Cisco Catalyst switches.