Aggressive expansion of its high-speed data networking service offerings has prompted Qwest

Aggressive expansion of its high-speed data networking service offerings has prompted Qwest Communications International Inc. (Denver, CO) to form agreements with Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, CA) and Ascend Communications Inc. (Alameda, CA). The agreement will enable Qwest to offer remote access virtual private networking (vpn) and frame relay/Asynchronous Transfer Mode (atm) services using the Qwest Macro Capacity Fiber Network. Cisco will provide the 12000 Gigabit Switch Router for the vpn network backbone, the carrier-class AS5800 universal access server for vpn network edge use, and a software platform for the integrated vpn features. Ascend will provide Qwest with carrier-class cbx 500 multiservice atm switches as well as b-stdx 9000 multiservice frame relay switches. Qwest plans to deploy dual OC-48 (2.5-Gbit/sec) backbones with both a native Internet protocol (IP) backbone for IP services and a native atm backbone for frame relay/atm services.