Bay last week also introduced two new switches, the Accelar 1000 route switch and the Extranet Access Switch, which support these capabilities. This addition could eventually let customers deploy the Bay devices in a network where bandwidth is controlled and dynamically reassigned from a central directory.
Directories also play a key role in Cisco's policy networking strategy.
Cisco is working with Microsoft on Active Directory, due to ship with Windows NT Server 5.0. As policy networking matures, many experts expect LDAP to play a bigger role in tying together directories and centrally administered policies. Check Point Software last week introduced a new version of its Firewall-1 system that can query LDAP servers for user information. Cap Gemini is turning to CheckPoint's FloodGate software to prioritize traffic for certain user groups connected to its U.S. virtual private network. But that's not enough.