Cisco Systems also sponsors a line of IT Professional certifications for Cisco products.

Sales of the re-branded Cisco product fell below expectations, and Interlink struggled to rebuild its own sales channel.

Mr. Chambers said bookings for Cisco products worldwide surged 55 percent in its fiscal first quarter from a year ago.

The program might also increase the market for Cisco products, company executives said.

This mode is the default shipping mode for Cisco products and enjoys support of all new features and line cards.

For Cisco products that required very high availability, such as the Cisco CRS-1, these limitations were not acceptable.

"I think people will be drinking Jim Beam 50 years from now, and I'm pretty sure people won't be using Cisco products that long," he said.

Growth in Internet-based calling, analysts said, is helping to increase demand for Cisco products.

"Multiple Cisco products are exposed to cross-site scripting issues because they fail to properly sanitize user-supplied input."

Under the new agreement, Ericsson will now supply the Cisco products to end-users worldwide.