BUSINESS WIRE

October 28, 2002; McLean, Virginia

Isocore today announced the opening of the MPLS 2002 International Conference, which will provide a forum for leading MPLS vendors, test equipment manufacturers, and premier ISPs to showcase next generation MPLS products and services. The conference is sponsored by Alcatel, Avici Systems, Cisco Systems, Cosine Communications, Extreme Networks, Ixia, Juniper Networks, Laurel Networks, Lucent Technologies, Nettest, NEC, Nortel Networks, Redback Networks, Spirent Communications, and other leading network equipment suppliers. MPLS 2002 is taking place in Washington DC.

The conference includes two full days of technical sessions covering topics such as MPLS deployment, protection and recovery, Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs, internetworking issues, network management, network security, traffic engineering, and GMPLS/optical networks. During these two days sponsors will be exhibiting their latest MPLS products. The conference will be followed by the 3rd Public Interoperability Demonstration which will take place at Isocore's state-of-the-art Internetworking Lab facility in McLean, Virginia.

A sampling of sponsors' products exhibited at MPLS 2002 includes the Cisco MPLS Bandwidth Protection solution combining a network architecture that uses MPLS Traffic Engineering Fast Reroute and an offline application called Tunnel Builder Pro. Cosine Communications' IPSX 3500 exhibited at MPLS 2002 is a carrier-class IP service switch that incorporates a fully distributed and virtualized architecture designed to deliver computationally-intense IP services such as VPNs and managed firewalls. Juniper Networks' family of products exhibited utilize advanced packet processors to enable customers to offer services ranging from best-effort Internet to guaranteed delivery of rich media, video and voice services at full wire speed. Avici Systems is exhibiting its TSR and SSR Internet router products that enable superior scalability, reliability and network availability, while lowering the total cost of building and operating their networks.

The Type-X core router exhibited at MPLS 2002 is of special interest due to its joint development by a service provider and equipment vendor, namely, NTT and NEC. Type-X is a high-speed core router with various carrier-grade features such as full IP/MPLS DiffServ classes, ultra-high reliability represented by non-stop software/firmware upgrading, no-loss system switchover/failover functions, and full wire-rate forwarding over IPv4/IPv6 dual stack.

Laurel Networks is showcasing their ST200 Service Edge Router that allows evolution of carrier architectures from multiple data networks to a single packet-switched architecture. Lucent Technologies' Springtide 7000 IP service switch router gives service providers the ability to customize VPN offerings to the needs of each customer while optimizing the use of system resources for the virtual-router based BGP/MPLS VPNs. Nortel Networks is demonstrating the ease of adding new sites and providing secure remote access to users to an RFC 2547 IP-VPN with their Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Node (BSN). Redback Networks is exhibiting their SmartEdge 800 Router that is targeted at providing IP dedicated access services, Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs, as well as core applications with focus on high availability and flexibility.

On the test equipment side, Ixia is highlighting LDP, RSVP-TE, Layer 2 VPN per Draft Martini and Layer 3 VPN per RFC 2547bis protocol emulation via their traffic generator/analyzer Ixia 1600T with 10/100/1000/ 10Gb Ethernet and OC - 3c, 12c, 48c and 192c SONET interfaces. NetTest is participating with its Network Emulator that provides real IP/MPLS/GMPLS network emulation with the ability to integrate multi-stream data traffic generation and QoS measurement. Spirent Communications is exhibiting their Martini Conformance Test Suite which provides Martini frame encapsulation/de-encapsulation functional, performance, and conformance testing.

For more information about Isocore's Internetworking Lab, MPLS 2002, and next year's MPLS 2003 conference please visit http://www.isocore.com.

Media Contact:
Vincent Dean (703) 556-4939 or vdean@isocore.com