AboveNet's ISPCondo Delivers Profitability and New Performance Standards to ISP Industry; AboveNet Announces Alliance with "ISPCondo" Partners 3Com Corporation, Ascend Communications and Aquas at ISPCON'97.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 21, 1997--AboveNet Communications, the San Jose-based provider of co-location and fault tolerant Internet access to hundreds of Bay Area companies, today announced, "ISPCondo," a one-stop value-added network backbone service for ISPs.

ISPCondo is designed to provide ISPs faster, highly reliable and available, cost-effective connections to the Internet.

By outsourcing Internet access connectivity requirements to AboveNet's ISPCondo, Internet Service Providers eliminate many of the problems and most of the expense normally associated with providing Internet access, enabling them to concentrate on adding more customers to their service. With ISPCondo, ISPs can effectively eliminate the costly expense of purchasing multiple access lines to upstream providers and stop worrying about IP addressing, securing an AS number and doing the BGP4 routing.

AboveNet's announcement today at the ISPCON '97 show, host to more than 4,000 Internet Service Provider companies, extends the company's favored co-location service to ISPs. To facilitate the strength of their offering to all ISPs, AboveNet has created strategic alliances as well as vendor relationships that include 3Com Corporation, Ascend Communications, Aquas and many others. AboveNet is introducing ISPCondo today in the booths of several of the participating companies including Cisco, 3Com, Aquas, Aponet, and Warpdrive Network.

"With ISPCondo we are able to create a community of ISPs, technology partners and Internet presence providers who quite literally work together, creating a better Internet; a more reliable Internet that meets all our needs," said Sherman Tuan, CEO of AboveNet.

ISPCondo's scaleable bandwidth options provide ISPs up to 550 Mbps connectivity through multiple Internet providers, 24 hours a day; 7 days a week. AboveNet's super-clean network center provides complete security, fire and disaster prevention, as well as totally redundant environmental controls with reliable 10-hour D.C. battery backup.

ISPs such as Value Serve and got.net? have already signed up with ISP Condo. "We're sold on ISPCondo's extensive network, scaleable bandwidth, monitoring and rerouting tools. When MCI went down recently we weren't affected. It's true that all bandwidth is not created equal," said Mark Ishikawa CEO, ValuServe, the San Jose based corporate Internet Service Provider. "We chose ISP Condo so we don't have to worry about maintaining our own lines, dealing with the telcos, BGP4, and 24 by 7 security," said Jay Campbell, president of got.net?, the Santa Cruz based ISP serving local Bay Area customers since 1994.

"From design and implementation, to on-going administration and maintenance, ISPs have never been offered an easier or more profitable way to create or expand their networks," stated David Rand, chief technology officer at AboveNet. At ISPCON '97 Dave Rand will address the topic "Winning Business Model of the ISPng (next generation) at 4:30 p.m. on Friday August 22 in the Franciscan Room D of the San Francisco Hilton Towers.

ISPCondo Alliance Partners And Vendors

ISPCondo alliance partners and vendors bring a wide variety of service and products to ISP customers, ranging from provisioning telco services to handling DNS to providing complete equipment maintenance services. In addition ISPCondo partners offer other added value services to enhance the offerings of an ISP.

Alliance partners' and vendors' service and products are organized in a special ISPCondo catalog to provide comprehensive easy access to all or part of ISPCondo's network solution. Whether it's peering with other ISPCondo customers, scaleable bandwidth, or simply the most reliable and trouble-free access connection to the Internet, ISPCondo's turn-key solution has already gathered together some of the most prominent Internet technologies and value-added services in the industry under the ISPCondo umbrella service.

Three designated levels of partner and vendor alliances are presented in the catalog to help ISPs select the type of services each partner company offers: ISPCondo's alliance partners and vendors provide those critical products and services that cannot be supplied by ISPs, such as routers or telco provisioning. These partners and vendors include Cisco, 3Com Corporation, Ascend Communications SuperNews, PacBell and MFS.

ISPCondo's Service Partners provide critical services that may be implemented by the ISPs themselves or by a third party,such as DNS, news, and email. Service partners provide support, implementation, administration, maintenance, and consulting services and include companies such as BRG, Net+Effects and Secondary Network Services. ISPCondo Third Party Resource Partners provide non-critical functions that add significant value to the ISPs existing services such as, web hosting, e-commerce, streaming technologies, wireless and monitoring, which are provided by such AboveNet partner companies as Aquas,Warp Drive, BlueCoast Software and Bay Area Gold.

AboveNet as Internet Traffic Cop - Proprietary Bandwidth Management Tools

In addition, AboveNet's proprietary management tools provide ISPCondo customers complete monitoring and management of bandwidth usage and equipment performance in real-time. The suite includes ASAP, Asymmetrical Allocation of Packets, which manages AboveNet's flow of data packets traveling over its networks to insure the highest level of clean packet flow. The company also offers Pro-Active Bandwidth Monitoring and is the only access provider who displays its internal and external network connectivity status to the public around the clock.

AboveNet's proprietary EtherValve technology offers instantly scaleable bandwidth up to 100Mbps to manage the flow of traffic over customers equipment. This unique metering/measurement system means customers pay for only the amount of bandwidth used. Proactive Equipment and Server Probe is AboveNet's tool set that provides proactive customer notification of an equipment problem through email or pager with remote automatic reboot.

AboveNet at ISPCON '97

AboveNet will host ISP prospects and industry influencers at a variety of events during the conference being held here today through August 23 at the San Francisco Hilton. Hospitality Suites are at 6:00 on Thurs 21 and Friday the 22nd.

About the Partners and Vendors

3Com Corporation enables individuals and organizations worldwide to communicate and share information and resources at anytime from anywhere. As one of the world's preeminent suppliers of data, voice and video communications technology, 3Com has delivered networking solutions to more than 100 million customers worldwide. For further information, visit 3Com's World Wide Web site at http://www.3com.com .

Ascend Communications, Inc. develops, manufactures and sells wide area networking solutions for telecommunications carriers, Internet service providers and corporate customers worldwide. Ascend's products are used by some 2,000 ISPs around the globe. For more information about Ascend and its products, please visit the Ascend web site at http://www.ascend.com , or e-mail [e-mail] . Ascend is headquartered at One Ascend Plaza , 1701 Harbor Bay Parkway,Alameda CA 94502. Phone 800/ASCEND4; Fax [phone].

Aquas, Inc., a privately held Sunnyvale, California company, has provided networking services and products since 1995. They specialize in the remote monitoring and analysis of online business processes. Aquas has recently introduced Bazaar Analyzer Pro/vider, the industry's first web analysis tool specifically designed to increase an ISP's revenues and lower their expense of providing analysis services to their customers. They offer attractive ISP resell and service model programs. Aquas' products are sold worldwide online and through selected VARs, System Integrators, and Commercial Web Hosts. Further information about the company and its products can be found on its website, http://www.aquas.com .

About AboveNet

AboveNet provides non-stop, non-congested bandwidth and connectivity to the Internet for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), large commercial websites and growing numbers of entry-level "Internet-centric" businesses and their customers. The facility, based in San Jose, California, is located one block from MAE West a major Internet access point, servicing more than 12% of Northern California's Internet traffic. AboveNet's network includes connections to every major Internet provider including MCI, Sprint, UUNET, Goodnet, Priorinet, as well as major network access points such as MAE West, MAE East, Ameritech, NAP, PAIX, (DIX), PACNAP, and NASA Ames in addition to peering with 93 other service providers throughout the world.

AboveNet, with its proprietary technologies including EtherValve and A.S.A.P., provides scaleable and guaranteed bandwidth from 256 Kbps to 100 Mbps through channelized Ethernet, real-time monitoring, the A.S.A.P. routing service and its proactive probe remote management procedures.

AboveNet's growing metropolis of bandwidth related products and services is creating the infrastructure for Internet 2, "the-net-above-the-net" to provide a consistently reliable super information highway for business and commerce into the 21st century.

Further information on AboveNet can be found at www.above.net . -0-

Note to Editors: Asymmetric Allocation of Packets, (A.S.A.P.) and EtherValve are registered service marks of AboveNet Communications.

CONTACT: Complete Communications

Dianne Douglas, 415/584-4906

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AboveNet Communications

Chuck Scifers, 408/367-6693

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