AcceLight Networks Announces the World's First Photonic Service Switch; Photonic Economics Drives Switched Service Demand in the Wavelength Core.

Business/Technology Editors

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 29, 2001

AcceLight Networks Inc. today announced the world's first core Photonic Service Switch - part of its PhotoniX(TM) family that is designed to deliver "photonic economics" in terms of unmatched speed, scalability, simplicity, savings, and service flexibility for integration with the installed long haul transmission infrastructure. The product family includes the PhotoniX Core Switch 540 and the PhotoniX Core Manager.

"AcceLight Networks has taken an interesting approach to solving the management and service delivery problems that carriers face today," said Muayyad Al-Chalabi, director, Core Switching & Routing, with telecommunications industry analyst firm RHK. "By addressing the challenges associated with combining G-MPLS and Optical and Packet Services (TOPS), AcceLight allows carriers to scale their networks and cope with the ever increasing traffic demand." AcceLight's Photonic Burst Switching fabric delivers the massive scalability of optical transmission technology while switching packets, timeslots, and wavelengths in nanoseconds. This removes the electrical and slow optical switching bottlenecks once and for all.

The PhotoniX Core Switch 540 merges a number of key benefits in the intelligent optical core that include:

--Massive Scalability - AcceLight's patented photonic switching fabric enables the delivery of terabit to petabit throughput and scalability through Photonic Burst Switching across the fully redundant multi-chassis system;

--Integrated Service Management - Comprehensive, programmable system to simplify the rapid provisioning, operation, and management of optical networks;

--Service Flexibility - Flexible service provisioning through Generalized MPLS (G-MPLS) provides a suite of multi-layer extensions to meet specific optimization demands on a customer-by-customer basis for service bundling, reliability, speed, and management;

--Revenue Acceleration - Decreased customer provisioning cycles for high speed broadband services, such as Gigabit Ethernet, Guaranteed Bandwidth packet services, and consolidation of legacy ATM and voice circuits; and,

--Service switching at terabit rates - Enables network traffic consolidation of IP, MPLS, SONET/SDH, voice circuits, Private line, OC48/192/768, and emerging wavelength cross connects.

"Photonic economics will fundamentally change the way carriers approach their business by serving as the gateway to an all-optical networked world, allowing service providers to focus on growth and profitability," said Dr. Hyong Kim, founder and CEO, AcceLight Networks. "Our PhotoniX product family is the first to offer the integrated functionality with scalability and operational efficiency that carriers need to cost effectively develop and deliver new high margin services."

AcceLight's product family is scheduled for field testing during Q4 2001, with general availability and full production during the first half 2002.

Based in Pittsburgh, Pa., AcceLight Networks is a privately held new generation optical solutions provider that was founded in 1999 with funding from Menlo Ventures and Venrock Associates. AcceLight Networks' solution forms the cornerstone of the new optical frontier and leads the Photonic Switching Revolution. The company designs Photonic Service Switching solutions to enable the evolution to end-to-end photonic internetworking. AcceLight Networks has assembled a world-class management and engineering team, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pa., with R&D facilities in Ottawa, Canada.

For additional information, please contact AcceLight Networks at 613.596.4804 or visit www.accelight.com.