Acme Packet Net-Net PAC Scales to New Leadership Levels in Performance, Availability and Capacity.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

Spring VON 2004

Booth # 1102

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 2004

Unveils industry's most scalable, feature-rich session border

control solution for large-scale Tier 1 service provider deployments

Acme Packet(TM) today unveiled the Acme Packet Net-Net(TM) PAC, the industry's most scalable, full-featured session border control solution for large-scale Tier 1 service provider deployments, at the Spring 2004 Voice on the Net (VON) show in Santa Clara. The introduction of Net-Net PAC sets new levels for SIP performance, availability and capacity that are three times to sixteen times better than the nearest competing session border controllers.

The Net-Net PAC is a pack of up to nine 1U Net-Net session border controllers that performs as one logical session border controller, all in only 9U of rack space. This new benchmark-setting product scales from two times to eight times that of the current Net-Net Session Director (SD) performance and capacity numbers, giving it another distinct advantage over competing solutions that employ large, un-scalable, chassis-based packaging.

"Acme Packet's session border controllers provide us with a secure method for managing IP traffic across our customer's and Global Crossing's IP networks," said Dennis Morton, vice president of product commercialization at Global Crossing. "As we continue to increase our VoIP traffic volume we will need the Net-Net PAC to scale with our growing network to meet the performance and capacity requirements of our customers."

Acme Packet Net-Net PAC's Performance, Availability, Capacity

Based upon its experience with large customer deployments such as Fusion Communications, Global Crossing, NTT Communications and others, Acme Packet has designed the Net-Net PAC with a strong focus on scalability to deliver the performance, availability and capacity required for large VoIP peering and hosted IP interactive communication service applications.

Performance

-- Up to 900 call set-ups per second (CSPS), equivalent to 3.24

million busy hour call attempts (BHCA)

-- Up to 400 calls per second (CPS) for typical 7 message SIP

call flow including call set-up and tear-down

-- Media latency of less than 15 microseconds

-- Signaling latency of 7-10 milliseconds

Availability

-- Five nines high availability design using active/standby model

-- Media state check-pointing ensures no loss of active calls

-- SIP signaling state check-pointing ensures no loss of call

state required for session handling operations (transfer,

hold, etc.), preserving endpoint registration information and

producing accurate Call Detail Records (CDRs)

-- In-service software and configuration upgrades and Net-Net PAC

expansion/contraction

Capacity

-- 256,000 active simultaneous sessions/calls

-- 1024 VLANs for customer/subscriber segregation including VPN 

support

-- 800K endpoint registrations, 256K hosted NAT traversal 

registrations

-- 16 Gbps throughput with new (2) x 1 Gbps Ethernet interface

module

"With the addition of the Net-Net PAC to its family of session border controllers, Acme Packet has efficiently and successfully scaled its existing platform - realizing up to an eightfold increase in performance and capacity - without sacrificing any of the product's features, such as high availability guarantees," said Joe McGarvey, senior analyst, Current Analysis. "As service providers expand their networks and as VoIP deployments take off, the Net-Net products are on course to meet the new requirements."

With the Net-Net PAC, a service provider can easily grow a single 1U Net-Net SD to a pack of eight, using the Net-Net Session Router (SR) for SIP-based load balancing to ensure optimum session performance and protect against system failure. The pack acts as one single, logical session border controller with a single, unique signaling interface per peering service provider, enterprise customer or business/residential subscriber group. The Net-Net PAC also shares configuration elements - such as VLANS, realms, session agents/groups, routing policy, management - across all of the pack members.

"As VoIP deployments become larger and more successful, service providers increasingly require a session border control solution that can quickly and efficiently scale to keep pace with the increased traffic volume and new customer acquisition," said Andy Ory, president and CEO, Acme Packet. "Our family of session border controllers, which now includes the Net-Net PAC, meets the needs of our service provider customers - both large and small - as they grow their networks to satisfy the new network requirements of VoIP and other hosted IP services deployments."

Acme Packet is showcasing the Net-Net PAC at the Spring 2004 Voice on the Net (VON) show in Santa Clara, CA, March 29-March 31, Booth #1102, http://pulver.com/von/index.html.

About Acme Packet

Acme Packet enables network service providers to deliver premium, interactive communications - voice, video and multimedia sessions - across IP network borders. Our award-winning Net-Net family of session border controllers satisfies critical security, service assurance and law enforcement requirements in wireline, wireless and cable networks. The Net-Net session border controllers are deployed in over 30 production networks worldwide, spanning all border applications - peering, access network-backbone network, and data center - and all protocols - SIP, H.323, and MGCP. For more information, contact us at +1 781.756.6800, or visit us at www.acmepacket.com.