Adtech Licenses Telcordia Frame Relay Test Suites; Solution Addresses ADTRAN's Customer Standards.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SUPERCOMM 2000

Booth 6261

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 6, 2000

To help frame relay network service providers and equipment manufacturers conform to domestic and international standards and Frame Relay Forum Implementation Agreements, Adtech Inc., a SPIRENT Company, today announced a new offering that utilizes Telcordia(TM) Frame Relay Conformance Test Suites with Adtech's award-winning AX/4000 Broadband Test System.

"The combination of the Telcordia Frame Relay Conformance Test Suites and Adtech's AX/4000 Broadband Test System will help R&D engineers quickly validate, debug and optimize their Frame Relay equipment while verifying full conformance with existing standards," said Alan Sguigna, Adtech's vice president of marketing. "The availability of the Telcordia suites on the AX/4000 Broadband Test System will provide customers with flexibility and cost-efficiencies from running both conformance and performance testing from the same platform."

Research conducted by Vertical Systems Group in 1999 indicated that total worldwide revenue for frame relay services and equipment combined is projected to rise to $17.6 billion worldwide by 2002, up from $8.5 billion in 1998. In 1999, the number of billable public frame relay subscriber ports surpassed one million and is projected to double by 2002. Today, carriers provide more than 30,000 enterprise customers with Frame Relay services supporting applications ranging from IP and voice to video and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

"Frame Relay service is a cost-effective solution for our enterprise customers so just about every WAN access device that we make has a Frame Relay engine in it," said Chuck Rehage, lead Product Qualification Engineer for ADTRAN, Inc. "Frame Relay/ATM Interworking Test Suites from Adtech and Telcordia enable us to validate both our existing Frame Relay devices and accelerate our expansion into ATM. The Telcordia piece enables us to conformance test our products according to our customers' high standards."

At the core of Telcordia test suites are automated Frame Relay/ATM PVC Interworking Test Suites for service interworking conformance and network interworking conformance.

It also includes the PVC Core Aspects Test Suite and Status Signaling Test Suites with support for ITU, ANSI and LMI. Telcordia also will provide established test plans and core test suite software for integration with Adtech's AX/4000 Broadband Test System.

"Telcordia Frame Relay Conformance Test Suites were designed to help reduce time-to-market by providing consistent, high-quality, off-the-shelf testing standards," said Raghavan Kalkunte, director of ATM Broadband Technologies at Telcordia. "The combination of Adtech's broadband performance capabilities and Telcordia carrier-grade, automated conformance test suites provides the industry with a one-stop Frame Relay test solution."

Each test suite provides a series of test cases for specific Frame Relay standards. Users can set up Frame Relay Test Suites with minimal report detail to quickly identify potential areas of nonconformance. Test cases that fail can be re-tested with a higher level of detail for complete analysis. In addition to adhering to Frame Relay Forum Implementation Agreements, enhanced standards are included based on Telcordia conformance specifications.

Telcordia has more than 10 years of Frame Relay testing experience and has drawn upon this expertise to create solid, field proven test suites. Telcordia testing of Frame Relay equipment from most carrier class switch manufacturers has contributed to the stability of Frame Relay and Frame Relay to ATM Interworking services.

Adtech currently markets a broad range of ATM test suites under license from Telcordia. The ATM test suites consist of an SSCOP test, ATM layer tests, UNI signalling tests, and PNNI signalling and routing tests. These advanced test suites run on the company's AX/4000 Broadband Test System.

Availability

The Telcordia Frame Relay Conformance Test Suites are available July 2000.

About Adtech, Inc.

Adtech, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of broadband test systems and data link simulation equipment. Its AX/4000 Broadband Test System was named 1999's "Best of the Best" by InternetWeek magazine. Located in Honolulu, the company currently employs approximately 235 people, including 80 electronics and software engineers, and markets its products in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. The company also has regional offices in California, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Texas and the United Kingdom. Adtech is a SPIRENT Company. For more information about Adtech, go to http://www.adtech-inc.com.

About SPIRENT Communications

SPIRENT Communications combines the resources of five leading test and measurement companies including Adtech, DLS TestWorks, GSS, Netcom Systems and TAS, to provide customers with full-breadth of comprehensive and integrated tests. SPIRENT Communications' solutions are indispensable to developers and evaluators of next-generation Internet and communications technologies. SPIRENT plc (formerly Bowthorpe plc) owns all SPIRENT Communications companies. For more information please visit the SPIRENT Communications website at www.spirentcommunications.com.

SPIRENT Communications was recently named as the winner of the Best of Show Award at NetWorld+Interop 2000 in the Performance Test and Measurement Category for its new TeraMetrics(TM) system from Netcom Systems. TeraMetrics for Netcom's SmartBits products is the first open test platform to allow integration of third party test applications. Adtech claimed one of the two runner-up positions in the same category for their new OC-192c Test Solutions which offers a 10 Gbps performance capability.

About Telcordia Technologies

Telcordia Technologies, Inc., an SAIC company, is one of the world's largest providers of operations support systems, network software and consulting and engineering services to the telecommunications industry. The Telcordia software organization, comprised of Operations Support Systems and Service and Business Management Systems, has been ISO 9001-certified and has been assessed at Level 5, the highest level of the Capability Maturity Model(R), an industry standard for measuring software development processes that was developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. A leader in the development of Next Generation Network technologies, Telcordia employs more than 6,000 professionals and has revenues of more than $1.2 billion. Telcordia (www.telcordia.com) is headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey, US with offices throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America and Asia Pacific.