Altiga Proves Multi-Vendor Interoperability for Seamless VPN Deployment; VPN Workshop Marks Significant Development in the VPN Market.

FRANKLIN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 1999--

In an effort to accelerate widespread availability of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Altiga Networks today announced that it successfully completed extensive interoperability tests with twenty vendors, including Cisco, IBM and Microsoft. The Virtual Private Network (VPN) Interoperability Workshop sponsored by Ericsson was held in Santa Barbara May 24-26, 1999. The workshop provided an opportunity for multiple vendors to work side by side to standardize and enhance the deployment of VPN products and services through common product interoperability methods and extensive testing.

This event represents a key milestone in the evolution of the VPN market. Customers often have to decipher over a variety of perplexing product and/or service specifications, technologies and alternative standards, which ultimately leads to confusion in network deployment and growth. With the major vendors working together to assure VPN product and/or service interoperability and adherence to standards, customers are better able to take advantage of emerging technologies with confidence, and know that their investment is protected.

"The key enabler in the explosive growth of VPNs is seamless interoperability between server vendors," said Greg Marcotte, vice president of marketing of Altiga. "Altiga Networks concentrator series was designed to incorporate industry standards and work seamlessly with existing network infrastructures to benefit large scale deployment by enterprise customers and service providers."

This collaborative testing, held over a three day span and headed by top engineering professionals, included forty of the industry's most significant communications companies as well as emerging VPN companies. Altiga engineering professionals completed in-depth testing with more than twenty of the companies' products, including one's from Cisco Systems, Microsoft Corp., 3COM Corp. and IBM. The event enabled engineers to handle actual products and test IPSec session establishment, IKE and key management functionality.

"This testing opportunity is the first step allowing customers to choose and integrate the most robust technologies that will provide the performance and quality required for next-generation applications," said Jeff Wilson, Infonetics Research. "Overall, barriers to deploying VPNs, such as security, lack of standards, unreliable dial-up connection availability, are down from last year, as reflected in our latest VPN study (User Plans for VPNs and Managed Network Services 1999), but interoperability problems between VPN products still has 24% of respondents (of 225) concerned. In addition, we found 76% of respondents feel 'commitment to standards' is critical when choosing a VPN product. This current effort from the industry's VPN vendors to work to improve interoperability can only benefit end users, and thereby propel the overall VPN market forward, faster."

The Altiga VPN Concentrator Series

The Altiga VPN Concentrator Series offers a comprehensive VPN product line, with its C10, C20, and C50 models, specifically focused at addressing bandwidth-intensive broadband connections. It is ideal for enterprise corporations that need to support the largest scale of remote users, from 100 to 5000 concurrent sessions, and remote offices while achieving the highest performance and redundancy. The connections are exemplary of emerging high-performance desktop applications, such as real-time graphics and integrated voice, video and data, as well as the new breed of high-speed remote connections, such as cable and DSL. Available now, pricing ranges from $10,000 to $50,000, depending on configuration.

About Altiga Networks, Inc.

Altiga Networks' VPN concentrator technology is designed for the convergence of dial-up and multi-megabit connectivity, delivering an unprecedented level of performance, scalability and service availability, while minimizing operating costs. Specifically designed for corporations that require secure access for their remote employees, partners and customers via the Internet, the Altiga VPN Concentrator Series harnesses the power of VPN by enabling widespread deployment of remote bandwidth intensive applications. Altiga's product solutions are compatible with DSL and router equipment from leading networking companies, including 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ:COMS), Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU) and Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO). For more information, please call Altiga Networks at (877) 4-Altiga or visit www.altiga.com.