Amber Networks' ASR2000 Named Most Promising New Technology at SUPERCOMM 2000.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SUPERCOMM 2000

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 7, 2000

SUPERQuest Award Goes to Industry's First Aggregation Service Router

As the Most Promising New Backbone/Edge Equipment in the Industry

Amber Networks' new super-scalable edge router for the Optical Internet, the ASR2000(TM), today has been named the "Most Promising New Technology" in the backbone and edge equipment market space at SUPERCOMM 2000.

The SUPERCOMM judges gave Amber's new class of carrier equipment the coveted SUPERQuest Award for its true carrier-class fault tolerance, its ability to direct multiple service feeds (IP, Frame Relay, ATM, TDM, etc.) onto the Optical Internet, and the industry's highest port and logical subscriber densities. With these unprecedented capabilities, service providers will not only be able to cap their investments in legacy networks, but will also be able to shift all service revenues to the Optical Internet to quickly recoup investments in this next-generation infrastructure.

The third annual SUPERQuest Awards Program had the largest volume of nominees in SUPERCOMM history -- more than 160 entrants in all. Nominees are judged by a group that includes members of CMP Media's tele.com, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the United States Telephone Association. SUPERQuest honors the best-built networks and most promising new technologies introduced at SUPERCOMM each year. Previous SUPERQuest winners include Williams Communications Group and Lucent Technologies.

"We recognize that this award ranks Amber Networks against many of the industry's top players and it's quite an honor to be judged amongst such a prestigious group," said Sam Mathan, CEO, Amber Networks. "By naming the ASR2000 among the most promising new technologies at SUPERCOMM, the SUPERQuest judges have validated the industry's need for an entirely new class of multi-service aggregation router at the service edge of the Optical Internet."

The ASR2000 is a new class of carrier equipment designed to deliver SONET-like resiliency to the network's IP/MPLS service layer. The ASR2000's operating system, Amber's AmbOS(TM), is the first fault-tolerant router OS, ensuring full route state resiliency (without service interruption) for the most popular routing protocols, such as BGP, IS-IS and OSPF. Amber's implementation ensures sub-50 millisecond service healing and non-service affecting upgrades, making the ASR2000 the first Optical Internet edge device to meet the same non-stop requirements as a carrier's traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) equipment.

"Amber is raising the bar for carrier edge products with the ASR2000," said Michael Howard, principal analyst and founder of Infonetics Research. "Amber's SUPERQuest award acknowledges the need for a product which offers PSTN-quality fault tolerance and scalability required by service providers to move traffic and revenue flow from legacy networks onto the Optical Internet. Amber's product is specifically designed to move data traffic directly across the Optical Internet, thus meeting the exploding demand for carrier services at the edge."

The ASR2000 allows carriers to concentrate multi-service access feeds and convert, multiplex, groom and encapsulate this traffic for transport over high-speed IP/Optical backbones. Amber Networks' patented Service Transformer(TM) technology enables service providers to make IP/MPLS a unifying service carriage for TDM private line, Frame Relay, ATM and IP traffic. At the heart of the ASR2000 is Amber's patented Genie(TM) Network Service Processor, which embodies Amber's groundbreaking pipelined processing technology that handles 6.5 million packets per second (mpps) per ASR2000 node, or an astonishing 97.5 mpps per seven-foot rack, giving the ASR2000 aggregation service router more than 25 times the performance of its closest edge competitor.

The router also offers port densities in excess of 10,000 T1s per 7ft telco rack and a logical subscriber count exceeding 240,000 DLCI/PPP connections per 7ft rack.

About Amber Networks

Founded in 1998, Amber Networks is "Shaping the Optical Internet(TM)" by delivering the industry's most advanced carrier-class IP/Optical edge networking systems. Amber's products enable network service providers to rapidly scale their services in ways that significantly boost competitiveness and profitability. Products include the ASR2000, the world's first Aggregation Service Router, and edgeSpan, an Internet-scale element and service management suite. Company headquarters are in Santa Clara. For more information, contact Diane Wilson at 408/845-5556 or visit the Amber Networks Web site at http://www.ambernetworks.com.

Note to Editors: Amber Networks, Service Transformer, edgeSpan, Genie, AmbOS and "Shaping the Optical Internet" are trademarks of Amber Networks Inc.