Astral Point ON 5000 Optical Services Node Breaks SONET Barrier; Accommodates Explosive, Unpredictable Bandwidth Needs in Transport Networks.

Business/Technology Editors

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 2000

Product's Revolutionary "Self-Healing Mesh" Enables SONET-quality

Protection without Ring Infrastructures

Astral Point Communications, a pioneer in optical networking and recently named a Forbes Magazine `Young Gun,' today announced its first product, the ON 5000 Optical Services Node. ON 5000 uses the company's patent-pending "Self-Healing Mesh" algorithm, which helps carriers overcome the barriers to fast, easy provisioning in metropolitan areas by enabling first-ever SONET-quality protection and restoration capability in mesh networks.

"The Self-Healing Mesh algorithm gives the ON 5000 an innovation that meets service provider needs," said Michael Howard, principal analyst and founder, Infonetics Research. "It satisfies two major market requirements: service providers get the protection and restoration capability of SONET, as well as the freedom and flexibility of mesh networks in a single, streamlined platform."

The Power of the Self-Healing Mesh

ON 5000's Self-Healing Mesh algorithm effectively breaks the costly, difficult-to-manage SONET "chain of rings." It does this by enabling SONET-quality protection and restoration capabilities in the more flexible mesh topologies of today's data networks. This enables carriers to maximize fiber efficiency in metropolitan networks by offering different Protection Classes of Service. For example, carriers can designate protection guaranteed at 100 percent, choose a lower

Quality of Service class or smaller bandwidth allocation, or opt for no protection at all. Unprotected services use the idle protection bandwidth of other users and are pre-emptable in fiber failures.

"Carriers are currently building the next generation network infrastructure, and fast provisioning, flexible network scalability, and "pay as you grow" capacity are going to differentiate the winners from the losers," said Paul Johnson, Managing Director, Robertson Stephens. "Astral Point's innovation in these areas with the ON 5000 will be instrumental in rebuilding the transport network infrastructure and ensuring the Company's continued growth and success."

"By including a variety of important network elements in a single platform with a small footprint, Astral Point's ON 5000 is a cost-effective and compelling offering for carriers," said Rick Malone, principal, Vertical Systems Group. "With ON 5000 carriers can reduce or replace costly systems, including SONET A/D, Optical A/D, stand-alone DCS systems and ATM equipment."

Many Functions in One Platform

The optical networking functions within ON 5000 combine the functions of several key carrier network elements in a single modular platform. Specifically, ON 5000 integrates SONET protection, frame and cell switching, Optical ADM and the world's first network-wide, distributed DCS in a single, easy-to-deploy package. ON 5000 will enable carriers to provide leased line services with the full functionality of a 3:1:0 DCS (an industry first), to build scalable Integrated Access Devices (IADs) and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) deployments and to offer distributed LAN services from a single platform.

By integrating DCS functionality, ON 5000 helps carriers reduce the number of costly, stand-alone DCS systems in the network. Distributing DCS functionality provides greater flexibility. Grooming is done at the network edge and only the bandwidth actually being used need be transported across the network. In addition, carriers are afforded testability to the network edge - a feature not supported in current backhaul DCS infrastructures.

"The ON 5000 brings together our extensive industry experience and patented technologies to enable carriers to do what they have never been able to do before -- rapidly and efficiently respond to skyrocketing bandwidth requirements," said Raj Shanmugaraj, Astral Point founder and CEO. "ON 5000 greatly improves provisioning speed, reduces provisioning costs, scales to support huge networks - and, finally, enables carriers to generate significant new revenues."

ON 5000 also brings the power of DWDM technology to the metro area in a cost-effective, efficient manner and enables it to be deployed on SONET rings. This not only relieves span congestion by increasing bandwidth, but also lowers overall network costs by making unilateral DWDM deployments unnecessary. By eliminating the need for full DWDM build-out at network inception, ON 5000 enables carriers to adopt a "pay as you grow" model for DWDM deployment. ON 5000 also maximizes DWDM efficiency by directly mapping service bandwidth to wavelengths.

Coexists with SONET Today, Provides Easy Migration from SONET Tomorrow

ON 5000 not only provides easy migration from today's metropolitan SONET infrastructures to the metropolitan optical networks of tomorrow, but also can coexist and be deployed in current SONET rings. This provides a basis for building out optical mesh networks and offers immediate fiber span relief by provisioning wavelengths for increased bandwidth capacity.

Optical Services Architecture

ON 5000 is built on the Astral Point Optical Services Architecture(TM) (OSA), a fully distributed, mesh network topology discovery and bandwidth-management system. OSA facilitates the build-out of scalable (upwards of several hundred nodes), easy-to-provision metropolitan transport networks.

The mesh topology of the OSA is more flexible and easier to configure and expand than SONET ring architectures. For example, adding additional ON 5000 nodes adds bandwidth capacity to the network. In contrast, adding additional nodes to SONET rings creates more contention for available bandwidth, which remains fixed. The OSA also provides for improved fiber efficiency in that it eliminates the need for complete duplicate for protection throughout the network. This allows carriers using the ON 5000 to deliver bandwidth based on customer and facility availability and to flexibly add incremental services when and where needed.

Provisioning is 10 Times Faster

ON 5000 uses Astral Point's Optical Network Management System (ONMS) which enables carriers to configure network services through an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI). The ONMS provides a view of every node and connection across the entire network. This saves time and reduces operating costs by enabling `point-and-click,' end-to-end service provisioning. In fact, Astral Point reduces provisioning time to one tenth that of standard SONET provisioning.

The ONMS is Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) compliant, so carriers can easily integrate it into their existing OSS operating systems. Astral Point also provides Java-based web access for remote users.

Pricing and Availability

ON 5000 Optical Services Node is now in beta with Advanced TelCom Group (see companion press release for more information). It will begin shipping for general availability in Q2 2000. ON 5000 is priced from $30,000 to $250,000 depending on configuration.

About Astral Point

Privately held and headquartered in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Astral Point Communications is a pioneer of optical networking equipment for the carrier market. The company has developed a new generation of optical access transmission systems based on its patent-pending Optical Services Architecture(TM). These systems enable carriers to provide profitable, network-based services and efficiently aggregate traffic from low-speed networks to high-speed optical networks. Additional information can be found at www.astralpoint.com.