Atrica Enriches Carrier Ethernet Systems with Industry-Leading Carrier-Class Service Capabilities.

CHICAGO & SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Release 3.5 Incorporates the Industry's First VPLS-TE Capability; Expands Product Line with Ethernet Demarcation Devices

Atrica(TM), the Carrier Ethernet Company(TM), today announced a major new hardware and software release for its industry-leading Carrier Ethernet solutions. Release 3.5 of Atrica's Carrier Ethernet Systems introduces a comprehensive set of functionality enhancements -- including the industry's first VPLS-TE capability, enriched service provisioning and management capabilities on its ASPEN network management platform, and an expanded Atrica product family with Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet Demarcation Devices (the A-100 and A-200).

Building upon Atrica's position as the first vendor to combine the numerous benefits of Ethernet technology -- including its low-cost, proven scalability, ease of management, and ubiquity in the enterprise market -- with innovations in traffic engineering/management and optical switching to meet the stringent demands of next-generation transport networks, Release 3.5 allows carriers to deliver a more comprehensive set of Ethernet services for business customers as well as the ultimate broadband triple play services experience to their residential customers over a single universal transport network. Enhancements in Release 3.5 complement the existing feature set in Atrica's Carrier Ethernet platform, including guaranteed SLAs, sub-50ms network-wide resiliency, TDM traffic support, and point-and-click, centralized OAM&P.

Among Release 3.5's major enhancements are:

The Industry's First VPLS-TE Capability

Release 3.5 launches a new age of Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS), with its revolutionary Virtual Private LAN Service with Traffic Engineering (VPLS-TE) capability. This important industry development adds carrier-class traffic engineering attributes to basic L2 Ethernet-based VPN capabilities to deliver carrier-class L2 VPN traffic engineered service. A powerful solution for multi-site any-to-any connectivity, Atrica's new VPLS-TE services enable service providers to set and tune any specific bandwidth per each end user site, while utilizing guaranteed, pre-provisioned -- yet flexibly controlled -- core bandwidth resources. The flexibly controlled resources are enabled by Atrica's innovative 'bi-directional traffic conditioning' technology. This advancement allows carriers to develop, market, and support new revenue-generating VPLS service models to meet their customers' growing demands for flexible LAN-to-LAN connectivity for real-time multimedia services such as voice and video applications.

Basic L2 Ethernet-based VPNs, which are being deployed using a standard VPLS-based solution defined by the IETF, are best effort services that don't allow carriers to guarantee Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or Quality of Service (QoS). These VPNs specify only full mesh, any-to-any connectivity, offering little to no flexibility in connectivity models. In contrast, Atrica's bandwidth-conditioned VPLS-TE delivers guaranteed SLAs and hard QoS with sub-50ms service protection and is user-configurable, based on different traffic patterns. This flexible connectivity model allows a carrier to define how much bandwidth it wants to reserve for the core, and how much should be reserved for specific VPNs. This can significantly improve bandwidth optimization and support carrier's own unique revenue models.

The bandwidth-guaranteed, flexible VPLS-TE service offered by Atrica's VPLS-TE capability incorporates ingress and egress policing at every point and direction, operator-configurable ingress and egress bandwidth, and operator-configurable core bandwidth. Its broadcast policing capability allows carriers to control broadcast traffic, further optimizing the performance of the network.

Enhanced ASPEN Functionality

In Release 3.5, Atrica introduces enhanced functionality for ASPEN(TM), Atrica's Service Platform for Ethernet Networks. Using a multi-layered modular architecture, ASPEN supports large, dynamic, carrier-class networks with comprehensive functionality and point-and-click centralized service provisioning and management capabilities. The major new features in Release 3.5 for ASPEN include service management for VPLS services based on VPLS-TE and the ASPEN Service Provisioning Planning Tool (SPPT).

The ASPEN SPPT is a platform designed to help service providers simplify inputs to the network planning and capacity planning processes, and to help service provider product development and network planning teams to simplify the productization of new services and new service features.

The ASPEN SPPT offers service providers the ability to plan and simulate new services prior to their introduction and/or prior to the expansion of their network. The ASPEN SPPT is typically used in an offline mode. With it, carriers can replicate the existing deployed network topology or a new network topology for testing "what if" scenarios. They can also create a number of new services and analyze the impact of introducing those services in the network. With the ASPEN SPPT, carriers can modify and simulate different device topology layouts and import existing topology networks.

OC3/STM-1 Grooming

In release 3.5, Atrica's TDM integration with Circuit Emulation Services over Ethernet adds OC-3/STM-1 to DS1/E1 grooming over the Ethernet network. This unique enhancement enables service providers to connect customer equipment such as PBXs or routers to the metro Ethernet network using multiple T1/E1 connections from multiple sites in the network. It allows them to groom these connections into a single OC-3/STM-1 service handoff at the central office switch or router. This allows a service provider to cost-effectively aggregate TDM and data traffic from multiple subscriber sites into a main POP/CO over a common Ethernet infrastructure.

The OC-3/STM-1 grooming capability includes advanced protection mechanisms allowing for 50ms protection against any failures in the network. The grooming feature also delivers 1+1 protection of the OC-3/STM-1 equipment by allowing dual redundant OC-3/STM-1 interfaces to be deployed. This end-to-end protection, combined with full performance monitoring with TDM-like troubleshooting capabilities, ensures a carrier's ability to support reliable delivery of CES services to its customers.

With the OC-3/STM-1 grooming functionality over a Carrier Ethernet network, Atrica continues to lead the industry in developing and delivering innovative universal transport solutions for aggregating Ethernet and TDM traffic over a common universal transport network infrastructure.

A-100 and A-200 Carrier Ethernet Demarcation Devices

Atrica's new Ethernet demarcation devices -- the A-100 Fast Ethernet Demarcation Device and the A-200 Gigabit Ethernet demarcation device -- have been specifically delivered to expand a service provider's ability to extend cost-effective, flexible, managed Ethernet services to the customer premises. The A-100 and A-200 support point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and multipoint-to-multipoint services supported by Atrica's Carrier Ethernet product portfolio.

As extensions to Atrica's overall Carrier Ethernet product suite, the A-100 and A-200 are fully managed by ASPEN and give service providers complete control and visibility of their services all the way to the customer demarcation point. With the A-100 and A-200, services supporting strict SLAs can be provisioned within seconds within flexible parameters, including Committed Information Rate (CIR), Excess Information Rate (EIR), priority, delay, and jitter.

The A-100 is a compact device featuring a chassis and a pluggable module with a singe user port and a single network port. It features a 10/100Base-Tx copper user port with auto-negotiation and a 100Base-LX fiber network port. The A-100 is available with an AC rear-facing power supply, and features SNMP-based manageability in-band via the network port, as well as local management through the dedicated RJ-45 management port.

The compact A-200 features a chassis and pluggable module with a single user port and single network port. The following modules are currently available: the AT10060 with a 10/100/1000Base-T copper RJ-45 user port and 10000Base-X SFP, and the AT10061 with a 1000Base-X SFP user port and 1000Base-X SFP network port. All the 1000Base-X interfaces feature hot-swappable SFP transceivers capable of accommodating SX (500m), LX (10km), and LH (70km and 120 km) for complete deployment flexibility. The A-200 is available with an AC or DC rear-facing power supply.

Both the A-100 and A-200 offer transparent Ethernet access and are capable of passing 802.1q tagged or untagged customer traffic to the Carrier Ethernet network. Additional highlights of the A-100 and A-200 include:

--Managed Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet Demarcation

--Remote real-time statistics and monitoring

--Remote loopback testing

--Remote software upgrades

--Line rate throughput

--Flexible SFP support for distances up to 120km (the A-200)

About Atrica

A technology visionary and industry pioneer, Atrica provides a full range of Carrier Ethernet transport solutions to service providers delivering Metro Ethernet services. Atrica's Carrier Ethernet product suite combines the benefits of Ethernet technology -- including its low-cost, proven scalability, ease of management, and ubiquity in the enterprise market -- with innovations in traffic engineering, service management and scalability to meet the stringent demands of next-generation transport networks. With Atrica's Carrier Ethernet solutions, service providers can deliver the ultimate broadband triple play services experience to their business and residential customers over a single universal transport network, with guaranteed SLAs, sub-50ms network-wide resiliency, TDM traffic support, and point-and-click, centralized OAM&P. Privately held, Atrica is based in Santa Clara, Calif., with R&D facilities in Israel and the Untied States and business development and sales offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The company has received over $134 million in funding to date, from world-class venture capital firms, industry leaders, and seven global service providers. For more information, visit Atrica on the Web at www.atrica.com.

Atrica, ASPEN and The Carrier Ethernet Company are registered trademarks and trademarks of Atrica Ireland Limited in the United States and other countries.