Chicago's onShore, Inc. and Yipes Communications Deliver Light-speed Internet Access to Historic Monadnock Building.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CHICAGO and SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 13, 2001

Premier Chicagoland systems integrator deploys Yipes' gigabit optical

services in city's first multi-tenant data network

onShore, Inc., a leading systems integrator in the Chicago metropolitan area, and Yipes Communications, Inc., the defining national provider of scalable bandwidth, today announced that they are offering light-speed Internet service to tenants in Chicago's historic Monadnock building.

onShore has created Chicago's first multi-tenant data network in the Monadnock building, the same building that was Chicago's first to get phones and electricity. onShore's building-wide network allows tenants to enjoy shared services such as e-mail, file servers, automated tape back-up and high-speed Internet access.

onShore's network allows Yipes to distribute its services more quickly and directly to tenants in the building. Through the efforts of onShore and Yipes, small businesses that otherwise could not afford high-speed Internet access can now take advantage of reliable and secure high-speed Internet service.

The initial Yipes connection delivers 5 megabits per second, more than 100 times the speed of a dial-up modem. The unique Yipes network allows onShore to increase building bandwidth on just a few hours' notice, all the way to 1,000 megabits per second. Traditional data services require weeks or months to change bandwidth.

"Yipes is an ideal business partner for us," said Stelios Valavanis, President and Networking Projects Supervisor of onShore. "The scalability of Yipes' services ensures that we can meet the growing bandwidth demands of our clients. Furthermore, Yipes' straightforward Ethernet interface is simple and cost-effective to manage."

Valavanis added, "The Monadnock building houses many small companies who could not afford on their own to purchase or manage advanced networking and IT services. These companies can truly benefit from sharing the combined resources and services of onShore and Yipes."

"I am happy to be able to offer Yipes' service as a key amenity to tenants in the Monadnock Building," said Bill Donnell, the building's owner. "Yipes provides quality service, and as the bandwidth requirements of our tenants increase, Yipes will be able to match them. Having Yipes available in our building should greatly improve tenant retention."

Customers in the Monadnock building say they appreciate the service Yipes offers. "Being tenants here gives us access to state-of-the-art technology. The speed and reliability of Yipes more than meet all our current and foreseeable needs," said Dan Dooley of Mark J. Walsh & Co., a commodity trading advisor.

"Businesses of all sizes have a growing need for reliable Internet service," said Rex Fisher, Co-founder and Vice President of Sales at Yipes. "Yipes is pleased to be working in partnership with onShore in the historic Monadnock building to give tenants the fastest, most flexible and affordable network services."

Yipes is the first national provider of fully scalable bandwidth on demand, ranging from 1 Megabit per second to 1 Gigabit per second in 1 Mbps increments. Yipes serves 21 markets across the country with its unique optical IP networks. The company's customers include Fortune 1000 enterprises, real estate companies, financial institutions, ISPs and ASPs, Web-based businesses, software developers, law firms, major medical facilities, universities, school districts and government agencies.

Yipes is the defining provider of managed optical IP networks. Yipes leverages the elegance of native Ethernet technology to provide Just-In-Time Bandwidth(SM) that is smoothly and quickly scalable from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps (in 1 Mbps increments), enabling the next generation of Internet services. Yipes' highly affordable services, currently available in 21 markets coast-to-coast, include Yipes MAN (metro area networking), Yipes NET (high-speed Internet access), Yipes WAN (wide area networking), Yipes TOUGH (extended redundancy options), Yipes WALL (managed firewall service) and Yipes WEB (managed Web services). Yipes' Application-Aware Network(SM) will empower customers to manage bandwidth and quality of service on a real-time, application-specific basis. Yipes has received $291 million in equity funding from more than 30 investors including Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), The Sprout Group/CSFB, Charter Growth Capital, JP Morgan Partners, BancBoston Capital, Soros Private Equity Partners, Focus Capital and Intel Capital.

Yipes has been honored for innovation and excellence by America's Network, Computerworld, Enterprise Systems, Inter@ctive Week, The Net Economy, Network, Red Herring, tele.com, Telephony and Upside magazines, as well as Networld + Interop, Supercomm and COMNET. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.yipes.com.

Onshore, Chicago's premier systems integrator, provides technology business planning and project execution at the Enterprise and Workgroup levels. onShore is fluent in UNIX (Solaris, Linux), NT and Mac OS for integration, expertise in LAN, WAN and Internet technologies. onShore is a true single source provider of business technology solutions. Founded in 1991, onShore's headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois.