Circadiant Systems Optical Standards Tester To Evaluate 10GE Systems and Components At The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ALLENTOWN, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 2002

Optical Interfaces to be Tested for Compliance To IEEE 802.3ae

Stressed Receiver Conformance Test During January Group Test Period

Circadiant Systems, Inc., the company making optical testing simple, today announced its award-winning Optical Standards Tester (OST) will be used by participants of the next 10 Gigabit Ethernet Group Test Period (GTP) held at the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) to characterize 10GE systems and components to the IEEE 802.3ae and other standards. The testing will be conducted from January 6 through January 31, 2003.

"To have Circadiant's OST at the next 10 Gigabit Ethernet test event should be a great help for companies that need to check their layer one performance against the IEEE 802.3ae standard," said Bob Noseworthy, 10 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium Manager at the UNH IOL. "In our experience, an OST rapidly characterizes a 10GE optical product's performance. All 10GE optical component and system manufacturers are invited to participate, to test their product with an OST, and to evaluate their interoperability with other 10GE vendors." A Circadiant OST was used to characterize a variety of 10GE systems and components at the UNH-IOL October 2002 GTP.

The most popular use of the Circadiant OST during the GTP is expected to be compliance testing of optical interfaces to the IEEE 802.3ae 10GE standard. Key Physical Medium Dependent (PMD) tests include Stressed Receiver Sensitivity, Extinction Ratio, and Optical Modulation Amplitude. Additional PMD measurements that will be made include Receiver Sensitivity, Optical Overload, Dispersion Penalty, Bit Error Rate vs. Optical Signal to Noise Ratio, Launch and Received Optical Power, and S/x Penalty.

Components and interfaces intended for use in 10GE Wide Area Networks (9.95328 Gb/s) and 10GE Local Area Networks (10.3125 Gb/s) will also be tested by the OST for layer two and layer three protocol compliance. In addition, the OST will simultaneously test protocol compliance while performing physical layer tests. Tests will also be conducted at the G.709 OTN rate of 10.709 Gb/s.

"We are delighted to support the UNH IOL with our innovative 10Gb/s OST," said John French, CEO of Circadiant Systems. "Engineers that have not seen an OST will have a chance to observe how valuable a productivity tool an OST can be as they characterize the performance of their new products."

About OSTs

OSTs are an important new class of test instrumentation. They have received numerous awards as innovative test instruments that reduce manufacturing test cycle times and shorten a new product's time-to-market. Layer one, two and three instruments and components commonly used to test optical communication systems are consolidated into an OST. This enables sophisticated algorithms and complex testing procedures to be calibrated and automated by the factory, instead of the user, and produces a test instrument that is fast, accurate and purpose-built for optical communication system testing.

Individual and group test results are displayed on appropriate scales with statistical confidence levels clearly shown to help users understand the behavior of a Device Under Test. An OST also allows the user to degrade test signals to simulate worst-case test conditions. Degradation includes control over jitter, OSNR, interfering source, extinction ratio and optical power as well as the ability to inject errors into the layer 2 and 3 protocol signals.

About Circadiant Systems, Inc.

Founded and staffed by a team of distinguished engineers with extensive experience in optical components, networks, protocols and testing and a rich pedigree at Bell Labs, Circadiant is a privately held venture-funded company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The company provides optical component and network equipment makers with award-winning, purpose-built, intelligent testing systems that significantly reduce development and manufacturing costs while accelerating the time-to-market of high-quality optical networking solutions.

To that end, Circadiant has introduced a new class of testing equipment that offers standardization, automation and scalability in a system purpose-built to meet the needs of the current and future optical networking market and is well positioned to capitalize on the multi-billion dollar optical testing industry.

About 10 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium

The 10 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium was formed to foster interoperability among 10 Gigabit Ethernet products and to educate students in 10 Gigabit Ethernet technologies. Staff and students of the Consortium strive to provide high quality, reliable, and accurate testing of 10 Gigabit Ethernet products from both an interoperability and standards-based parametric perspective, while maintaining a non-biased environment.

The 10 Gigabit Ethernet Consortium is one of 14 Consortiums involved in the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory, located in Durham, New Hampshire. More than 200 companies worldwide are members of the UNH InterOperability Laboratory. For more information, visit the UNH InterOperability Laboratory at www.iol.unh.edu/consortiums/10gec.