Communication Machinery Corporation Debuts the World's Only Multi-Station Wi-Fi Protected Access Load Test System.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 15, 2004

Communication Machinery Corporation:

-- Finally, a Desktop Unit Enables Network Engineers to Test the

Full Operation of Critical Security Parameters for Wi-Fi

Products and WLAN Systems as WPA Enabled Networks Are Being

Deployed Across the Enterprise

Extending its leadership in Wi-Fi test and analysis, Communication Machinery Corporation (CMC) today unveiled the EE-WPA, the world's only multi-Station test system with support for Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) testing. Part of CMC's EmulationEngine(TM) XT family, the EE-WPA for the first time delivers the ability to test and analyze Wi-Fi product designs and wireless networks under true WPA Station loading. EE-WPA enables wireless LAN designers and network engineers to test WLAN scalability and capacity on 802.11 devices, access points, switches, network components and backend systems using 59 WPA enabled virtual Stations (vSTA(TM)) per emulator to impose stress and traffic loading conditions that reflect the demands of the security driven enterprise environment.

"Until the recent adoption of WPA, security risks had slowed Wi-Fi adoption at the enterprise level. Now, engineers are faced with the challenge of rapidly designing, deploying and maintaining 802.11 products and WLAN systems that incorporate WPA into scalable enterprise class network infrastructures," commented Dave Swan, CEO of CMC. "While mandatory to incorporate WPA, these engineers had no way to realistically test these next generation products and deployments -- until now. CMC's EE-WPA solves this challenge and allows WLAN designers and network engineers to test new generation WPA products and systems before release or deployment to ensure network performance and integrity."

Using CMC's new EE-WPA, engineers can impose a user controlled multi-Station load on an 802.11 access point, WLAN switch or other network components. The EE-WPA's virtual Stations act as true Stations following 802.11 a, b or g protocol and are capable of being enabled for WPA security on an individual basis for capacity, scalability and stress testing of products or the actual network composed of these components and other back end systems.

The EmulationEngine allows users to create a test environment with between 1 to 64 emulated Stations all conforming to the 802.11 a, b or g protocols. Each vSTA has its own configurable MAC, IP address and can send and receive data traffic across the Wireless link. Of these 64 Stations, 59 can have WPA enabled. This provides a testing configuration of 64 802.11 Stations consisting of any combination of WPA (up to 59) and non-WPA such as WEP or "open" Stations.

Users can produce a variable Station loading of mixed WPA, WEP, open Stations, DHCP enabled or configured IP, and control how and when the Stations are authenticated, associated and pass traffic on the WLAN system. This enables the critical testing, analysis and verification of network WLAN components and back-end systems for capacity and scalability under true Wi-Fi Station loading conditions.

Throughout the test, the EmulationEngine collects detailed statistics on a per vSTA basis of the operation of WPA as the product or network is stressed under variable Station and traffic loading conditions. These include the total number of successful and failed WPA authentications, the number of TKIP replay errors, the number of EAPOL (Extensible Authentication Protocol Over LAN) frames of any type that have been received or transmitted by the virtual Station, and many more. This data collection enables further analysis and statistical tracking to ensure critical operations perform consistently over time, and eases the identification of unsatisfactory performance. The unique multi-station testing capability of EmulationEngine XT, and the new EE-WPA, enable identification of product and network problems prior to a potentially disastrous new product introduction or network deployment.

In addition to the core test system, CMC offers EE-SDK, the CMC Perl Software Developer Kit (SDK). This kit contains a set of Perl modules, which provide an application programming interface to the CMC EmulationEngine XT family of products. With this interface, users can create Perl scripts that configure an EmulationEngine, vSTA, and perform other functions programmatically as provided by the EmulationEngine CLI (Command Line Interface) and the EmulationEngine Web-Based User Interface.

Price and Availability

CMC's new EE-WPA is available immediately for $9,995.00 USD with the EE-SDK priced at $1,500.00. This initial release of CMC's EE-WPA supports WPA PSK (Pre-Shared Key) including TKIP, MIC and other aspects of WPA. A final release of firmware with full WPA features will ship and be automatically sent to customers August 1. Volume discounts are available. For additional information contact Dave Swan, Communication Machinery Corporation, 402 E. Gutierrez Street, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101; Phone: [phone]; Fax: [phone]; [e-mail]; www.cmc.com.

About Communication Machinery Corporation

Communication Machinery Corporation provides a suite of test and analysis products that are essential tools for the design, deployment and support of all 802.11 based products, appliances and Wireless LAN networks. CMC's EmulationEngine(TM) XT family enables stress and scalability testing through the use of multiple concurrent user-controlled virtual Stations (vSTA(TM)) from a single 802.11 emulation platform.

Editors Note: Photos are available. Please contact Phyllis Grabot, 805.341.7269.

EmulationEngine, vSTA, EEAnalyst and EEScenario are trademarks of Communication Machinery Corporation. Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a trademark of Wi-Fi Alliance. All other company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright (C) 2004 Communication Machinery Corporation, all rights reserved.