Concord's eHealth Provides First QoS Assurance for Cisco's MPLS Architecture.

Business/Technology Editors

MARLBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 2002

Together, quality of service products ensure the accurate and timely delivery of premium content services that customers like Equant 

demand

Concord Communications (Nasdaq: CCRD) today announced the first quality of service (QoS) assurance software for Cisco's multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) architecture. Cisco's MPLS architecture prioritizes network traffic for Internet protocol (IP) services such as streaming media, voice over IP (VoIP) and virtual private networks (VPNs). Concord's eHealth(TM) Suite of service management software ensures Cisco's MPLS architecture queues network traffic properly so that service providers may guarantee the quality delivery of premium content services.

The first of eHealth's Emerging Technology products, QoS analyzes traffic passing through carrier-class network routers by monitoring the vital details that determine how routers direct traffic based on MPLS. Like the tracking system for UPS packages, MPLS contains information about the priority, destination and importance of network traffic. eHealth monitors such priority information to map how the router has treated each packet based on individual customers or services. Concord's eHealth monitors network traffic so that service providers can prevent bottlenecks that create delay, ensuring the router is prioritizing content appropriately based on priority or class of service.

This technology is useful when, for example, an enterprise's executive team wants to conduct interactive training over the Web, complete with streaming audio and video, without delay or interruption. The enterprise's IT staff can work with the service provider to assign the highest priority to such traffic beforehand, so that when it arrives at the router, the router prioritizes delivery to the appropriate destination without delay or degradation. By frequently sampling MPLS based QoS parameters before and during the training session, eHealth ensures the router handles the priority traffic appropriately, so the training takes place without a hitch.

"eHealth has empowered us to take random network events that threaten service performance out of the equation," said Jack Norris, head of customer service and network at Equant. "We can now intelligently prevent bottlenecks that create packet loss and delays by class of service with granular drill-down capability to deliver SLA- [service level agreement] compliant services for our premium customers."

Customers demand evidence proving that they are receiving the highest level of service for the voice, video and audio services their providers are delivering over MPLS infrastructures. By providing QoS assurance using Cisco routers and eHealth, service providers not only address problems before they affect service, they also validate vital SLAs with their business customers.

"MPLS-enabled routers are dominating the Internet market for performance sensitive applications while QoS is becoming an invaluable tool for ensuring routers treat prioritized services to match customer service level requirements," said Matt Standish, product marketing manager. "eHealth helps service providers ensure that customers are receiving the quality of service they are paying for by ensuring that MPLS routers handle data for everything from VoIP to live Web casts. eHealth helps service providers maintain revenues from their premium services by proving that routers and traffic perform the way they're supposed to."

About Concord Communications

Concord Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: CCRD) is the market leader in automating technology management of the Internet infrastructure. With its eHealth(TM) Suite of software products, Concord offers the only solution to combine real time information with historical context for integrated fault and performance management across systems, applications and networks. Only by successfully managing fault, performance and availability across all of these key areas can organizations truly ensure effective e-business. This end-to-end view provides the critical insights needed to power day-to-day business and e-commerce operations for some of today's most successful service providers and corporations worldwide. Concord is headquartered in Marlboro, Mass. For more information on Concord, call 1-800-851-8725 or visit Concord on the Web at www.concord.com.

Concord Communications, Inc., the Concord logo and eHealth are trademarks of Concord Communications, Inc. All Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.