Consensus Reached on RPR; IEEE Working Group Agrees On Single Baseline Document for RPR Standard; Silicon Vendors Strengthen Commitment to RPR.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 28, 2002

The Resilient Packet Ring Alliance, an industry advocacy group promoting the standardization of resilient packet ring (RPR) technology, today announced that the IEEE 802.17 Working Group agreed on a single baseline draft for the RPR standard at its meeting this week in Orlando. By meeting this major milestone on schedule, RPR maintains its momentum, garnering support from carriers, systems vendors, and silicon providers. Xilinx, a leading supplier of complete programmable logic solutions, participated in the meeting as a new member of the RPR Alliance, expanding the membership roster to 18 leading companies.

To date, more than 400 people have participated in the IEEE 802.17 RPR standard development efforts. The January meeting included representatives from systems vendors, silicon suppliers, public network providers as well as university and nonprofit organizations. The baseline document for the RPR standard resulting from this working group meeting received support from greater than 75% of the participants. The working group will meet again in March to continue developing the standard.

"RPR is considered one of the leading technologies for carriers to build new and upgrade existing metro data networks," said Robert Love, chair of the RPR Alliance and vice chair of the IEEE 802.17 Working Group. "With this consensus in the 802.17 working group, the RPR standard preserves the value proposition for carriers: their metro networks can carry more data with greater reliability and efficiency and at lower cost. As the RPR effort builds significant momentum, we welcome Xilinx as a new member of the Alliance, strengthening our contingent of RPR silicon providers."

"We have seen demand building from our customers for solutions that solve the MAN bottleneck," says Robert Bielby, senior director of Strategic Solutions Marketing at Xilinx. "RPR shows great promise as a viable solution to address the demands of this market as it provides resiliency, interoperability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness that will ease carrier's transitions to next generation data networks. Our membership will help Xilinx to readily develop and deploy solutions that will accelerate the build-out of this new market."

About the Resilient Packet Ring Alliance

The RPR Alliance, founded in January 2001, is an industry advocacy group committed to the development of an RPR technology standard for the networking industry. The Alliance will promote the adoption of an RPR standard for LANs, MANs, and WANs by educating the networking industry about RPR technology and the benefits of an IEEE standard and encouraging multi-vendor interoperability. Principal members of the RPR Alliance include Alcatel, Alidian Networks, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Corrigent Systems, Dynarc, Lantern Communications, Luminous Networks, Mindspeed Technologies, Nortel Networks, Riverstone Networks, and Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation. Avaya Communication, Chip Engines, Huawei Tech Co., NEC Corporation, Xilinx, and ZTE Corporation are participating members in the Alliance. For more information about the Alliance, see www.RPRAlliance.org.

About Xilinx, Newest RPR Alliance Member

Xilinx is the leading supplier of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as intellectual property cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and fulfills more than half of the world demand for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, aerospace, defense, low-power portable and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx web site at http://www.xilinx.com.