Coriolis Networks Unveils Breakthrough Architecture for Managing and Maximizing Bandwidth in Optical Networks.

Business/Technology Editors

BOXBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 2000

Company's Optical Spatial Division Multiplexing (OSDM(TM)) Allows

Service Providers to Recover Up to 75% of Bandwidth Stranded in

Traditional SONET Networks

Coriolis Networks, Inc., today announced a bold new metro optical networking architecture that will allow facilities-based carriers to dynamically provision end-to-end services with unparalleled ease and speed, as well as transport both `bursty' data and voice traffic more efficiently and economically than any other architecture in use today.

The Optical Spatial Division Multiplexing (OSDM) architecture allows carriers to significantly multiply their revenue from data services while continuing to efficiently transport traditional Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) services over fiber. OSDM is the industry's first architecture that provides the economies of over-subscription and statistical multiplexing over an entire optical network.

OSDM enables the creation of elastic data pipes, by introducing QoS-aware dynamic bandwidth management of optical infrastructure that is shared by several geographically dispersed nodes. This results in fully utilized network resources that substantially increase the number of services and ports that may be provisioned in the network. OSDM retains traditional transport network characteristics like payload transparency and native mode protocol transport, while incorporating the efficiency and flexibility of statistically multiplexed data networks. These capabilities, coupled with OSDM's optimal use of the protection ring path, allow service providers to recover as much as 75 percent of the stranded bandwidth in traditional SONET networks.

"OSDM has the potential to do for optical networks what packet switching did for private-line networks." said Christine Heckart, president at TeleChoice, the leading strategic catalyst for the telecom industry. "Metropolitan service providers should evaluate this solution as a strong candidate for improving the economic return on their networks without sacrificing the reliability offered by more traditional legacy architectures."

"The widespread investments in SONET, coupled with the ongoing growth in demand for data services, has fueled the need for the OSDM architecture from both traditional carriers and emerging service providers," said Robert Castle, CEO of Coriolis Networks. "Our innovative approach provides measurable economic benefits to carriers and lays the groundwork for network growth and new technology advances."

OSDM solves many of the problems carriers face today. For example:

--Rapid service creation and provisioning is finally achievable with the automatic provisioning capability enabled using the OSDM architecture, replacing the standard "drag and click" approach used to provision most network elements today. OSDM provides carriers with the opportunity to design services and SLAs that can operate independent of human intervention.

-- Because OSDM can partition bandwidth into arbitrary amounts, network wholesalers could allow retail service providers to provision and manage their own service types, ports, and SLAs independent of one another and without involving the wholesaler in retail provisioning and management operations.

--As carriers make considerable capital investments in their metro transport networks to accommodate the rapid increase in DSL and cable modem services, the OSDM architecture can provide a very economical, scalable aggregation and backhaul transport solution that is easy to operate and manage -- and is much less expensive than traditional SONET, ATM or router transport networks.

--The OSDM architecture can be used by ISPs to provide high-capacity services for enterprise Ethernet traffic, web-hosting applications, or to interconnect islands of storage area network (SAN) servers in a metropolitan network. By coordinating the bandwidth allocation across all network elements , a service provider can offer virtual private networks and tiered IP services. If no TDM services are needed, the full bandwidth of the network is available for IP transport providing the low cost structures of IP-over-fiber, but preserving the critical reliability and management attributes of SONET.

--Many local exchange carriers need to conserve their fiber and place all their data and TDM services onto the same fiber-optic network. The OSDM architecture provides superior support for a converged network topology, reducing the cost of SONET equipment needed for T1/T3 services while providing seamless native-mode transport for all data services -all over a single fiber infrastructure. Bandwidth can be dynamically reallocated as customer needs dictate.

--The OSDM architecture enables emerging carriers who serve high-rise buildings and office parks, known as BLECs, to optimize the use of network resources in a small, but densely populated geographic area. BLECs can deliver high-end, committed information rate Ethernet services to tenants that could also be the front-end to VoIP services for users wanting to reduce or eliminate traditional TDM voice traffic. Aggregated streams of Ethernet/IP packets, ATM cells, and TDM circuits are seamlessly transported over the network at a fraction of the cost of other architectures.

About Coriolis

Coriolis Networks, founded in 1999, is developing a family of products based on the Optical Spatial Division Multiplexing (OSDM(TM)) architecture that deftly bridges the gap between high cost, but reliable SONET environments, and highly scalable, but difficult to manage IP solutions. The products will be available at customer sites during the last quarter of calendar year 2000. Headquartered in Boxborough, Massachusetts, Coriolis is funded by leading venture capital firms. For more information, visit www.coriolisnet.com or call 978-264-1904.