Data Connection Announces Portable Multicast Routing Software for OEMS; Data Connection Publishes Technical White Paper Providing IP Multicast Overview for OEMS and Service Providers.

LONDON -- Data Connection Limited (DCL), the world's leading provider of communications protocol software, today announced DC-PIM-SM and DC-IGMP, the first two products in its new Multicast Product Family for OEMs building multicast-enabled routers and switches. Unlike other multicast products, Data Connection's solution is truly portable, with an open, extensible and modular architecture that is designed for future as well as existing applications. It covers a wide range of multicast applications, including edge, core and border routers, and multicast group discovery protocol proxies. This architecture also allows the replacement of individual components with third party implementations, quick and easy integration with existing systems and support for all types of multicast forwarding hardware. Service providers and enterprises increasingly require multicast-capable solutions that can deliver a new range of scalable high-bandwidth services. These serve On-Demand applications requiring video and data broadcast and include a wide range of market areas such as leisure, training, defense and finance. Data Connection's multicast routing products are ideally scaled to meet this requirement.

Manufacturers need a solution that they can deploy now and that will evolve to meet their future needs. Data Connection has extensive experience in the development of carrier-grade networking software including unicast IP Routing and MPLS and this has been incorporated into the advanced design of its multicast product family to produce a truly extensible solution.

"Multicast services are becoming very important and potentially very significant revenue drivers for service providers," said Phil McConnell, CEO of Data Connection. "Our software, backed up with the exceptional support for which we are well known, allows vendors to add these capabilities to their equipment quickly and with the greatest ease of integration."

DC-PIM-SM and DC-IGMP are the first products in this new product family.

--DC-PIM-SM supports Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode (PIM-SM), including Source Specific Mode (SSM).

--DC-IGMP supports Internet Group Membership Protocol (IGMP).

These are the two most important multicast protocols for next generation networks. Future products will extend the protocols supported to include further variants of PIM including Dense Mode and Bidirectional PIM, and other multicast protocols, such as Border Gateway Multicast Protocol (BGMP).

Data Connection's multicast product family extends its successful range of unicast IP routing, MPLS, VPN, VoIP and ATM software, providing manufacturers with a consistent and reliable source for all of their networking software. The multicast products fit into the same architectural framework as DCL's other IP Routing and MPLS protocol products (including DC-OSPF, DC-ISIS, DC-BGP, DC-RIP, DC-MPLS and DC-VPN Manager). They can be supplied pre-integrated with these products, for example to provide the MRIB, or can be used on its own or with third-party products.

In common with all Data Connection's protocol products, Data Connection's multicast products operate within Data Connection's unique "N-BASE" environment, which provides portability, scalability, and performance, at the very highest levels of resilience and availability as demanded by the leading carriers. The N-BASE has been proven in a wide range of networking devices for over 10 years and allows Data Connection's software to be used on VxWorks, Linux, OSE, Nucleus, Integrity, pSOS, UNIX, Solaris and many other operating systems. The N-BASE environment also supports easy distribution of components over multiple threads, processes or processors, where extreme scalability or redundancy is necessary.

Data Connection's multicast routing products have been developed according to Data Connection's highly rigorous processes, which greatly reduce the time to market and engineering effort required for customers building carrier-class network devices.

Further information on Data Connection's multicast routing products can be found at www.dataconnection.com/multicast/

In conjunction with announcing its new software, Data Connection published a white paper providing a detailed analysis of the different multicast routing options available, as well as their different usages. This will be very useful to OEMs and service providers who are clarifying which protocols to implement and deploy (see www.dataconnection.com/products/whitepapers.htm).

You can see Data Connection to discuss our multicast software and receive technical information at SUPERCOMM 2004, Booth #12923.

About Data Connection

Data Connection Limited (DCL) is the leading independent developer and supplier of IP Routing, MPLS, SIP, MGCP/Megaco, ATM, Conferencing, Unified Messaging, Directory and SNA portable products. Customers include ARRIS, CIENA, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM Corp., Lucent, Microsoft, NEC, Nortel Networks, Siemens, and Sun.

Data Connection is headquartered in London UK, with US offices in Alameda, CA, Dallas, TX and Reston, VA. It was founded in 1981 and is privately held. During each of the past 20 years its net profits have exceeded 20% of revenue. Last year sales exceeded $40M, of which 90% were outside the UK, mostly in the US. This large proportion of overseas sales has led to the company being awarded two Queen's Awards for outstanding export performance.

For more information, see www.dataconnection.com.

Data Connection is a trademark of Data Connection Limited and Data Connection Corporation. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.