Digital Fountain Announces Second Generation Data Delivery System; Transporter Fountain 2.0 Sets Order of Magnitude Benchmarks for Speed, Predictability and Control.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 30, 2002

Digital Fountain, maker of the fastest and most predictable global data-delivery solutions, today announced a new release of its flagship product. Transporter Fountain 2.0 is a high-performance data-delivery solution designed to save time and add certainty to the transport of mission-critical data over wide area networks. Transporter Fountain 2.0 is 3 to 30 times faster than conventional data delivery systems, and includes new features that give businesses predictability and control over the delivery of massive files that are not possible with any other solution. With Transporter Fountain 2.0 businesses can, for the first time, predict file delivery times over global distances with the guarantee that they will arrive on time.

"The delivery of very large files across continents remains a problem for enterprise customers," said Cindy Borovick, program director of datacenter networks for IDC. "For a growing number of files, increasing bandwidth doesn't increase the speed of delivery. Transporter Fountain enables large data transfers with new levels of speed and predictability."

Transporter Fountain is an ideal solution for companies that have a large amount of data to deliver, that need to deliver that data over global distances or that require the fastest possible delivery over congested or unreliable networks. Transporter Fountain is being used by businesses for a variety of mission-critical applications, including business-continuity planning, collaborative engineering, retail data distribution, and media production and distribution. Transporter Fountain offers its users order-of-magnitude improvements over competitors in several key areas.

Transporter Fountain 2.0:

-- Is 3 to 30 times faster than FTP-based data delivery, recovering hours, and in some cases, days of time lost by the inefficiencies of existing solutions.

-- Is unfailingly predictable and immune to adverse or changing network conditions, offering delivery-time guarantees that are a requirement for deadline-driven business processes but which would not be possible with alternative delivery methods.

-- Puts control of key delivery metrics--transfer speed, bandwidth allocation and simultaneous destinations served--in the hands of the network administrators to ensure that network performance is consistent with business needs.

"We deliver digital film clips to European and American filmmakers for reviewing and editing from filming locations in South Africa," said Mike Smit, founder and principal of Media Host, a media distribution and hosting company. "The method we were using was extremely slow--mainly due to latency and packet loss. Transporter Fountain allows us to deliver the files 10 to 100 times faster with the additional guarantee that they will arrive in perfect condition. The added speed and predictability allow us to set aggressive production schedules, with the guarantee to our customers that we will meet them. The time we save results in higher productivity, happier customers and ultimately, a positive impact on our bottom line."

For long-haul digital transport of over-sized files, TCP- and FTP-based delivery approaches begin to break down when packet loss or congestion is present. With Digital Fountain's patented Meta-Content(TM) technology, the negative effects of packet loss and network congestion are virtually eliminated, thus enabling maximum network efficiency and throughput. With network timeouts and failed downloads no longer an issue, exceedingly fast and reliable media delivery becomes possible.

"We're required to deliver digital dailies for TV shows from New Zealand to Los Angeles and elsewhere around the globe," said Matt Cunningham, technology manager for Digital Post, a leading media post-production company. "These are big files, and without Transporter Fountain the only reliable way to get this much media is to put it on a plane or send it via an expensive private network. Transporter Fountain allows us to consistently deliver large video files over the Internet many times faster than is possible with FTP, thus shortening our production cycle and giving our customers more time to edit their content."

Transporter Fountain 2.0 Features

Fountain Pool. Two or more Transporter Fountains can deliver files to an individual receiver simultaneously with a cumulative effect. The result is a dynamic redundancy that has a business benefit even during normal operations. Systems provide at least twice the performance and capacity in normal operations, and instantaneous redundancy prevents even momentary downtime in the event of a site or network failure.

Pipeline. This feature allows Transporter Fountain to encode, deliver and decode data in parallel. The result is up to a 50-percent speed improvement over previous versions of the product, and the ability to deliver files of unlimited size--multi-terabyte files and greater--without having to manually break them up into smaller pieces or interrupt the transfer.

Tunable Rate Control. Transporter Fountain 2.0 gives predictability and control over quality of service without even requiring QoS-enabled networks. It can share bandwidth at any level of priority designated by the administrator. This means that large data transfers can occur without impacting other WAN traffic. It also means that in the event of an emergency, network administrators can take advantage of Transporter Fountain's record-breaking speed to dispatch critical data on an expedited basis.

Transporter Fountain 2.0's other new features include Bandwidth Caps and Delivery Confirmation. Bandwidth caps give users the ability to set the maximum bandwidth used by the Transporter Fountain on the network. Delivery confirmation provides the sender with notification via a graphical user interface or email when a transfer is completed.

"Our mission is to continue to make possible unprecedented high-speed and highly predictable data delivery over wide area networks, even for data that was so large it was previously transported by physical couriers," said Cliff Meltzer. "Transporter Fountain 2.0 lets you get full use of your network, with full control over critical functions like speed, delivery time and traffic management."

Transporter Fountain is based on Digital Fountain's patented "Meta-Content(TM)" technology, a fundamental innovation in reliable networking that dramatically simplifies the processes required to deliver data completely and perfectly over any network. With Meta-Content, all data is transformed into a series of mathematical equations. The unique property of this technology is that unlike FTP, receivers don't need to obtain data packets in a particular order to ensure delivery of an exact bit-for-bit copy of the original data. They just need to receive enough packets, in any sequence, to recreate the file. The value of this invention is that data can be transported without any concern for loss, delay or out-of-order delivery. With FTP, throughput is significantly reduced by packet loss and delay, but with Transporter Fountain, administrators have complete and direct control over throughput, regardless of network conditions.

About Digital Fountain

Digital Fountain provides the fastest, most predictable global data-delivery solutions. The company's technology allows customers to realize dramatically increased data transfer speeds and predictable data delivery times resulting in significant savings in both time and expenditures. Digital Fountain's products are based on the company's patented Meta-Content(TM) technology, a networking innovation that dramatically simplifies the processes required to completely and perfectly deliver data over any network, regardless of impairments like packet loss and delay. Digital Fountain products are currently being used by a who's who of media, technology, oil & gas, retail firms and government agencies to transport their mission critical files. For more information call 510-284-1400, email [e-mail] or visit www.digitalfountain.com.

Transporter Fountain, Meta-Content and the Digital Fountain logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Digital Fountain, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.