Essential Communications Introduces 64-Port, All-Fiber Serial HIPPI Switch; Cost Per HIPPI Port Drops Below $2,000.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 1995--Essential Communications today announced the highest-bandwidth LAN switch available. The ESS-64 is a scalable, all-fiber HIPPI switch. It offers up to 64 ports, each of which supports a full-duplex serial HIPPI connection and provides data transfer at 800 megabits per second simultaneously in each direction. The switch is thus capable of an unmatched aggregate bandwidth of over 50 gigabits per second.

Not only is the new ESS-64 the largest and fastest HIPPI networking switch on the market, it is also one of the most affordable. With a per-port cost below $2,000, the ESS-64 lowers the price of a HIPPI connection by one-third, and reduces the price per megabit-per-second to half that of Fast Ethernet.

An ANSI-recognized standard, the High Performance Parallel Interface protocol, or HIPPI, provides the fastest implementation of TCP/IP networking -- up to 93 megabytes per second in many installations.

"The requirement today is for highly scalable, easy-to-manage networking," said Bill Boas, president and chief executive officer of Albuquerque-based Essential Communications. "The ESS-64 provides both. Its speed, expanded management features and low per-port cost debunk the myth that HIPPI is old and expensive."

Like all Essential products, the new switch supports ANSI HIPPI standards and TCP/IP (RFC 1374), and includes ARP (RFC 826). In addition, the ESS-64 provides a number of features not found in other high-performance switching products, including:

o Hunt Groups - a superset of alternate-path routing that creates multiple paths among switches and nodes, allowing them to share the traffic load automatically; and

o Auto configuration - "plug-and-play" networking; switches and workstations are configured on the network automatically.

The ESS-64 will find immediate application in demanding commercial computing environment such as the entertainment, seismic and automotive industries, and at government supercomputing sites -- anywhere there is a need to connect a large number of high-performance workstations, supercomputers and storage devices at very high speeds.

"The ESS-64 and other Essential switches and network interface products are extending the use of HIPPI beyond cluster computing to create high-performance local area networks, or SuperLANs," Boas said. "SuperLANs are becoming strategically valuable in a range of commercial environments, where the need is to transfer information among a specific set of machines, all of which must be capable of sending and receiving extreme amounts of data very fast. An example is data mining.

"Essential, along with other members of the HIPPI Networking Forum, is looking ahead to the emergence of HIPPI 6400, a follow-on ANSI standard capable of scaling to 6.4 gigabits. In fact, the HIPPI Networking Forum Technical Committee will meet Monday (Dec. 4) during Supercomputing '95 to present this new standard proposal," he said. "Recognizing that our customers are likely to implement HIPPI 6400 in the future, we are designing our products to allow them to scale up without replacing current HIPPI connections."

Albuquerque-based Essential Communications, founded in 1992, is a leading provider of end-to-end solutions for the high-bandwidth communications market. A model of the new switch will be on display at Supercomputing '95, Booth 900, in the San Diego Conventional Center.

For more information, contact Essential at 505-344-0080 or via the World Wide Web at www.esscom.com.

CONTACT: Essential Communications

Lisa Freitas, 505/344-0080

[e-mail]

or

Shandwick USA

Mary Ellen Amodeo, 612/832-5000

[e-mail]