Excel Releases New Advancements In Switching Technology.

HYANNIS, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug.25, 1997--

Switch Now Supports One Million Busy Hour Calls and Over 30,000 Ports

Excel, Inc. announced today the immediate availability of revolutionary levels of network reliability with LNX Release 5.1. This major software release expands Excel's industry leadership position by cost effectively supporting over 1 million busy hour calls and over 30,000 ports with Excel's EXS (Expandable Switching System) architecture. The addition of SS7 Fault Tolerant Redundancy and other Release 5.1 reliability and scalability enhancements, along with the results of the company's recent performance benchmark, position Excel to meet network demands of its wireless and wireline service providers.

"Release 5.1 further increases the capabilities of our switches to perform in the central office," said Bob Madonna, President of Excel, Inc. "Through our aggressive rollout of product releases, we have expanded the level of scalability and reliability in our product line to surpass the requirements of the carrier and service provider community."

Excel conducted a distributed call benchmark in July to quantify the performance of Release 5.1 in terms of busy hour call completions (BHCC). The benchmark was designed to run with different network and common channel signaling protocols; R1, R2, ISDN and SS7. The benchmark was repeated using an increasing number of Excel switching nodes in the EXS to measure growth in performance in relation to growth in system resources. The results indicated that the LNX switch achieves a performance rating of over 100,000 busy hour calls for a single node system, and a 16-node EXS system is able to achieve over 1.1 million busy hour calls. These results illustrate not only Excel's significant performance leadership for programmable switching architectures, but also that this distributed switching architecture can achieve performance that rivals large-scale traditional switching architectures.

Excel's new product features have received a tremendous reception from the carrier community. "These impressive new levels of throughput and reliability further confirm Telegroup's decision to select Excel's open switching platform," said John Lass, Chief Operating Officer of Telegroup, Inc.

The product enhancements offered in Release 5.1 are representative of the advancements Excel has made in switching technology, and reconfirm its technology leadership position. They include:

EXS Expandability - The EXS (Expandable Switching System) now supports over 30,000 non-blocking ports. This host-controlled, distributed, programmable switching architecture integrates multiple CSN and LNX switches to form a single logical and scalable switch environment. The EXS lets developers implement applications cost- effectively across a wide range of port capacities.

SS7 Redundancy - The SS7 Fault Tolerant Redundancy feature achieves the highest level of SS7 reliability found in the market today. The SS7 card was designed to capitalize on the robust architecture and multi-level reliability of the Excel system. The product enhancement consists of a combination of hardware redundancy, mirroring technology and sophisticated software that ensures that any single point of failure will not interrupt service, protecting all calls, whether stable or transient. Because the Excel architecture is designed for hot pluggability, (a feature that is not available on PC- based bus structures), cards can be removed and inserted while the system is in operation without impacting service. SS7 Fault Tolerant Redundancy is accomplished without host intervention, providing the best performance possible and reducing application development time. The SS7 product is integrated into the Excel switch architecture, enabling it to take advantage of the company's robust product reliability, powerful programmability and integrated Programmable Protocol Language (PPL). Excel's SS7 card can be ordered in various configurations supporting 2, 4, 8 and 16 links. The system supports up to 4 signaling stacks (or 4 SS7 cards) for a maximum of 64 links per LNX shelf.

CSN Switch Matrix Redundancy - The 1,024 port CSN has been enhanced with switch matrix redundancy and now supports full redundancy for all system components. All matrix, line interface, service resource cards (e.g. DSP, ISDN, SS7), and power cards can be configured for simplex or redundant operation.

Sub-Rate Switch Controller (SRC) - With the SRC, a single LNX programmable switch effectively supports up over 16,000 non-blocking ports, making wireless and International Virtual Private Network applications more cost effective. The SRC allows the LNX to switch calls at sub-64Kbps rates, transmission speeds typically used between base stations and subscriber units. By by-passing vocoders in wireless-to-wireless subscriber calls, sub-rate switching reduces costs and improves voice quality. By mixing the sub-rate connection types, an LNX can support a varying number of connections per system, providing greater flexibility to the service provider and therefore cost and quality benefits.

Analog Interface I/O Card (AIC) - Excel switches now support direct connectivity to analog telephones with the introduction of its family of Analog Interface Cards. The AIC-8 offers 8 ports of analog connections supporting FXS loop-start interfaces. Multiple AIC cards can be configured to support increased analog capacity.

More Information Available -

Excel's "High Reliability Switching" and "Call Processing Benchmark" reports are available by contacting the company's marketing services department at [phone].

About Excel, Inc.

Excel, Inc. designs and manufactures a family of open architecture, programmable switches used in a wide variety of telecommunications applications in over 50 countries. The company markets its products through systems integrators, application developers, OEM's and service providers for deployment worldwide. Founded in 1988, Excel is based in Hyannis, MA.

CONTACT: Excel, Inc.

Karen Steele, 508-862-3145

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