ITWorx Accelerates WAN Performance by 100X; Extends LAN Benefits to Global Wide Area Networks.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 11, 2003

Introducing NetCelera 1.5 Featuring SpeedArray; Enabling Disaster Recovery and Other Business Critical Applications Deployment on A Global Scale

ITWorx today announced that it has accelerated for the first time ever, 100 X performance over long haul wide-area links. By introducing NetCelera 1.5, it has expanded its offer to include SpeedArray; a patent pending acceleration feature that extends the benefit of LAN based applications on a global scale. NetCelera 1.5 also includes RMON2 and TOS control, which enables network managers to monitor, report, classify and prioritize the WAN traffic.

NetCelera 1.5 now enables companies to deploy business critical applications both nationally and worldwide including disaster recovery, replication, remote backup, collaborative engineering and post-production. By establishing a new benchmark in WAN performance, ITWorx is increasing business productivity around the globe.

"ITWorx is changing the way global companies operate by accelerating the transfer of bulk data files by 100-fold, regardless of data size and network latency," said Youssri Helmy, Chief Executive Officer, ITWorx. "NetCelera 1.5 with SpeedArray extends the benefit of LAN applications to the global wide-area network, breaking the speed barrier in national and global network performance."

SpeedArray is based on a new patent pending technology that overcomes the limitations of TCP resulting from high latency, or Bandwidth Delay Product (BPD). SpeedArray eliminates the TCP's imposed bandwidth barriers that slow down large data transfers. SpeedArray features an enhanced forwarding mechanism, which uses multiple parallel tunnels to transfer the same TCP connection. This implementation reduces the dependency on one connection and dramatically increases the maximum link throughput.

"TCP/IP has a well-known bandwidth limit, which is affected by latency." Says John Bartlett, an application performance consultant and Vice President of NetForecast, Inc. "As network latency rises due to distance or medium, like satellite, this limit can become intolerable for large file transfers. ITWorx engineers have devised a clever solution to this problem, implemented in its SpeedArray technology. For non-compressible content, SpeedArray delivers as much as 15X speedup over the normal TCP/IP limit, and for compressible content, increases of as much as 100X can be obtained. Applications that are limited by large file transfers can significantly benefit from this technology."

The combined solution of NetCelera's ACM5 and SpeedArray achieves the highest WAN performance available today. For compressible files, ACM5 accelerates a compression factor of up to 10X. For long haul wide-area links with high latency, SpeedArray accelerates up to 15X. NetCelera 1.5, with integrated ACM5 and SpeedArray technology, result in more than 100X performance gain over WAN links.

NetCelera is easy to deploy on the network, with minimal setup time. Administrators can implement SpeedArray onto their network seamlessly, without any disruption to their network traffic and is transparent to the end-user. Installation is simple with an easy to understand wizard to guide the network administrator.

"The issue that plagued companies with long haul wide area networks was the TCP behavior issue rather than congested networks," said Youssri Helmy. "NetCelera 1.5 with SpeedArray overcomes this issue by accelerating the transfer of any file type--both compressed files like MPEG, or regular files. By deploying NetCelera 1.5 with SpeedArray, ITWorx is establishing a new benchmark in WAN performance by offering the only solution to this problem."

About NetCelera 1.5 with SpeedArray

Adaptive connection and compression multiplexing at layer 5 (ACM5) is NetCelera's core patent-pending architecture. It performs the acceleration function at the session layer of the OSI model providing maximum control to the TCP traffic. The outcome is a high acceleration gain and latency reduction. ACM5 enables network administrators to expand their WAN links capacity resulting in saving a hard dollar ROI within six months.

SpeedArray is a breakthrough enhancement to TCP forwarding; it enhances forwarding across long haul wide-area networks and eliminates the TCP bottlenecks caused by network high latency. SpeedArray improves the throughput of global networks by improving TCP performance and runs on NetCelera systems transparently to the end user.

Speed Array and ACM5 offer a multiplicative benefit to the customer in terms of bandwidth saving, high throughput and TCP performance. Results show in high latency networks, both of ACM5 and Speed Array provide a gain up to 100X.

NetCelera 1.5 offers many breakthrough features and benefits.

NetCelera 1.5 is Failsafe

NetCelera provides failsafe failure, offering a high level of resiliency to the network. NetCelera switches-to-the-wire in case of failure without impact on other network equipment. Hardware reconfiguration is not required.

NetCelera 1.5 eliminates Corporate System Down Time

NetCelera offers system-level redundancy to offer corporate networks with the highest level of resiliency while minimizing downtime. NetCelera's redundant solution provides load balancing to the traffic as well. The redundancy solution functions transparently with the industry standard router redundancy solutions, HSRP and VRRP.

Easy-to-use Interface for Set-up

NetCelera 1.5 offers an easy-to-use web interface. Configuration simplicity and reporting features offer a high level of configuration management and performance management. NetCelera provides detailed reporting feature that offers customers with the capability of monitoring the traffic before and after Netcelera and monitoring the bandwidth gain that NetCelera provides.

NetCelera Provides maximum Security

Communication with the web interface is implemented using the (HTTPS) protocol while utilizing the SSL (secure Socket layer), providing maximum security to the system.

NetCelera Provides TOS

NetCelera provides the capabilities of setting the TOS byte of the IP packet on a per application basis. It enables network managers to classify and prioritize the WAN traffic based on the application prioritization requirements. It enables NetCelera to integrate with IP MPLS/DiffServ provider-managed networks.

Product Availability

NetCelera, version 1.5 will be available in December 2003. SpeedArray is shipped as an integrated feature. Current NetCelera customers with maintenance contracts will receive SpeedArray as a free upgrade. For more information, please call 781-272-6222.

About ITWorx

Founded in 1994, privately held ITWorx helps customers increase revenues and reduce costs through its portfolio of software and networking products. Its NetCelera WAN capacity expansion appliance is unmatched in eliminating network traffic redundancy. The solution dramatically expands network capacity and accelerates all applications. Targeted at enterprises, NetCelera operates over line capacities ranging from 64 Kbps to 45 Mbps, delivering up to 10-fold improvements of network capacity and speed. As a result of improved network efficiencies, customers can greatly reduce bandwidth costs, improve application performance, and eliminate the need to add costly network infrastructure. NetCelera is particularly suited for companies seeking to reduce high data communication costs due to distributed operations or outsourced functions. The company has headquarters in Burlington, Mass. and Cairo, Egypt, and distributes NetCelera directly and through a reseller channel. Customers include the GE, Sony, and Brown Shoe Company.