La Poste chooses ACC routers for PINGRE networking project; the French postal service chooses ACC's advanced routing technology to improve internal networking capabilities.

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 24, 1995--In an expansion of its internal networking capabilities, the French postal service (La Poste) has chosen Advanced Computer Communications (ACC) bridge/routers to create their new IP network.

La Poste's new internetwork has been designed to work in conjunction with their existing X.25 backbone and will allow new TCP/IP based applications to transparently exchange information between any of La Poste's designated sites.

Like many European Postal Services, La Poste offers two kinds of service: traditional mail, parcel services, and mass marketing as well as financial services for individuals and companies. To respond to the varied needs of its customers La Poste is actively expanding and decentralizing its computer and network resources. Currently the Poste counts 287,000 employees and 17,000 post offices.

The vast majority of La Poste's sites (98%) will use ACC's popular Danube router. This router features 1 WAN connection and 1 Ethernet connection, making it the perfect size for most post offices. The remaining sites that need dual Ethernet connections will use ACC's larger Amazon router which comes standard with 3 WAN connections and 2 LAN connections.

The PINGRE Project

La Poste has chosen ACC to upgrade their new network as part of their PINGRE (Project d'INterconnection et de Gestion de REseaux) network interconnection and management project. To help simplify communications the PINGRE project standardized on the TCP/IP protocol suite for its applications. La Poste has already in place an X.25 network, called MUSE, in a hierarchical structure providing an extremely reliable network infrastructure between post offices and central databases. By using IP over the MUSE network, the PINGRE project will simplify communications between local databases and avoid the centralization of data at the national level. The pilot phase of the PINGRE project concerned 43 sites which was completed in September of 1994. The second phase will include all 1,400 PINGRE sites and will be completed in April, 1995.

In addition to IP routing, the PINGRE project defined objectives for network management. The PINGRE network will be centrally managed with provisions for fail-over to backup management sites. The IP management platform chosen is HP OpenView using custom modules from UB Networks of Santa Clara, Calif.

ACC routers at La Poste

Having already in place a highly reliable X.25 network, the Poste wanted to re-use the existing network to build the new IP network. La Poste did extensive testing to validate the technical merits of each finalist's solution. ACC routers scored consistently high in all the tests and was chosen to fulfill La Poste's bridge/router needs. Among the most important tests run were: Routing IP over X.25 with special X.25 address conversion, X.25 switching, Remote Management, and X.25 payload compression.

-- Routing IP over X.25: The MUSE network contains a well structured address space which La Poste wanted to take advantage of, as well as avoiding having to maintain address translation tables between IP and X.25 address for 1,400 sites. Thus, La Poste defined a translation algorithm to convert IP addresses into X.25 addresses. According to Christian Malet of La Poste's Computing Architectures and Methodologies Group, La Poste was "impressed by the ease and rapidity in which ACC implemented their algorithm. In just a matter of weeks, ACC implemented this new function in the router software and now the router can automatically determine the X.25 address of a remote site just by looking at the destination IP address. This greatly simplifies network management for La Poste."

-- X.25 Switching: X.25 switching capabilities of ACC routers were thoroughly tested and ACC's ability to switch traffic based on the user data field of the X.25 call packet was an important feature. In future phases of the PINGRE project, La Poste may use this feature to provide simultaneous X.25 access for legacy equipment and LANs without needing to expand the capacity of their X.25 switches. All of this is possible to implement without touching the addressing structure of the MUSE network.

-- Remote Management: La Poste was particularly interested in remote management for a project of this size. PINGRE will use both the remote configuration and remote software download features of the ACC routers. All routers contain flash memory which allows network file transfers to and from the router. In the future La Poste will be using the dual-image capabilities to maintain a backup version of software during the software migration process.

-- X.25 Payload Compression: ACC's compression software gave particularly impressive results during the evaluation process. Using test data supplied by La Poste, the ACC routers increased throughput by a nearly 4:1 ratio. This was achieved in spite of the overhead imposed by the X.25 protocol. X.25 payload compression is a very effective method to increase throughput without investing in high speed lines for the X.25 backbone. For Christian Malet, X.25 payload compression was an essential ingredient for this project.

About ACC

ACC is a leading manufacturer of wide-area internetworking products that provide cost-effective interconnection and management of geographically distributed computer networks. ACC leads the industry in the development of Bandwidth Optimization technologies to maximize the utilization of leased lines and switched services. ACC's products are sold world-wide through 80 leading international VARs and OEMs serving corporate and business customers, educational institutions, health care, retail establishments, governments, and PTTs.

Advanced Computer Communications is headquartered at 10261 Bubb Road, Cupertino, Calif. 95014; telephone: [phone]; Fax: [phone]. Internet: [e-mail]. World Wide Web: http://www.acc.com

CONTACT: Advanced Computer Communications

Trish Voskovitch or Rich Black, 408/366-9600