Lucent Technologies and GlobalCast Communications Form Strategic Partnership in Reliable Multicast Market.

MURRAY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 25, 1997--Lucent Technologies today announced that it will form a strategic partnership with GlobalCast Communications, a Fremont, Calif.-based multicast networking company, to create a unified platform for reliable multicasting.

The unified platform will dramatically increase performance of time-urgent data delivery to large numbers of users over private intranets, corporate extranets and the public Internet.

GlobalCast will add Lucent products, based on its patented multicast protocol technology, to its own multicast networking platform and will be the exclusive partner to the Intranet, Extranet and Internet markets. Under the terms of the agreement, Lucent will become a GlobalCast shareholder, investor, development and marketing partner.

Financial terms of the relationship were not disclosed.

"Lucent Technologies is committed to creating, acquiring, and evolving new business platforms for commercializing Bell Labs technology," said Thomas Uhlman, senior vice president of Lucent's Corporate Strategy, Development & Public Affairs group. "The strategic partnership with GlobalCast is an exciting opportunity for Lucent to commercialize important Internet technology and an example of one such business platform."

According to a study recently conducted by the IP Multicast Initiative (IPMI), 54% of information systems managers stated that IP multicast had created new business opportunities for their companies.

GlobalCast will acquire exclusive rights in the Internet arena to market Lucent products based on Bell Labs Reliable Multicast Transport Protocol (RMTP) technology, and to develop products that integrate RMTP technology with GlobalCast's innovative family of multicast offerings.

"As congestion on the Internet and in corporate networks continues to grow, IP multicast will have to become a more prevalent means of distributing information," said Henning Schulzrinne, associate professor of computer science at Columbia University and a leading expert on IP multicasting. "Lucent and GlobalCast have the most comprehensive, proven multicast technology and products. Their intent to work together creates a formidable resource for IP multicast customers."

Reliable multicast can be used to increase the performance of many applications which deliver information or live events to large numbers of users, such as financial data or video streaming. Reliable multicast creates higher value application services for today's IP-based networks. For example, if an Internet Service Provider (ISP) had customers who desired real-time stock quotes, reliable multicasting would ensure that all customers received the quotes at the same time, without any loss of information.

GlobalCast was founded in 1995 by Ronald Lachman, an early Internet pioneer, and a core group of researchers at the University of Illinois, West Virginia University and the University of California at Berkeley. The company's founders include a number of foremost experts who have been responsible for pioneering the development of reliable multicasting technology.

"We believe that our work with Lucent will change the way companies communicate information to their customers and employees," said Ronald Lachman, Chairman and CEO of GlobalCast. "Time and time again, we hear that mission critical time-urgent data must be delivered to large numbers of users, but that performance and bandwidth are the limiting issues."

Lucent's RMTP, which was granted a patent in June 1996, was developed by Bell Labs researchers Sanjoy Paul and Krishan Sabnani. In May 1997, Lucent released its e-cast software, a corporate intranet software solution based on RMTP. To date, several thousand users have downloaded and tested e-cast.

GlobalCast's Reliable Multicast Protocol (RMP) was developed by Brian Whetten and Todd Montgomery at the University of Illinois, West Virginia University, and University of California at Berkeley. In addition, GlobalCast has implemented Generic Scalable Reliable Multicast (GSRM) and other multicast communication technologies and applications.

"GlobalCast and Lucent have a vision for reliable multicasting that will enable application developers to write to a single networking platform that works for all data types and all network types. There will not be a need for different protocols for file transfer, push applications, media streaming and live information feeds. The networking platform will choose the best transport protocol automatically. This will be transparent to the user," said Allen Weiner, principal analyst of online strategies for Dataquest. "This is cool, revolutionary stuff. If they make it happen, you'll see reliable multicasting being used for many applications and a significant percentage of Internet traffic."

Lucent and GlobalCast are committed to supporting open standards and are active members of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on Reliable Multicasting and the IP Multicast Initiative (IPMI), a multi-vendor cooperative effort aimed at addressing the problems of crowding and bandwidth on the Internet.

GlobalCast Communications, Inc. provides multicast networking platforms for independent software vendors, corporate application developers and network service providers to easily deliver multicast services. The company's offerings provide high performance delivery of business critical and time-urgent data to large numbers of users over private intranets, corporate extranets, and the public Internet. Further information about GlobalCast is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.gcast.com .

Lucent Technologies (NYSE:LU) designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems and software, consumer and business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Labs is the research and development arm of the company. Further information about Lucent Technologies, headquartered at Murray Hill, N.J., is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.lucent.com .

CONTACT: Lucent Technologies - Bell Labs

Chris Pfaff, 908/582-7571 (tel) or 800/705-2368 (pager)

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or

GlobalCast Communications, Inc.

Kathryn Hall, 510/492-4711 (tel)

[e-mail]