MFA Forum, Cisco to Spotlight NGN Opportunities, Challenges at October Event.

FREMONT, Calif. -- The MFA Forum announced today that the Forum, along with event sponsor Cisco Systems, will be presenting an all-day Next Generation Networks (NGN) event on Monday, October 31, 2005 at the Boston Marriott Burlington Hotel. The event will feature speakers from leading vendors and service providers such as Cisco, Tellabs, Verizon, Juniper, Lucent and Nortel. This event is open to both members of the MFA Forum and to the general public.

"We are excited to be hosting this event for our members and the industry," said Andrew G. Malis, of Tellabs, and president and chairman of the board of the MFA Forum. "This event is a great opportunity to share our thoughts on NGN and how our technology plans align themselves with the industry's needs. It also demonstrates the MFA's dedication to telecommunications standardization, and to working closely with other standards development organizations."

"The MFA Forum's wide reach over MPLS, ATM and Frame Relay technologies makes it the perfect consortium to host this broad ranging NGN event," said Rajiv Kapoor, director of Service Provider Marketing, Cisco. "The Forum's efforts on interworking of multiple technologies over MPLS according to common encapsulation formats, quality of service (QoS) across service provider boundaries and operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) are some of the most important issues influencing standards bodies such as ATIS, ETSI TISPAN, ITU-T and other consortia in the development of the NGN."

Members of the Forum can attend the event for free; registration after October 21st is $200. For non-members wanting to attend the event, the cost is $200; $350 for registration after October 21st. To register, call Michael Parket at 510-744-4003 or go to www.mfaforum.org/events/industry2.shtml

The following is the scheduled agenda for the day:

NGN Enablers: Doug O'Leary, MFA Forum Service Provider Committee Working Group Chair; Verizon

--IP NGN Vision - Susan Scheer, VP, Carrier Services Engineering, ITD, Cisco

--MFA Forum NGN-Related Work Items - Andrew G. Malis, Chairman and President, MFA Forum; chief technologist at Tellabs

--WAN Services Overview and Migration to NGN - Erin Dunne, Analyst, Vertical Systems Group

--Ethernet Access to MPLS Core Network - Bill Bjorkman, MEF TC Co-Chair; Verizon

--MPLS Inter Carrier Interface Requirements - Nabil Bitar, Verizon

NGN Technologies: Rao Cherukuri, MFA Forum Technical Committee Chair; Juniper Networks

--Interprovider QoS at MIT's Communications Futures Program (CFP) - Bruce Davie, Cisco

--Resource and Admission Control for NGN- Hui Lan Lu, ITU-T SG 13 Q4 Chair; Lucent

--IPsphere Architecture for NGN - Kevin Dillon, Chairman IPsphere Board; Juniper Networks

--ATM/FR to MPLS Control Plane Interworking - Nikhil Shah, Lucent

--IP/MPLS Control Plane Security for Inter Carrier Interface - Ross Callon, Juniper Networks

--Ethernet OAM - Dinesh Mohan, Nortel

About the MFA Forum

The MFA Forum is an international, industry-wide, nonprofit association of service providers, equipment vendors and enterprise users. The focus of the Forum is to advance the deployment of multi-vendor, multi-service packet-based networks, associated applications, and interworking solutions for telecommunications and networking. The Forum is driving the convergence of ATM, Frame Relay and IP/MPLS technologies in the global telecom industry through interoperability initiatives, implementation agreements, and educational and marketing resources and programs. The Forum currently has more than 60 members. For Forum membership information please contact Alexa Morris, executive director, at [phone] or via e-mail at [e-mail]. Additional information about The MFA Forum is available online at http://www.mfaforum.org