MontaVista Linux Provides Fail-Safe Platform with Clustering Functions for Rohill's Latest Network Infrastructure Products.

MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition Chosen for Hard Real-Time Capabilities, Supporting 99.999% Uptime in Private Mobile Radio Networks

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- MontaVista Software, Inc., the leading embedded Linux provider for the telecommunications, mobile, and embedded markets, today announced that Dutch network equipment provider Rohill has started shipping infrastructure equipment running MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition 4.0.

Rohill supplies private radio network platforms and systems intended for mission-critical users such as the military, police, fire, ambulance services, as well as business critical users including airports and public transportation. At the heart of these systems are Rohill's TetraNode eXchanges (TNXs), a pure soft-switch TETRA infrastructure solution, which can be interconnected by means of an IP network to form the digital backbone of a mobile communications network.

In developing Rohill's CompactPCI and AdvancedTCA based TetraNode eXchange product, the essential requirements were to ensure "five nines" reliability; to provide an open architecture; and to allow systems to be easily scaled from a single base station to a nationwide network.

"We chose embedded Linux as the operating system platform for TetraNode because we wanted system integrators to have access to an open system benefiting from a rich set of third-party applications," said Rohill's Director of R&D, Bert Bouwers. "We turned to MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition because it provides a fully supported, tested and documented distribution of Linux with hard real-time and clustering features built into the kernel."

Earlier generations of TetraNode eXchange ran Wind River's VxWorks OS, and commercial-grade Linux distributions.

MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition has been optimized for telecom and datacom applications by offering hard real-time capabilities, advanced clustering and a broad range of hardware support. It includes:

* A fully pre-emptive kernel and other real-time enhancements. Rohill's deployment of MontaVista Linux requires a maximum interrupt response time of 100(micron)s

* Kernel hardening in order to provide better tolerance for hardware defects and enhanced network security

* Conformance with all important open standards, including OpenAIS, OpenHPI and OSDL v2.0

* Support for ATCA platforms from, among others, Intel and Motorola

* Wide range of serviceability, availability and management features, including Ethernet aggregation and failover and RAID1 and DRBD disk mirroring support

"There is still some uncertainty in the market over the ability of Linux to meet embedded developers' need for hard real-time performance and rock-solid stability," said Dan Cauchy, director of product management for carrier and telecom products, MontaVista Software. "Rohill's decision to use MontaVista in a mission-critical deployment is testament to the enhanced performance of our Carrier Grade Linux.

"Rohill's products are destined for use by police and ambulance services, so lives depend on them. Every MontaVista distribution is subject to the industry's most exhaustive set of tests, so it was not difficult to show Rohill that we could give them the stability that they needed."

Rohill's Bert Bouwers said that the company had chosen to follow the industry trend towards open, standards-based platforms based on commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software. It was therefore logical to base all future product developments on Linux.

The biggest decision the company faced was whether to use a commercial distribution or develop a modified version of Linux internally for the new AdvancedTCA platform. Bert Bouwers said: "It made no sense for Rohill to modify the source code of Linux to provide the hard real-time and clustering capabilities that we needed when these capabilities already existed in MontaVista Carrier Grade Edition. On top of that, MontaVista provides a complete package of support, documentation and warranties. It is unrealistic to think that we would have had the time, resources or expertise to supply that internally."

Mr. Bouwers also said it's been easy to integrate MontaVista's product. "The migration path from commercial-grade Linux to MontaVista CGE Linux has been completed within two months. In fact, the source code of the core software remained identical - we only had to add certain MontaVista enhancements."

"With the help of real-time and system experts at MontaVista, Rohill managed to get the product to the release phase in record time, addressing some of the most demanding real-time and raw performance requirements ever faced by MontaVista," said Bouwers. "This has resulted in truly improved system performance without sacrificing the open architecture of Linux, enabling Rohill to supply large infrastructure solutions on the basis of proven concepts and products."

Rohill's TetraNode eXchange products running MontaVista CGE Linux, and supporting hardware and software extensions for private mobile radio networks, are available immediately. For more information about Rohill and its products, see www.rohill.com.

For more information about MontaVista and its range of embedded Linux products and tools, see www.mvista.com.

About MontaVista Software

MontaVista is the leading provider of Linux distributions for the embedded market. MontaVista delivers a complete, flexible and open operating system, which allows designers to innovate across a wide range of embedded devices, mobile handsets and communications infrastructures. Headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., MontaVista has operations in 15 countries. For more information, please visit www.mvista.com.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. MontaVista is a registered trademark of MontaVista Software Inc. TetraNode is a registered trademark of Rohill Technologies B.V. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.