NetIQ's Chariot 4.0 Goes Internet-Scale; ASPs and Service Providers Can Conduct Tests With Up to 10,000 Connections; New Visual Test Designer Simplifies Testing of All Sizes.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 2000

NetIQ Corporation (NASDAQ:NTIQ), a leading provider of e-business infrastructure management software, today announced the availability of its award-winning network-testing tool Chariot 4.0. Already the industry's only application-layer network tester, Chariot 4.0 now supports Internet-scale testing with consoles available to test up to 10,000 connections, emulating the network traffic of hundreds of thousands of users.

"For both service providers and enterprises, network loads and the number of users requiring simultaneous connections are growing exponentially," said John Steigerwald, director of network development for NetIQ. "Chariot 4.0 now provides a way to proactively test the scalability of these large network environments to ensure service level agreements can be met as demands increase."

Testing of all sizes is now simplified with Chariot 4.0's Visual Test Designer, which defines tests and sets up configurations graphically using mouse clicks and drag-and-drop techniques. The tool increases Chariot's usability and makes even new users quickly productive, enabling the set up of tests - including very large and complex ones - in just minutes. With Visual Test Designer, a single graphic can be used to represent large groups of endpoint computers, eliminating the need to define test connections individually.

Chariot determines the end-to-end performance of today's complex, multi-protocol networks by running scripts that mimic a variety of applications, including Web, VoIP, videoconferencing, e-mail, ERP and others. Chariot conducts tests that simulate traffic of the actual network environment, providing easy-to-understand metrics on response time, throughput, and jitter from the end-user's perspective.

Chariot is a standard in most independent network testing labs. It is also used by more than 1,000 businesses to predict the impact of planned network changes, such as new applications, new hardware or technologies, and by network service providers to ensure agreed-upon performance levels are being met. Network equipment vendors use Chariot to make certain their products will perform as expected in customer environments.

"Chariot is an excellent tool for testing what-if scenarios involving the latest technologies," said Gregory Hersh, senior network integrator at Lotus. "I've used Chariot to simulate IP Multicast streaming traffic to test whether my network environment supports IP Multicast. Chariot has also given me objective measurements to prove that Quality of Service can improve application performance."

Chariot 4.0 now ships with more than 125 popular application scripts, including new scripts to emulate Microsoft's Exchange 2000, Active Directory, SQL Server, NetMeeting, Citrix, Oracle, and a variety of VoIP codecs. A Script Editor is built in to customize scripts, and an optional Application Scanner is available that analyzes the network flows of custom applications to automatically create test scripts.

With Chariot 4.0, buffer sizes of application scripts can be varied, providing more realistic emulation of multimedia applications, such as VoIP and streaming video that typically send data at varying packet sizes. The new version also continues to expand traceroute capabilities, which isolates performance problems by mapping and reporting the route taken by the application script, including hop-by-hop information. In addition to Win32 and Solaris already supported, traceroute testing can now be run with Linux, AIX and HP-UX endpoints.

Pricing and Availability

Chariot 4.0 is available now with pricing beginning at $14,000. The Chariot Console runs on Windows NT, 95, 98 and 2000. Chariot endpoints can be installed on 19 different operating systems and are available for free and can be downloaded from the NetIQ Website at http://www.netiq.com./

About the NetIQ Network Performance Management Products

The Network Performance Management product line provides comprehensive solutions for testing and monitoring end-to-end application response from a user's perspective to ensure that applications are performing well and meeting service levels, and that problems are resolved with minimum downtime.

About NetIQ Corporation

NetIQ (Nasdaq:NTIQ), with over 2000 customers, is a leading provider of e-business infrastructure management software encompassing application, directory, server, and network performance management. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California with development and operational personnel in Houston, Texas; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Bellevue, Washington. For more information, please visit NetIQ's web site at http://www.netiq.com/ or call 408/330-7000.

NetIQ, the NetIQ logo and Chariot are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetIQ Corporation. All other products mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.