NetScout Systems extends WAN monitoring capabilities to meet bandwidth demands for Internet and Intranet traffic growth.

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 21, 1997--

New EnterpriseProbe for T3 links another industry

first for market leader

NetScout Systems, Inc. (formerly Frontier Software) extended its industry-leading, end-to-end application monitoring capabilities today with the introduction of the NetScout T3 WAN EnterpriseProbe. The T3 probe allows high bandwidth users such as Fortune 100 corporations, Internet Service Providers, telcos and carriers to maintain high network availability. The introduction of the T3 probe brings to seven the total number of products. NetScout has introduced since 1992 that are industry firsts. Future NetScout WAN products planned for introduction later this year as part of NetScout's roadmap for the wide area network will include an ATM probe, monitoring of multimedia traffic and support for application response time.

For many corporations and service providers, consolidating existing T1 links and implementing T3 WAN services is driven by the economics of justifying bandwidth increases and deciding exactly where to expand the network. Internet-based traffic is dramatically increasing with ubiquitous use of Web sites, introduction of intranets and extranets and wide-scale deployment of applications across enterprise networks. In addition, new multimedia applications and vast numbers of remote sites require increased WAN bandwidth. These networks must maintain the highest quality of service for critical T3 links.

NetScout's T3 WAN Probe monitors these links proactively through the application layer. In combination with NetScout Manager Plus console, the new probe also provides long-term trend analysis of billing reports for T3 usage. This information, both real time and historical, ensures network availability and reliability as well as predictable response times for mission-critical WAN links, and allows the network administrators to meet their Service Level Agreements.

"It has always been NetScout's mission to deliver products that anticipate and meet our customers' specific networking monitoring needs," said Narendra Popat, President of NetScout Systems. "T3 links are becoming increasingly important to a spectrum of customers who must remain competitive by providing network capabilities that ensure optimum performance and productivity to a growing and disparate user base. The introduction of the T3 probe demonstrates our ongoing commitment to providing the most comprehensive end-to-end application in the industry."

NetScout's T3 WAN Probe, like all other NetScout products, is highly scaleable, meets industry standards and supports both LAN and WAN topologies. This makes NetScout products ideal for deployment in high-performance environments which incorporate dual LAN/WAN monitoring into an enterprise-wide network management architecture. The T3 WAN Probe is an industry-leading product in a family of innovative products that also includes NetScout's Ethernet Probe, Token Ring Probe, T1 WAN Probe, FDDI Probe, Fast Ethernet Probe and embedded RMON.

The T3 WAN probe is a high-speed networking technology that monitors T3 links at full wire speed up to 45 megabytes per second. With EnterpriseRMON, a superset of RMON1 and RMON2, application traffic can be monitored for frame relay and for both DTE and DCE on a WAN link. Using custom application filters, network managers can monitor specific applications such as Notes, ccmail, AFS, Oracle and others. Customers deploying T3 probes can view physical layer to application layer traffic on high-speed WAN links (including frame relay), track end-to-end host conversation and applications usage and drill down to identify the source of a problem quickly. Over 120 reports are available for trend analysis capacity planning and billing. This simplifies network troubleshooting and helps network managers plan future bandwidth capacity.

In addition to statistical data collection, performance tuning and diagnostic evaluation, the T3 Probe offers network managers the following benefits:

-- Network Availability: Diagnostic data generated by proactive,

real-time monitoring pinpoints problems and alerts the network

manager, often before the problems can affect network

availability. -- Service Level Agreements: Increasingly, corporations are

demanding that their MIS departments and service providers commit

to delivering a predictable quality of service, as outlined in a

Service Level Agreement that is defined by specific metrics. By

using NetScout's probes, the manager or provider can verify that

they are delivering or receiving the network services for which

they have contracted. -- Reduced Operating Costs: T3 WAN Probes help balance the network

traffic load by identifying connections that are saturated or

underutilized, consolidating these connections and pinpointing

where changes can make the network more efficient. Additionally,

the probe helps to identify WAN congestion that creates demands

for increased bandwidth. -- Policy-Based Management: The probes provide critical information

for enforcing corporate policies that govern access to external

Internet sites, including the World Wide Web; allowing control of

traffic across the most expensive part of the network. -- Interoperability: NetScout probes are compliant with the SNMP,

RMON and RMON2 standards and seamlessly interface with all

industry-standard management platforms and applications including

HP OpenView, Sun Solstice, IBM NetView and Cabletron Spectrum.

"With growing bandwidth demands for Internet and intranet applications, customers are looking to vendors to support high-performance LAN and WAN technologies, such as T3," said Elisabeth Rainge, senior analyst at IDC. "NetScout is addressing this need with their T3 WAN Probe."

"With NetScout Systems' new T3 Probe, we have achieved a level of visibility and monitoring capability necessary for managing our critical T3 links," said Eric Feinstein, network technical manager of Viacom, a beta customer user. He added, "the real-time troubleshooting and support capabilities of NetScout's probes were only the first requirement for Viacom. We also needed to monitor individual PVCs as well as usage trends by individual applications, hosts and the aggregate T3 link. T3 is a powerful tool for maximizing our quality of service for network users and was also easily integrated with our existing NetScout Manager software."

Future Directions

Later this year, NetScout Systems will introduce several additional capabilities that address important network management needs for WAN-based monitoring and analysis. This product roadmap will include an ATM probe for OC3 (155Mb/s) speeds, monitoring and analysis tools for video and voice over IP, and application response time metrics for real time troubleshooting and historical reporting.

NetScout T3 WAN Probe Pricing and Availability

NetScout Systems' T3 WAN Probes will be available in June at a cost of $18,995.

About NetScout Systems, Inc.

NetScout Systems, Inc. (formerly Frontier Software) is the industry leader in offering powerful, proactive solutions for network operations, particularly application traffic monitoring, diagnosis and reporting, that allow network managers to optimize quality of service and deliver on service level agreements. NetScout's award-winning NetScout probes and NetScout Manager applications are based on EnterpriseRMON, a compliant superset of RMON1 and RMON2. The NetScout product family provides unique solutions beyond RMON2 by supporting all LAN/WAN topologies including switched LANs, VLANs and Frame Relay. In addition, NetScout Systems provides end-to-end standard or custom application monitoring for distributed enterprise networks.

NetScout Systems is headquartered in Chelmsford, Mass. Company news, product and service information are available on NetScout's Web site: http://www.netscout.com . -0-

NetScout is a registered trademark and EnterpriseRMON is a trademark of NetScout Systems, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks or service marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: NetScout Systems, Inc. KHJ Public Relations 

Aline Kaplan Paul Kidwell

[phone] x1424 [phone] x116

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