NetWorth Signs to Use Epilogue Technology's RMON in Stackable Hub Products.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 23, 1995--Epilogue Technology Corporation and NetWorth of Irving, Texas, today announced a licensing agreement under which NetWorth has purchased Epilogue's RMON source code to develop network management agents for use in NetWorth's expanding line of Ethernet stackable hubs.

NetWorth had previously licensed Envoy, Epilogue's compact, portable SNMP solution, Emissary, Epilogue's Management Information Base (MIB) compiler, and Attach , Epilogue's UDP protocol stack. This agreement adds a license for Ambassador Plus, Epilogue's fully portable RMON source code.

"We surveyed the market for commercially supported RMON solutions and decided to come back to Epilogue Technology," said Arlan Harris, Vice President of Engineering for NetWorth. "We had a very good experience with Epilogue's SNMP and UDP products in the past. When we looked at the solutions available from different RMON source code vendors, we determined that Epilogue's Ambassador Plus was clearly the best RMON solution out there. The functionality of the code and the technical support Epilogue offers were the two major contributing factors that dictated our decision."

"This is a significant announcement for Ethernet customers, since it demonstrates that more and more hub manufacturers are implementing RMON agents," added David Preston, Vice President and General Manager for Epilogue. "Our Ambassador Plus RMON solution has been designed as a series of interlocking building blocks that allow our customers to build and deploy RMON solutions one piece at a time. This integration architecture makes our RMON source code easier to integrate, more portable to multiple computing platforms, and more readily adaptable to switched network environments like ATM."

According to Harris, Epilogue's RMON products will initially be used to add network management agents to the companies growing line of stackable Ethernet hubs, including the Series 6000 Switching and Network Series Hubs, the Series 4000 MultiSegment Hubs, the Series 3000 TriSegment Stackable Hubs, and the PowerPipes Ethernet/FDDI Switching Hubs, among other products. Harris also hinted that Epilogue's RMON source code will prove valuable in supporting emerging technologies, such as 100-Mbps Ethernet.

"One of the things we really like about Epilogue's source code products are their portability," Harris added. "We are deploying network management across multiple networking platforms. In fact, we already offer network management software for our hardware that supports Microsoft Windows, Novell's NMS, and Hewlett-Packard's OpenView, and soon we will be adding support for SunNet Manager. Epilogue's network management products are an important piece that will help guarantee our success with these products."

Epilogue's Ambassador Plus allows vendors to develop Remote MONitoring (RMON) agents for its internetworking products. RMON agents are used to monitor changes in network performance, collecting and storing statistics that can be interpreted using an RMON pod or network management station to assess network traffic and highlight potential hot spots.

Epilogue's Envoy 5.0 SNMP source code lets vendors create a hierarchical network management environment made up of "master" agents that control local sub-agents. Using Envoy, NetWorth will be able to develop a series of sub-agents, giving each sub-agent control of a specific network management task. The sub agents process the SNMP request and report to the master agent, which in turn reports to a network management station.

This hierarchical SNMP design gives vendors two specific advantages: It allows vendors to decentralize development efforts, assigning specific development tasks to sub-agent development groups. It also allows vendors to develop plug-and-play SNMP applications. New sub agents can always be created and added to the existing infrastructure to support new management tasks. What's more, the plug-and-play architecture makes it that much easier to create interfaces for multiple network management platforms.

Epilogue Technology Corporation is located at 11116 Desert Classic Lane, N.E., Albuquerque, NM 87111-7512; telephone: [phone]; FAX: [phone].

CONTACT: Woolf Media Relations Inc.

Tom Woolf, 415/508-1554