Newbridge Networks Announcement; IP Multicast Capability Sets Standard for Scalability, Manageability and Performance.

HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 19, 1998--Newbridge Networks (NYSE:NN)(TSE:NNC) today announced versatile Internet Protocol (IP) multicasting for its Switched Routing portfolio of products, demonstrating Newbridge Networks' commitment to video, voice and data convergence as part of its Enterprise and Carrier Switched Routing solution. With up to 65 million packets per second of aggregate multicast forwarding into a Switched Routing network, Newbridge(r) equipment provides the highest performance, greatest scalability and most easily managed multicast implementation available for today's networks.

The IP multicasting capability will be available in the entire Newbridge Switched Routing portfolio, including Carrier Switched Routing (CSR) and Enterprise Switched Routing (ESR). CSR, a solution-based on the Carrier Scale Internetworking (CSI) network architecture, enables established service providers, Internet service providers (ISPs) and competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) to build an IP virtual private network (VPN) infrastructure capable of delivering value-added business services. ESR delivers an application-proof internetworking infrastructure that enables an entire enterprise to function as a single network, dramatically improving scalability, performance and manageability. It also enables the enterprise network manager to operate as an Enterprise Service Provider (ESP). The enhanced IP multicasting capability will enable established, new generation and enterprise service providers to offer scalable, reliable and high performance IP multicasting applications to their customers and end users.

Newbridge Switched Routing is uniquely suited to delivering high performance IP-multicasting because of its center-weighted, connection-oriented internetworking architecture.

The center weighted management ensures efficient administration and enforcement of IP multicasting policies, while the connection-oriented asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching fabric is optimal as an efficient multicasting infrastructure.

IP multicasting distributes a common stream of information to multiple network users. For example, a file transfer to a distributed group of recipients, or the distribution of a video channel to a large group of viewers on a network is much more efficient than traditional IP methods.

"IP multicast has typically not been available on traditional enterprise networks because of low performance and difficulty in managing the service," said Jim Arsenault, Vice President of IP and Internetworking Products Group, Newbridge Networks. "Our IP multicast implementation not only offers significantly higher performance, but it is also much easier to manage than traditional IP multicast implementations. This enhances our position in key vertical markets such as education, government and healthcare that want to leverage IP multicast capability."

Newbridge Switched Routing networks simulate a traditional router on a network-wide basis by using a distributed backplane composed of one or many industry-standard ATM switches, and ATM attached edge devices, supporting a variety of local area network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN) interfaces, functioning as router interface cards. The complete system supports the creation of a highly scalable virtual router that is fully modular down to the actual backplane. By reducing the number of routing points in a network, performance, scalability and manageability of IP multicast are substantially improved. Increased Performance

Newbridge Networks also announced today the availability of the Route Services Forwarding Engine, an optional upgrade to the Enterprise Switched Routing Route Server. With the Route Services Forwarding Engine, IP multicast can scale to 125 Mbit/s of source multicast traffic -- roughly 100,000 packets per second an order of magnitude greater than traditional routers. As a result, a Newbridge Switched Routing network can support an aggregate of 65 million packets per second of multicast traffic, ideal for enterprise IP-multicasting needs.

The increase in multicast forwarding performance is made possible through the innovative use of the ATM fabric, which underpins the Switched Routing technology deployed by the Newbridge(R) Enterprise Switched Routing solution. Each multicast tree is performed in hardware by the ATM fabric, which ensures that the ATM fabric performs packet replication.

The Newbridge Switched Routing solution supports Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol (DVMRP) Version 3 and Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) Version 1 and Version 2 on a per port basis. In addition, bandwidth is optimized through the implementation of per port (IGMP) snooping. Multicast packets are delivered only to the individual ports that request them, instead of to all ports in the broadcast domain or subnet. This prevents multicast "junk mail" from flooding those parts of the network that are not involved in a particular multicast session. Pricing and Availability

Newbridge Networks versatile IP multicast capability will be available the first quarter of calendar year 1999. The current U.S. list price for the Route Server-2 is $29,990. The product is part of the Newbridge Switched Routing internetworking product portfolio. Existing customers will be offered an upgrade plan to enable easy migration to the new IP multicast functionality.

Newbridge Networks designs, manufactures, markets and services networking solutions to organisations in more than 100 countries. The company leverages its relationship with a growing family of Affiliate companies and strategic alliances with Siemens and 3Com Corporation to deliver seamless, end-to-end solutions. Newbridge customers include the world's 300 largest telecommunications service providers and more than 10,000 corporations, government organisations and other institutions. Founded in 1986, the company employs more than 6,000 people on five continents. News and information are available at www.newbridge.com.

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