Packet Design Raises $10.5 Million in New Round of Venture Funding.

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Packet Design, Inc., the leader in the field of route analytics technology for managing large IP networks, has raised $10.5 million in a second round of venture funding.

The lead investor in the new round is Masthead Venture Partners, of Cambridge, Mass. Also participating in the funding are first-round investors Advanced Technology Ventures, Palo Alto, Calif.; Mayfield Fund, Menlo Park, Calif.; and Allegis Capital, Palo Alto.

With an earlier round of $14.5 million, which closed in March 2003, the new funding brings Packet Design's total venture financing thus far to $25 million. The company has been selling Route Explorer, the first route analysis system on the market, since 2003.

Packet Design CEO Doug Brent said, "The increased valuation we received for this round of funding reflects our market success to date and a strong product roadmap. Route Explorer is now helping manage IP networks in dozens of global enterprises -- including financial, retail and pharmaceutical firms -- as well as educational institutions, government and military agencies, and some of the world's largest service providers. The new funding will let us solidify our industry-leading position, introduce major new functionality, and accelerate our marketing and sales efforts across a broad spectrum of customers worldwide."

Stephen K. Smith, general partner at Masthead Venture Partners, has joined Packet Design's board of directors. "We see route analytics as a key emerging market, and Packet Design as the clear leader in that market," Smith said. "Two years after introducing the concept of route analytics to the industry, Packet Design has successfully executed on the concept, continually improved and enhanced Route Explorer with new capabilities and protocols, and made major inroads into enterprise and service provider networks."

In addition to Smith and Brent, Packet Design's board includes Judy Estrin (chairman); Jack Bradley, Packet Design chief financial officer; Wes Raffel, general partner at Advanced Technology Ventures; and Yogen Dalal, managing partner at Mayfield.

Route Explorer sits in the network infrastructure as if it were a router, "listening" to routing-protocol exchanges, creating an accurate layer 3 topology map and analyzing routing events to let network engineers pinpoint and resolve routing problems quickly. All routing events are logged in a local data store, from which they can be analyzed and visualized in real time, or replayed later for forensic analysis or planning purposes. Route Explorer is the only route analysis tool to support all four major routing protocols in common use: OSPF, EIGRP, IS-IS and BGP.

About Packet Design, Inc.

Packet Design, Inc., develops a family of network appliances that improves the reliability, efficiency and predictability of IP networks by providing network-layer (layer 3) visibility into them. Packet Design, Inc., was spun out in March 2003 from Packet Design, LLC, the fourth networking company started by entrepreneurs Judy Estrin and Bill Carrico, who previously founded Bridge Communications, Network Computing Devices and Precept Software. The company's original seed funding was provided by Packet Design, LLC. For more information, visit http://www.packetdesign.com.