RPR Alliance Bolsters Membership with Leading Semiconductor, Test, and Edge Vendors to Solve the High-Speed MAN Bottleneck.

Business/Technology Editors

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 20, 2002

ARRIS, Infineon, Intel, and Ixia Join RPR Alliance to Promote IEEE 

802.17 Standardization Effort Worldwide

The Resilient Packet Ring Alliance, an industry advocacy group promoting resilient packet ring (RPR) technology and its standardization by IEEE, today announced increased support from the semiconductor, test, and edge equipment provider market segments with the addition of four new members. ARRIS (NASDAQ: ARRS), providing broadband local access networks with innovative optical transport; Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX), a leading provider of communications ICs and fiber optics components; Intel Corporation; and Ixia (NASDAQ: XXIA), a leading provider of multi-port traffic generation and performance analysis systems, have joined other leading optical system and chip companies in the RPR Alliance.

"The addition of ARRIS, Infineon, Intel, and Ixia to our Alliance will help promote RPR -- on both the component and system level -- as an ideal solution to the increasing problem of exploding traffic on today's MANs and WANs," said Robert Love, president of the RPR Alliance. "RPR addresses the data bottleneck while providing significant benefits: it is truly carrier-class, highly resilient, data-optimized, low cost, and highly scalable. Now that we have a draft standard in the IEEE 802.17 working group and are honing its details, the Alliance is moving forward on its mission of education and its focus on interoperability. We welcome ARRIS, President, Intel, and Ixia to our Alliance membership, allowing us to gain valuable insight and support from the semiconductor, test equipment, and edge equipment market segments."

"We see RPR as an advancement with the potential to enhance our edge routers' value to ARRIS's cable provider customers," said Tom Cloonan, CTO-Broadband Division, ARRIS. "RPR should greatly reduce the multiple service operator's costs of deploying redundant ring architectures, allowing them to offer better service and reliability to their customer base with higher return on investment." "Our membership in the RPR Alliance emphasizes our commitment to the RPR efforts to further the rapid deployment of revenue-generating resilient packet ring networks by service providers," said Christian Scherp, vice president of marketing of Infineon's Optical Networking Business Unit. "We see strong market potential for low-power and small footprint RPR ICs for metro and wide area networks and commend the Alliance for its work in educating the marketplace regarding this new promising technology."

"RPR offers operators efficient, high-speed optical internetworking connectivity for the next generation of network deployments," said Charles Bettinelli, Ethernet product manager for Ixia. "Our support for RPR and the RPR Alliance underscores our commitment to providing performance verification tools to accelerate the development, deployment and acceptance of new emerging technologies."

The RPR Alliance was founded to support the standardization effort and educate the industry on the benefits of RPR. The Alliance provides input on the technology and market dynamics impacting RPR technology to the IEEE 802.17 working group that is developing the RPR standard, the first draft of which was developed in January 2002. The working group is assigned with defining a Media Access Control (MAC) protocol that will be used in local area, metropolitan area, and wide area networks (LANs, MANs, and WANs). With RPR, metropolitan area service providers can create high-speed, survivable ring networks designed for Internet protocol and other packet data. Moreover, compatibility and interoperability amongst RPR vendors will be a priority, thus allowing providers to create global networks without being overly reliant on one vendor's equipment.

About the Resilient Packet Ring Alliance

The RPR Alliance, founded in January 2001, is an industry advocacy group committed to the development of an RPR technology standard for the networking industry. The Alliance will promote the adoption of an RPR standard for LANs, MANs, and WANs by educating the networking industry about RPR technology and the benefits of an IEEE standard as well as by fostering multi-vendor interoperability. Principal members of the RPR Alliance include Alcatel, Alidian Networks, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Corrigent Systems, Lantern Communications, Luminous Networks, Mindspeed Technologies, Nortel Networks, and Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation. ARRIS, Avaya Communication, Chip Engines, Huawei Tech Co., Infineon Technologies, Intel, Ixia, NEC Corporation, Xilinx, and ZTE Corporation are participating members in the Alliance. For more information about the Alliance and the membership application, see www.RPRAlliance.org.

About ARRIS

ARRIS provides broadband local access networks with innovative optical transport, high-speed data and telephony systems for the delivery of voice, video, and data to the home and business. ARRIS complete solutions enhance the reliability and value of converged services from the network to the subscriber. Headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, USA, ARRIS has design, engineering, manufacturing, distribution, service and sales office locations throughout the world. Information about ARRIS products and services can be found at www.arrisi.com.

About Infineon

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the US from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In the fiscal year 2001 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 5.67 billion with about 33,800 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com.

About Intel Corporation

Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking, and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom.

About Ixia

Ixia (Nasdaq: XXIA) delivers powerful, distributed, multiport traffic generators, and performance/conformance analyzers for wire-speed verification of optical networking equipment, LAN, MAN, WAN multi-layer switches and routers, and sophisticated routing protocols. Its products utilize a variety of interfaces - Packet Over SONET, BERT, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet, and USB. Ixia's network operations applications address the industry's growing requirements for a higher level of control over network optimization, traffic engineering, traffic profiling, and security. Ixia's analysis solutions are distinguished by their accuracy, reliability, high port density, support for emerging protocol standards, conformance adherence, and adaptability to the industry's constant evolution. For more information, contact Ixia at 26601 W. Agoura Road, Calabasas, CA 91302; [phone], fax: [phone]; email: [e-mail] or visit http://www.ixiacom.com.