Spirent Communications Introduces Service Assurance for Optical Infrastructures.

Business Editors & Technology Writers

SUPERCOMM 2002

Booth #12017

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 3, 2002

Spirent Communications(TM), a wholly owned business group of Spirent plc (NYSE:SPM) (LSE:SPT), today announced the industry's first management platform for assuring service across a complete optical infrastructure -- from the various access technologies to metro to long haul networks.

CenterOp for Optical(TM), the latest addition to Spirent's family of CenterOp service quality management platforms, is the first service assurance solution to bridge the critical evolutionary gap between legacy optical networks and the evolving next-generation networks, especially metropolitan area networks (MANs). CenterOp for Optical is one of several new Spirent solutions being introduced and demonstrated at Booth #12017 during SUPERCOMM in Atlanta, June 4-6.

"The deployment of intelligent optical networks over the past two years will drive more spending for integrated OSS systems that extend optical element and network management systems supplied from optical core switch and edge device manufactures," said Patrick Kelly, senior analyst, OSS, for RHK. "The mix of GbE, SONET and IP-VPNs will require metro service providers to manage the mix of these end delivery technologies, where the underlying network may be all-intelligent optics."

RHK, a leading market research and consulting firm specializing in the public telecommunications network, has forecast that the metro optical management market will grow at a 53 percent CAGR, from $95 million in 2001 to $515 million in 2005.

"As service providers move into next-generation technologies, they need a unified service quality management platform to automate support for both traditional and next-generation optical infrastructures," said Jim Schleckser, president of Spirent Communications - Service Assurance. "We developed CenterOp for Optical to eliminate the need to stitch together dedicated systems from different vendors and multiple systems for multiple technologies -- service providers benefit from an extendable platform that is easy to deploy, learn and use."

With CenterOp for Optical, service providers can extend the value and life of their investments in SONET/SDH and corresponding operation support systems (OSSs), while accommodating the evolution towards an infrastructure based on optical edge devices (OEDs) and multiservice provisioning platforms (MSPPs). CenterOp enables visibility into and management of all these items at once, regardless of technology, vendor or service.

CenterOp for Optical combines the following key components:

-- Fault and performance management capabilities: these enable service
providers to monitor service performance across the network, ensure Quality of
Service (QoS) for each service, and proactively isolate and resolve issues in
each service before they become revenue-affecting problems.

-- Testing capabilities: a combination of hardware- and software-based probes
allow CenterOp for Optical to rapidly and accurately diagnose service problems,
regardless of whether the service is transported via PON, Ethernet,
Next-Generation SONET or DWDM technologies.

-- Automated intelligence management capabilities: these streamline management
efforts by integrating information gleaned from fault, performance and test
operations, then presenting it to the right resource at the right time, helping
to provide efficient service delivery and accelerate mean time to repair
(MTTR).

About Spirent Communications

Spirent Communications is a worldwide provider of integrated performance analysis and service assurance systems for next-generation network technologies. Spirent's solutions accelerate the profitable development and deployment of network equipment and services by emulating real-world conditions in the lab and assuring end-to-end performance of large-scale networks. www.spirentcom.com

Spirent Communications is a wholly owned business group of Spirent plc, an international network technology company. Spirent plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: SPT). The company is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker: SPM; CUSIP number: 84856M209). www.spirent.com

Spirent, Spirent Communications and the Spirent logo are trademarks of Spirent plc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are held by their respective companies. All rights reserved.

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