TRADE NEWS: Agilent Technologies' N2X Multiservices Test Solution Used to Validate Alcatel-Lucent Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) today announced that its N2X multiservices test solution was used by Isocore Corp. to validate the performance of the Alcatel-Lucent Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA). The N2X was the exclusive test system employed in Isocore's independent evaluation of the forwarding performance, service prioritization and recovery mechanisms of the Alcatel-Lucent TPSDA.

The test was the first in the industry to validate an entire end-to-end network architecture under a highly scaled mix of residential triple play and enterprise VPN services. The resulting test measurements offer service providers excellent insight into how the network architecture will perform in real-world deployment scenarios, and give confidence that services can meet subscribers' quality expectations.

Emulating the architecture, subscriber profiles, traffic types and protocol state characteristics of today's multi-service networks within a controlled lab environment was a significant challenge. The test bed included multiple Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Routers and 7450 Ethernet Service Switches, as well as 58 GbE/10 GbE ports of the Agilent N2X. Isocore chose N2X for its ability to simulate, scale and make measurements for the magnitude of subscribers and service traffic required to emulate mass deployment conditions.

"Before service providers deploy IPTV and other multi-play services, they need the confidence that their network can deliver those services at scale and with the quality their customers expect," said Rod Unverrich, business manager of Agilent's Data Networks Operation. "N2X allows NEMs and service providers to cost-effectively simulate the scale and complexity of real-world multi-play deployments and validate that their network architectures can meet strict performance, reliability and QoS requirements."

"The scalability and usability of the Agilent N2X was pivotal in evaluating the performance of the Alcatel-Lucent Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture," said Dr. Bijan Jabbari, president of Isocore. "We wanted this to be the industry's most comprehensive and valid assessment of a working triple play network. N2X equipped us with the ability to quickly emulate a very large number of triple play subscribers with different profiles and generate multi-class traffic to create a very realistic test environment."

Agilent's N2X test measurements confirm that the Alcatel-Lucent TPSDA performed very well under extreme scaling conditions. Traffic forwarding measurements that were run repetitively and overnight demonstrated minimal latency and low packet loss. Media Delivery Index video quality metrics were used to validate that quality of experience expectations were met on a per-subscriber basis. The full Isocore test report, including test parameters, is available at www.isocore.com/papers2.htm.

Experts from Isocore, Alcatel-Lucent and Agilent will be available to discuss the key results and lessons learned from these validation tests as part of a one-hour Light Reading webinar entitled "Putting the Alcatel-Lucent TPSDA to the Test" on May 31, 2007. From this webinar, service providers evaluating converged network solutions for mass deployment will learn about the test methodology used in this comprehensive end-to-end test to measure and validate key performance metrics on scalability, fault resilience, subscriber management and quality of experience. More details are available at www.agilent.com/find/n2x.

The Agilent N2X helps NEMs and service providers improve the time to market and quality of triple play service deployments by:

* simulating tens of thousands of subscribers;

* emulating dynamic subscriber behaviors such as channel zapping, new Internet connection requests and DHCP session flapping;

* generating multi-class triple play video, voice and Internet traffic, including 500 channels of standard and high-definition video and stateful TCP traffic;

* analyzing multi-class traffic-forwarding performance for thousands of subscribers per port, including Media Delivery Index metrics for IPTV;

* scaling multicast traffic, IGMP and multicast routing protocols to test whether a network solution is ready for widespread production roll-out; and

* replaying captured video and using protocol decodes to achieve better insight into performance problems.

The Agilent N2X is complemented by a wide portfolio of Agilent test solutions to provide a holistic approach to measuring and monitoring video service quality from R&D and lab-based performance validation, through to service assurance and network troubleshooting.

Additional information about Agilent's triple play test solutions is available at www.agilent.com/find/tripleplay.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

The Agilent N2X multiservices solution is available at a starting price of $20,000. More information is at www.agilent.com/find/n2x. Product photos are available at www.agilent.com/find/n2x_image.

About Isocore

Isocore provides technology validation, certification and product evaluation services in emerging and next-generation Internet and wireless technologies. Isocore is leading validation and interoperability of novel technologies including Carrier Ethernet, IPv6, IP Optical Integration, wireless backhauling and Layer 2/3 Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and currently focuses on IPTV service deployment architecture validation and design. Major router and switch vendors, service providers, and test equipment suppliers participate in Isocore activities. Isocore has major offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is the world's premier measurement company and a technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company's 19,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenue of $5.0 billion in fiscal 2006. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com.

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