Enabling the enhancement of network infrastructure and deployment of high-value, customized services

ATLANTA, GA - 05/29/02

Spirent Communications?, a wholly owned business group of Spirent plc (NYSE: SPM and LSE: SPT), today announced new testing solutions to help service providers and network equipment manufacturers better develop and deploy advanced Metro network solutions, with support for the Martini networking draft of MPLS and virtual LANs (VLANs). These and other products from Spirent’s portfolio will be demonstrated at booth #12017 at SUPERCOMM in Atlanta, GA, June 4-6.

The IETF’s Martini drafts for MPLS define encapsulation and label-distribution mechanisms for handling various protocols across an MPLS network. Spirent’s new Martini traffic generation and analysis capabilities enable performance testing of the signaling and data plane implementations of provider edge devices, as well as functional and capacity testing of the control plane. This latest addition positions Spirent as providing the only solution capable of analyzing the behavior and performance of Ethernet, Ethernet with VLANs, Frame Relay, ATM, HDLC, and PPP encapsulated tunnels in layer 2 MPLS-VPN provider edge and core routers.

With the addition of this new capability, Spirent now offers the most comprehensive system focused on the test issues facing the deployment of Metro networks. Other elements include testing for enhanced RFC2547bis and Metro turn-up testing. In the area of routing, Spirent now offers the industry’s first large scale control plane test capability, sophisticated traffic generation and analysis up to 10Gbps (SONET and Ethernet) and routing emulation for OSPF, BGP, RIP and IS-IS, in addition to comprehensive conformance and performance test suites.

Applications include emulation of thousands of customer edge and core routers – pushing routers to capacity to predict points of performance degradation or failure. This enables service providers to quickly and accurately characterize their RFC-2547 routers under fully loaded conditions and accelerate their proper deployment.

The new Metro applications are matched with the highest performance processing from Spirent’s new mAX IP test processing systems. Only Spirent supports the necessary wide range of next-generation and legacy interfaces, including SONET, Ethernet, ATM, and T1, E1, DS-3, E-3 Frame Relay.

This breadth of technology alone is an important factor as service providers introduce competitive services while maximizing returns on legacy applications.

In addition to these new products, Spirent continues to invest in and improve upon existing market-leading solutions. Among them, the TeraRouting Tester (TRT), which currently supports more than 300 routing sessions per port over three different protocols (RIP, BGP and OSPF). This functionality, combined with VLAN test capabilities, tests and verifies the performance of next-generation Ethernet switches and routers and sets Spirent’s TRT solution apart. Service providers and equipment manufacturers will find true value in TRT’s integrated control and data plane routing tests, including system-level and configuration analysis of routed networks.

“Spirent is working with many of the industry’s leading equipment manufacturers and service providers to advance the deployment of new routing solutions and the services that will enable providers to see a return on investment sooner and preempt deployment issues,” said Bahaa Moukadam, vice president of product marketing, Spirent Communications. “Scalable test solutions with support for a wide-range of interfaces and the latest protocols and standards are essential to comprehensive testing of Metro routing solutions.”

Spirent’s Metro routing test solutions are designed to provide customers with the most advanced set of test features, in addition to test methodologies and access to scripting resources, which help customers get their tests running more quickly and with greater ease. The depth and breadth of these solutions provides customers a clear view into the performance of a device under real-world and worst-case conditions.