Clearsight Analyzer 4.0 Delivers Enhanced Performance and Clarity for Protocol and Network Analysis

San Mateo, Calif.-- October 18, 2004 -- ClearSight Networks, the first company to offer network analysis tools for troubleshooting at the application layer, today announced the release of ClearSight Analyzer 4.0, its award winning network and application management solution. ClearSight Analyzer 4.0 incorporates enhanced support for VoIP, multi-tier / multi-segment ladder flows and an optimized navigation and user interface, resulting in an IT solution that minimizes time spent analyzing problems. New "expert reports" and ladder views assist network and application professionals with day-to-day network and protocol analysis duties as well as advanced initiatives, such as rolling-out VoIP systems or transitioning to the IPv6 standard. Additionally, the ClearSight Analyzer offers users the ability to build their own list of applications to monitor and troubleshoot.

Unlike most network analysis tools, the ClearSight Analyzer has always supported VoIP as part of its core feature set and now incorporates two new major protocols - MGCP and MEGACO - and enhances CODEC support, furthering its ability to reconstruct VoIP content in real-time. Moreover, the ClearSight Analyzer implements industry standard call quality indicators, including the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) and R-Value, that precisely score call quality and performance thereby allowing the end user, carrier or equipment manufacturer to employ a passive, independent tool to judge call quality on a per-call basis.

The ClearSight Analyzer product line has been IPv6 aware from inception, and the company has continued to refine related features to better distinguish IPv6 from IPv4 traffic. The ClearSight Analyzer separates traffic into summary totals that include important metric data, such as network times, latency and packet loss. Further IPv6 related enhancements include improvements to routing and multicast analysis.

"Network based applications have the potential to transform the way we do business, but success depends on understanding the interactions between those applications and the network," said Zeus Kerravala, vice president at Yankee Group. "As networks mature, analyzers must begin to support the growing number of complex networked applications, through an effective, easy-to-use tool. As network analyzers develop, they will enable faster response times by providing a clear path to the problem and support application and network professionals that are responsible for effective application management collectively support issues and their solutions."

"ClearSight's Analyzer is an important component of Holland & Knight's portfolio of IT management tools," says Art Paquet, Networks Manager for the law offices of Holland and Knight. "It can perform constant SLA tests to ensure the response time and availability of a variety of business applications. Additionally, ClearSight's graphic interface allows us to rebuild the problem from a user's perspective, while making network activity understandable for the people on my team responsible for application operations and performance, a function where traditional analyzers fall short."

ClearSight has made a name for itself with its broad application support and intuitive graphics, as well as the superior performance of its 10 Gigabit analyzer. At a glance, IT professionals of all disciplines - developers, carrier/operators and enterprise IT personnel - are able to troubleshoot problems, without the tedium of extensive packet decoding.

New features in ClearSight Analyzer 4.0 include:

Multi-Ladder Flows: Traditionally, network and application professionals verify packet flows by manually drawing out conversations - which can take hours. ClearSight Analyzer now supports up to 4 "hops" (A, B, C & D) in the conversation flow, thereby allowing the IT Professional greater understanding of multi-tier application flows from VoIP sessions to Web-based applications.

"App-Aware" Technology: App-Aware allows the user to add their own applications, helping to improve their understanding of the network and application performance by defining how their own applications should be displayed in ClearSight's unique Summary-View. There, the user can track the number of flows, servers, throughput and TCP-level errors encountered by the application. For example, administrators have the ability to add additional instant messenger applications or RTP applications such as video multi-cast or music-downloads not already tracked by the ClearSight Analyzer by default. ClearSight has also added IKE and KERBEROS to its growing list of supported applications.

Trending & Performance Data: Built within the ClearSight 4.0 engine is an embedded SQL database that logs and stores performance data that can be queried for improved history reporting and analysis.

Expert Reporting: New expert reports have been added to address VoIP and TCP. These reports examine such factors as jitter, out of sequence packet loss, latency and provide recommendations on what areas of the network need attention to deliver optimal performance.

"ClearSight is driven to provide the network management market with innovative technologies that support the requirements of our established customer base of enterprises and government agencies," said ClearSight Networks CEO A. William Berkman Jr. "The ClearSight Analyzer's broad network and application protocol support, enable our development teams to quickly implement unmatched product features, ahead of the curve."

Built on the company's award-winning and innovative technology, the ClearSight product line also includes ClearSight Analyzer 10/100 Full Duplex, ClearSight Analyzer Gigabit, ClearSight Analyzer Distributed and ClearSight Analyzer 10 Gigabit. ClearSight's family of monitoring and troubleshooting tools support the same breadth and depth of networking protocols as traditional analyzers, yet the intuitive depiction of the application conversations, along with the comprehensive flow analysis goes far beyond the capabilities of traditional analyzers. Using ClearSight's products, network and application professionals can see exactly what the user experienced when encountering network and application problems, enabling personnel across disciplines to quickly pinpoint network problems in real-time, leading to more effective use of resources and high availability of business critical applications.