Press Release

Data Connection Ships IS-IS, Completing IP Routing Protocol Suite

DC-ISIS joins DC-OSPF and DC-BGP to provide a comprehensive IP Routing protocol suite for scalable, fault-tolerant next generation applications

London, UK: November 4, 2003. Data Connection Limited (DCL), the world's leading provider of communications protocol software, today announced shipping of its Intermediate System - Intermediate System (IS-IS) protocol product, DC-ISIS. DC-ISIS fulfils a strong market demand for a modern IS-IS implementation; it has already been licensed by a number of equipment manufacturers, who have been using an initial release of the product for several months.

DC-ISIS is a fully portable, source code solution that implements full mandatory IS-IS protocol support, including ISO 10589 and RFC 1195, together with enhancements including GMPLS and Traffic Engineering extensions, Equal Cost MultiPath (ECMP), HMAC MD5 authentication and domain-wide prefix distribution. It is designed for the most demanding applications, with exceptional reliability, scalability up to thousands of interfaces and millions of routes, and support for multi-instance virtual routers, distribution and non-stop forwarding.

DC-ISIS fits into the same architectural framework as DCL's other IP Routing protocol products (including DC-OSPF and DC-BGP) and can be easily integrated with DC-MPLS to provide a complete control plane solution for TE routers, or can be used on its own or with third-party products. This shared framework includes two protocol independent components.

• DC-Routing Table Manager (DC-RTM): DC-RTM communicates with all routing protocols in a device, either supplied by DCL or third-party, to build a complete routing table. It supports equal cost multipath routes, routes imported and exported between protocols, and multiple instantiation for hardware distribution and redundancy.
• DC-Constraint-based Shortest Path First (DC-CSPF): DC-CSPF works with DC-ISIS and DC-OSPF to provide traffic engineering network state information, and calculate full source routes across a network satisfying requested constraints. It caches routing trees for similar requests, can calculate disjoint routes for protection and restoration, and supports multiple instances for distribution and redundancy.

DC-ISIS, in common with all DCL's protocol products, has been developed according to DCL's highly rigorous processes, which greatly reduce the time to market and engineering effort required for customers building carrier-class network devices. It operates within DCL's unique "N-BASE" environment, which is shared by DCL's other protocol products. The N-BASE has been used in a wide range of networking devices over the past 10 years, and has proven its portability, its scalability, and its performance, at the very highest levels of resilience and availability demanded by the leading carriers.

Further information on DC-ISIS can be found at www.dataconnection.com/iprouting/isis.htm

About Data Connection Limited

Data Connection Limited (DCL) is the leading independent developer and supplier of IP Routing, LMP, MPLS, SIP, MGCP/Megaco, ATM, Conferencing, Unified Messaging, Directory and SNA portable products. Customers include CIENA, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM Corp., Lucent, Microsoft, NEC, Nortel Networks, Siemens and Sun.

Data Connection is headquartered in London UK, with US offices in Alameda, CA, Dallas, TX and Reston, VA. It was founded in 1981 and is privately held. During each of the past 20 years its profits have exceeded 20% of revenue. Last year sales exceeded $40M, of which 90% were outside the UK, mostly in the US. This large proportion of overseas sales has led to the company being awarded two Queen's Awards for outstanding export performance.

For more information, see www.dataconnection.com.

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