Press Release

Varros Telecom and Data Connection Announce an MPLS Product Alliance

Data Connection's Industry Leading MPLS Protocol Solution Is Set To Interoperate With Varros' Optical Performance and Service Management Solutions

Addison, Texas and London, UK: June 4, 2001. Varros Telecom and Data Connection Limited (DCL) today announced their plan to integrate their respective MPLS solutions, providing their customers a management solution for optical networking equipment. Together, these solutions address the new challenges of providing end-to-end optical networking and Optical Virtual Private Networks (OVPNs).

"This partnership provides our Original Equipment Manufacturers with the flexibility of adding a complete managed MPLS solution to their product portfolios, greatly enhancing their value-add to their Service Provider customers," said Ben Miller, Business Unit Manager for Data Connection's MPLS Group.

Optical Virtual Private Networks (OVPNs) is a key enabling technology for the next generation optical networks, providing high bandwidth users with connectivity and privacy. MPLS offers important improvements in provisioning and management of OVPNs. Traffic Engineering MPLS protocols (such as RSVP-TE) can signal optical paths across the Internet giving OVPN access sites dedicated bandwidth and private connectivity for the OVPN users.

"With the projected proliferation of wavelength-based services and rapidly increasing demand for bandwidth and channels, Service Providers will be challenged to improve network performance, reduce the overall cost per channel and offer new services to their customers," said Shailesh Negandhi, President and CEO of Varros Telecom. "The integration of our products with DCL's provides our customers with a complete Optical Wavelength Management solution that enables a new class of end-to-end wavelength services."

Varros recognizes the need for Intelligent Optical Networking and is building an integrated portfolio of next-generation products that provide:

• Management solutions that facilitate migration to optical networks without requiring forklift upgrade of the communication networks
• Differentiated Optical Element-Network Management solutions that drastically reduce development and deployment cycles for equipment vendors and provide competitive differentiation for their products
• Optical Performance Management solutions for Optical Wavelength, Power and Capacity Management, which enable Service Providers to improve performance of their network and reduce cost of their operation
• Optical Service Management solutions for Provisioning Management, Network Planning and Optimization, Quality of Service Reporting, Optical Virtual Private Network Management or Optical Virtual Path Service, and Service Level Agreement Management, which enable new revenue generating opportunities for Service Providers

Varros and Data Connection will integrate their embedded and network management products using a standardized set of SNMP MIBs and other interfaces, providing their Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) customers with rapid network management application integration, and automatic interoperability with other vendor's equipment. Varros also offers the V.Agent Practice that provides SNMP agent/sub-agent development and customization services to assist Network Equipment Manufacturers with MPLS integration with higher-level optical management systems.

About DC-MPLS

DC-MPLS is a fully portable carrier-class implementation that sets the industry standard for performance, scalability and robustness. Its architecture is easily extensible, provides full MIB support and enables fault tolerant and distributed hardware configurations.

DC-MPLS provides a full range of function, including RSVP-TE, CR-LDP and LDP signaling protocols, and protocol extensions for the full range of MPLS applications, including traffic engineering, optical provisioning and VPNs. Many leading MPLS equipment manufacturers use DC-MPLS and some of them are listed at www.dataconnection.com/mpls/customer.htm.

Data Connection is heavily involved in the MPLS standardization process and provides market education through highly regarded white papers available on its website. Topics include a comparison of RSVP-TE and CR-LDP signaling protocols, Protection and Restoration in MPLS networks, and VPNs.

About Data Connection Limited

Data Connection Limited (DCL) is the leading independent developer and supplier of ATM, MPLS, MGCP/Megaco, SCTP, SIP, SS7, Conferencing, Unified Messaging, Directory and SNA portable products. Customers include 3Com, Cabletron, Cisco, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM Corp., Lucent, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, NCR, SGI and Sun. Data Connection is headquartered in London UK, with US offices in Reston, VA and Alameda, CA. It was founded in 1981 and is privately held. During each of the past 19 years, its profits have exceeded 20% of revenue. Last year sales exceeded $30M, of which 90% were outside the UK, mostly in the US, leading to the company's second Queen's Award for outstanding export performance.

About Varros Telecom

Varros Telecom develops network management and operational support solutions (OSS) that specifically address the challenges posed by next- generation optical networks. Varros' products and services are targeted to the needs of Service Providers, Optical Subsystem and System Manufacturers. Based outside of Dallas, Texas, Varros was founded in 1997.

Contacts

Data Connection is a trademark of Data Connection Limited and Data Connection Corporation. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.