Press Release

Pittsburgh, PA, December 4, 2002—Laurel Networks, Inc., the first provider of high-performance service edge routers, today announced ST200™ Service Edge Router network availability features which dramatically improve the resiliency of ATM and Frame Relay services, Internet access and MPLS IP VPNs offered on IP/MPLS networks.

Independent carrier lab and in-house testing have shown the ST200 delivers significantly faster Layer 2 and IP service restoration than either ATM switches or IP routers. Upon detection of a link or adjacent node failure, the ST200 will:

· Switch over 50,000 Layer 2 connections per second: Only the ST200 combines unique fast failover hardware programming, configurable SONET timers and MPLS-based techniques to dramatically decrease ATM and Frame Relay service restoration time. This works in concert with RSVP hot standby and fast reroute and the hierarchical nature of MPLS to switch over 50,000 Layer 2 connections per second. As a result, ST200 service resiliency is higher than routers without these capabilities or ATM switches that must reestablish a large number of individual circuits. ST200 response is so rapid that an outage is often transparent to customers. This is especially critical at the edge of the backbone where path computation occurs, making restoration more challenging to implement.

· Perform IP service restoration in under 50 milliseconds: ST200 fast failover hardware programming uses innovative techniques to update IP forwarding table entries, resulting in Internet service restoration to customers in less than 50 milliseconds, regardless of the number of destination prefixes.

· Restore traffic destined to over 500 IP VPN sites in under 50 milliseconds: The ST200 offers the industry's most scalable IP VPN solution, supporting large numbers of VPNs per device. ST200 network availability features ensure these large numbers of VPN customers remain connected in the event of network disruptions, especially critical as IP VPN services continue to grow worldwide.

"Laurel has raised the bar for carrier network availability by delivering Layer 2 and IP service restoration that is dramatically faster than either ATM switches or IP routers," said Steve Vogelsang, vice president of marketing and co-founder, Laurel Networks. "This is a critical carrier requirement at the multi-service edge, where thousands of customers and a range of switched and routed services are aggregated in a single device."

With business-critical traffic traversing IP networks, edge routers must be designed to minimize the effect of network outages through device stability, redundancy, distributed hardware, software modularity and advanced recovery capabilities. ST200 Service Edge Router high availability features include a distributed design and redundant, hot-swappable components to minimize the impact of individual component failure, as well as modular, in-house developed software. To ensure maximum service provider uptime, advanced high availability features include graceful restart, state preservation, fast reroute and non-stop forwarding.

About Laurel Networks
Laurel Networks is leading the creation of The New Service Delivery Architecture to enable profitable delivery of data and IP services at the edge of carrier IP/MPLS networks. Laurel's service edge routers and service management software are evolving carrier architectures from multiple data networks to a single packet-switched architecture with minimal capital investment. Combining carrier-class routing, data switching, advanced QoS and high availability, Laurel service edge routers support both routed and switched services. This unmatched service agility allows carriers to evolve their service portfolio to meet changing market requirements. Laurel Networks was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.laurelnetworks.com.