Press Release

Pittsburgh, PA, December 10, 2002—Laurel Networks, Inc., the first provider of high-performance service edge routers, was declared the edge router of choice in Light Reading's Edge Router Test, the most comprehensive independent edge router test ever conducted. The nine-month evaluation was performed by independent test facility Network Test using the largest edge router test bed ever implemented.

The edge router evaluation tested the scalability of BGP, OSPF and IS-IS protocols to unprecedented levels and included the largest independent evaluation of Layer 2 and Layer 3/IP VPN performance. Additional tests conducted included throughput/latency, failover/resiliency and QoS enforcement.

"The Light Reading Edge Router Test publicly validates what carrier trials and deployment have already proven, that the ST200 delivers the routing, Layer 2 and IP VPN scalability required by the world's largest carriers," said Steve Vogelsang, vice president of marketing and co-founder of Laurel Networks. "The ST200 also performed flawlessly in QoS tests, while besting ATM switch and IP router performance in failover testing. Beyond performance and scalability, Laurel's unique ability to support all carrier data services with unmatched service agility is precisely why the ST200 is commercially deployed in carrier networks in the US, Europe and Asia."

"This was a truly massive undertaking," said David Newman, president of Network Test, the lab that conducted the evaluation. "We scaled several technologies to unprecedented levels, including Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs and all of the major IP routing protocols. Laurel's results here show that its ST200 router is ready to withstand the rigors of metro edge routing."

Laurel Test Result Highlights

· MPLS Martini Scalability: Laurel established 39,232 VCs (the test bed limit) in this test to determine the maximum number of Martini-draft virtual circuits the ST200 can establish and use under load. This level of scalability is critical to carriers looking to evolve the tens of thousands of connections on ATM and Frame Relay networks to an IP/MPLS network.

· MPLS IP VPN Scalability: In a test to determine the maximum number of RFC 2547bis VRF (virtual routing and forwarding) instances a single edge router can establish and use, Laurel established 2,420 VRFs using OSPF (the test bed limit). In a second test to determine the maximum number of VPN routes, Laurel supported 2.18 million routes. MPLS IP VPN scalability is critical to carriers looking to expand this fast-growing service, and a key to delivering profitable services.

· QoS Enforcement: Laurel achieved perfect results on all QoS tests. Laurel forwarded all packets in the mixed class forwarding test to determine the ST200's ability to enforce loss boundaries for unicast and multicast traffic. In the per-customer priority queuing and fairness test, the ST200 demonstrated its ability to meet performance guarantees of all traffic types. In the per-class rate shaping test, the ST200 achieved perfect shaping to the packet, demonstrating its ability to allocate predefined amounts of bandwidth to premium customers.

· Failover/Resiliency: The ST200 rerouted traffic destined to 512,000 BGP prefixes in 9.85 milliseconds in testing of primary ST200 uplink failure. Only the ST200 combines unique fast failover hardware programming, configurable SONET timers and MPLS-based techniques to deliver service resiliency that is higher than routers without these capabilities or ATM switches that must reestablish a large number of individual circuits.

· BGP Route Table Capacity: Laurel supported over 5.4 million routes in this test to determine the maximum number of BGP4 prefixes the ST200 will learn and propagate. This is more than double the capacity achieved by the highest-performing core router in Light Reading's previous core router test.

· BGP Peering Capacity: Laurel supported 1,012 BGP peering sessions in this test. BGP peering capacity is important since an increasing percentage of customers run EBGP for Internet or IP VPN services.

· Forwarding Table Capacity: The ST200 supported 849,990 unique routes in this test, nearly eight times more than the current Internet routing table.

· OSPF Link-State Database Capacity: Laurel supported 2 million routes in this test to determine the maximum number of OSPF link-state advertisements the ST200 will learn and propagate.

· IS-IS Link-State Database Capacity: Laurel supported 3,394,050 routes (the test bed limit) in this test to determine the maximum number of IS-IS LSPs and routes the ST200 will learn and propagate.

· Baseline Forwarding and Latency: Laurel achieved maximum throughput and low latency in this test to determine baseline throughput, latency and jitter for routed IP traffic through the ST200 when forwarding traffic on all interfaces.

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.