France Telecom and N.E.T. Demonstrate Next Generation Broadband Network Architecture - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, April 24, 2000

Network Equipment Technologies (NYSE: NWK), a multiservice networking pioneer, announced Wednesday that France Telecom R&D employed N.E.T.'s broadband network access platform in a joint exhibit at ATM Dev'2000, a tradeshow held in March in Rennes, France. The prototype demonstrated subscriber service selection in the next-generation broadband network.

Next generation networks integrate high performance hardware as well as software networking technology to deliver high-speed broadband services, blending video, voice and data traffic over a packet-based network infrastructure.

"Deregulation has lead to aggressive competition among carriers and ISPs. Right now they are focused on building pools of bandwidth and offering high speed connectivity," said Hubert (Bert) A.J. Whyte, President and Chief Executive Officer of N.E.T. "Once these are in place, then service providers have a completely different challenge. They need to differentiate their services from their competitors with the flexibility to continually adapt to rapidly changing demands. With our service creation capability, we begin to demonstrate the ways in which service providers can achieve success with this new generation of networking."

Customers on next generation networks will be able to take advantage of such services as video or videoconference on-demand, web-enabled call centers and a host of mobility services, including the convergence of PDA and mobile phone technologies, as well as roaming capability between ISPs. Services will no longer be linked with the network infrastructure, but instead will be enabled through the unique architecture demonstrated by this prototypical network.

The architecture of next generation networks encompasses three layers: the enabling network infrastructure, the middleware layer and the added-value services running on servers in the distributed computing environment. The new services prototyped on the network exhibited by the two companies rely on the distributed computing environment, or middleware, that controls the network infrastructure. The services are built around a scalable platform, such as the one provided by N.E.T., which fits the next-generation network model.

As an example, a customer that wants to set up an on-demand videoconference interacts with the Web server via a downloaded applet to configure the parameters of the videoconference. The server then informs the middleware that a new connection with a given quality of service will be required end-to-end to deliver the service requested by the customer. The middleware programs the infrastructure to build the videoconference-dedicated permanent virtual circuit (PVC) using the GSMP protocol, and the circuit is created from one end to the other end of the "enabling infrastructure."

N.E.T. recently reorganized to focus on success in the broadband market. In June at Supercomm in Atlanta, the company will deliver its vision of enabling service providers to achieve a significant competitive advantage via a scalable technology with service creation capabilities as part of the switch architecture.

Network Equipment Technologies, based in Fremont, California, pioneered the concept of multiservice networking and has designed, developed and supplied multiservice wide area networks (WANs) used by service providers, government organizations and businesses worldwide since 1983. N.E.T.'s WAN products integrate voice, data and video traffic for ATM, frame relay, IP and ISDN service delivery. With more than 25,000 multiservice systems around the globe, N.E.T. serves approximately 1,750 customers in more than 75 countries. FMI: http://www.net.com .