GOVERNMENT

Chiaro Networks, developer of true infrastructure-class IP/MPLS routing platforms, today introduced LDP and RSVP stateful protection as an extension of its Enstara platform's STateful Assured Routing (STAR) technology. This new extension will allow STAR to support MPLS protocols. Chiaro is demonstrating these new capabilities in Booth #302 at the 7th Annual MPLS 2004 International Conference, being held in Washington, D.C., through October 19. "The Enstara IP/MPLS router is designed not only for unparalleled high availability, but also for extensibility," said Ken Lewis, president and CEO of Chiaro Networks. "From the outset, one of the principal Enstara design goals was to provide an architecture to apply stateful protection to the critical processes on the router. Initially we focused on the key IP routing protocols. Now we have incorporated the critical MPLS protocols. As network technologies evolve, we will be able to add more protocols and processes under the STAR umbrella." Chiaro will hold a live demonstration of the Enstara platform's new capabilities in its MPLS 2004 booth. In the demonstration, Agilent's N2X Router Tester will be used to generate line-rate traffic, as well as BGP, OSPF, RSVP and LDP adjacencies. STAR technology will maintain data forwarding and control plane state during repeated fail-overs of the master control processor. "High availability is the key capability that is enabling the converged network," said Jennifer Liscom, a principal analyst in Gartner Research. "With MPLS gaining importance as the foundational protocol to converge networks, it is significant that Chiaro is providing stateful protocol protection of LDP and RSVP-TE in its Enstara core platform." Because core routers utilize both IP and MPLS traffic at the same time, enabling converged networks means that core routers must offer true high availability to protect both types of traffic. The significance of Chiaro's development is that the Enstara platform is the only core router on the market today to offer complete protection of a carrier's IP and MPLS traffic. The Enstara platform's ultra-high availability and extensibility derive from its STAR technology, a new approach to reliability that preserves the state of routing protocol sessions during failure, software upgrades or other maintenance events. STAR technology protects against unplanned outages, which not only represent a significant majority of failures encountered in telecommunications networks, but also are the failures that cost carriers both money and customers. In addition to open demonstrations of the Enstara portfolio with the STAR MPLS extensions in its booth at MPLS 2004, Chiaro's Eric Brendel, senior network architect, will participate in a panel discussion at the show in which equipment vendors will provide their perspectives on MPLS. The MPLS protocol standards are designed to improve the movement of traffic through IP networks. MPLS 2004 is the premier event on the subject of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), Generalized MPLS (GMPLS) and emerging Internet technologies. MPLS 2004, sponsored and supported by Isocore and other leaders of the Internet industry from both the service provider and vendor communities, showcases the latest IP/MPLS and optical products and services during three days of conference and exhibits. Enstara: the First Infrastructure-Class IP/MPLS Platform The Chiaro Enstara router, the world's first highly available infrastructure-class IP/MPLS platform, defines infrastructure-class with the ultra reliability, versatility and product longevity required to alleviate telecommunications carriers' "crisis of cost." Integrating a number of Chiaro technological breakthroughs -- and the result of applying expertise in the fields of networking, supercomputing, telecommunications and photonics -- the intelligent, carefully architected Enstara platform results in no less than the transformation of IP networks. Key to the Enstara platform's ability to deliver infrastructure-class capabilities is Chiaro's STateful Assured Routing (STAR) technology, which enables 99.999% (five nines) availability with seamless, transparent protection of hardware and software during switchover following failures and maintenance activities, including "hitless" upgrades. With STAR protocol protection, the impact of equipment failures and maintenance events is not only minimized, it is unnoticed by other parts of the network. The Enstara platform's modular distributed software architecture provides automatic fault detection and recovery, intelligent fault monitoring and network stability, with software modules added or upgraded as needed. Rapid and early detection of software failures and imminent failures provides fast switchover and recovery. The Enstara platform features a "no single point of failure" architecture, designed from the ground up with internal redundancy, which eliminates the need to deploy multiple routers. Available in configurations for different applications and system sizes, the Enstara portfolio offers telecommunications service providers a powerful new way to achieve unprecedented cost savings. Background: Chiaro Networks is the provider of the Enstara(TM) router, the industry's first highly available infrastructure-class IP/MPLS platform. The company, with headquarters in Richardson, Texas, has developed the Enstara portfolio with the goal of solving the "crisis of cost" issues facing service providers, reducing capital expenditures per PoP by more than 60 percent. With strong support from the venture capitalist and technology communities, Chiaro has secured $210 million to date from backers such as Intel Capital, Siemens Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and STAR Ventures. The company also boasts a Technology Advisory Board that comprises business leaders and academics from MIT and Stanford University. For more information on the company, visit www.chiaro.com.