INDUSTRY

ROCKVILLE, MD -- Internet2(R) and Spirent Communications(TM) today announce a partnership dedicated to furthering the Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative. Spirent Communications, a wholly owned business group of Spirent plc (NYSE: SPM and LSE: SPT) and Internet2 will work together to understand and overcome performance limitations of advanced wide area networking. With engineering support and end-to-end performance analysis hardware and management software from Spirent, Internet2 can more quickly meet its short-term goal of establishing a performance measurement infrastructure across Internet2 campuses and labs. In addition, resulting new data will be shared with commercial network equipment makers and to the broader commercial Internet industry to fuel development of the next generation Internet architecture, services and applications. The first milestones in the project cover definition of network metrics and method of access for the Internet2 and industry communities. Internet2 is a research and development consortium led by more than 190 universities, working with more than 100 companies, government research laboratories and other organizations. Internet2 members have deployed an advanced networking environment that connects more than 3 million people. Consisting of local, regional and national networks, including Internet2 backbone networks that by the end of next year will be operate at 10 gigabits per second and implement native IPv6. The Internet2 End-to-End Performance Initiative seeks to create a predictably high-performance network environment that supports the advanced applications being developed, tested and deployed by the Internet2 community. "This is a great opportunity to advance network understanding with our state-of-the-art service assurance system on one of the world's most advanced and complex networks," said My Chung, president of Spirent Communications. "Spirent's service assurance system will collect and analyze critical QoS metrics from a new generation of Spirent network probes based on our award-winning performance analysis products. The system will provide the Internet2 community with automated notification of performance trends, to better manage and fine tune network performance to create a stable and consistent environment in which the Internet2 community can thrive." Spirent's engineers and Internet2 scientists, teachers and students will collaborate using the Internet2 network environment to develop test practices and new solutions that optimize bandwidth; isolate network, transport and application layer processing needs; and test a network's ability to work under unprecedented loads and conditions. Advanced network applications to be analyzed include on-demand entertainment; remote control of scientific instruments, distance learning and collaboration using virtual reality; and grid computing. Today's commercial Internet does not support these types of applications. "This partnership takes an important step towards improving understanding how to deploy networks that meet the requirements of advanced network applications," said Ted Hanss, Internet2 director of applications development. "The large-scale, high-performance network environment established by the Interent2 community provides an ideal testbed for the commercial Internet of tomorrow." For more information visit www.internet2.edu/.