Nortel and Ethos Networks to Strengthen Connection Oriented Ethernet

London, 15 April 2008: Ethos Networks, a pioneer in connection oriented Ethernet solutions, today announced that it has successfully completed extensive interoperability testing with Nortel's Provider Backbone Bridging Traffic Engineering equipment (PBB-TE) to boost Ethernet capabilities for carriers and service providers. This announcement follows testing by the two companies at Nortel's laboratory facilities in Ottawa, Canada.

During the testing Ethos' deterministic end-to-end Network Management System (NMS), part of the Ethos Carrier PBB-TE solution, managed and monitored a Nortel PBB-TE network. PBB-TE is a key carrier Ethernet technology pioneered by Nortel and being adopted in the industry to deliver reliable Ethernet services. The two companies demonstrated advanced capabilities that compliment PBB-TE technology as the transport for Next Generation Networks.

Ethos FCAPS NMS and Nortel PBB-TE network interoperability included managing and monitoring a PBB-TE network, including service & trunk management. As a result of the extensive testing, Ethos' solution was awarded the Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem certificate of compatibility.

Dr. Yuval Davidor, co-founder and CEO of Ethos Networks, explains:

"Carrier networks are becoming increasingly complex and complicated to operate. Addressing this issue is one of PBB-TE's strong points. We demonstrated several capabilities that not only simplify network administration but can take carrier networks further. One example is how we can combine PBB-TE's centralized control plane with Ethos provisioning technology.

"The result is a multi-constraint provisioning that goes beyond path selection, taking into account business aspects of services such as cost of delivery, the prediction of bottlenecks and oversubscription and the suggestion of optimal solutions. With a centralized control plane, provisioning processes can be taken much further. We actually have it all: offline powerful provisioning, rapid service deployments, global and local optimization. Whilst we originally developed these capabilities for Ethos' Dynamic TE Switches, the fact that they work successfully with the products of two different PBB-TE vendors, is testament to the virtues of PBB-TE technology."

"The Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem testing just completed with Ethos Networks, demonstrates the momentum Nortel is seeing in the industry to take advantage of Ethernet as a solution that is cost effective, simple to use, and has the ability to grow network capacity as demand increases," said Mike Adams, vice president of strategy and architecture, Metro Ethernet Networks, Nortel . "Clearly the ability to optimize the network as demonstrated with the Ethos Networks solution will be a compelling value proposition to service providers looking to scale their multi-vendor networks as PBT-enabled carrier Ethernet is rapidly adopted worldwide."

About Ethos Networks

Ethos Networks has pioneered connection oriented Ethernet by providing a dramatically enhanced solution for intelligent network traffic engineering. Ethos provides a complete solution including PBB-TE devices and a network management system combining management resource analysis and optimization. Ethos' solution utilizes advanced traffic engineering while employing Ethernet as a single transport technology thus creating a congestion free metro packet network and retaining the advantages of PBB-TE simplicity.

The Ethos platform is the first packet transport system of its type developed from the ground up with a service centric approach. Ethos'

carrier-grade transport solution enables the delivery of any network service with strict end-to-end assurances. With Ethos' solution carriers can guarantee end-to-end QoS and offer an unlimited variety of services, enabling the increase of revenues and reduction of the total cost of managing Ethernet networks.

Ethos Networks is a member of the Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem, an industry consortium committed to helping carriers meet the exponential growth in metro area networks.