ASCEND AND STRATACOM COLLABORATE TO ENABLE DELIVERY OF ADVANCED INTERNET
AND INTRANET ACCESS SERVICES

Companies Solve Access Bottlenecks and Scalability Limitations

SAN JOSE/ALAMEDA, CA, MAY 13, 1996 -- StrataCom, a leading network switch
supplier and Ascend Communications, a leading supplier of WAN access
servers, today announced a joint development that will address current
bottleneck problems between dial access servers and frame relay/ATM
switches.

The new capabilities will enable Internet Service Providers and carriers to
more cost effectively provide dial access services such as building
virtual private networks (Intranets) using the Internet. The new signaling
interface will also enable connections to be established dynamically
between Ascend dial access servers and StrataCom switches thereby
eliminating previous restrictions preventing more than one customer from
connecting into a single switch port.

Under the agreement, StrataCom and Ascend are cooperating in a joint effort
to develop, test and deliver an intelligent signaling interface between
dial access servers and frame relay/ATM switches that allow ISPs to
increase the price/performance by a factor of four. To assure widespread
adoption of the new interface by the industry, the specification is being
made available to other vendors at no cost for use on their dial access
products. Cisco, Microcom, and ControlWare are planning to implement the
specification within their respective dial access products.

The Dial Access Server Interface (DASI), significantly improves dial-up
(analog) and ISDN (digital) basic rate interface (BRI) access to existing
StrataCom frame relay and ATM-based networks. According to Dataquest, the
bulk of today's Internet access is at speeds below 64 kbps, with the
majority of that access represented by analog dial-up users.

"ISPs are looking for solutions that allow them to easily migrate dial-up
users to a high performance frame relay or ATM infrastructure thereby
taking advantage of their existing base of dial access servers," said John
Coons, director and principal analyst for wide area networking at
Dataquest. "Solutions must go beyond merely addressing ISDN which would
leave ISPs without support for the bulk of their customers who use analog
modems."

A NEW MODEL FOR PROVIDING CORPORATE INTRANET SERVICES

The joint development is aimed at helping ISPs and carriers provide more
robust, flexible and secure Internet and corporate Intranet service by
enhancing the connection-oriented environment provided by frame relay ATM
technology.

Corporate Intranets represent one of the fastest growing technology markets
and biggest opportunity for networkers. This is up from $476 million in
1995. And a recent survey of 50 major corporations by Forrester Research
Inc., revealed that 16 percent have corporate Intranets and 50 percent are
planning or considering implementation.

ASCEND/STRATACOM JOINT DEVELOPMENT

"Ascend and StrataCom are addressing some fundamental Internet and Intranet
issues concerning the scalability of dial access networks connected to
frame relay and ATM backbones," stated Sam Mathan, vice president of
carrier marketing for Ascend. "These backbones are limited by the static
assignment of permanent virtual circuits (PVCs) to access ports. With
DASI, Ascend and StrataCom have enabled more efficient use of network
bandwidth and switch access ports (frame relay and ATM) for Intranet,
Internet and remote LAN dial applications."

With frame relay-to-ATM service interworking, DASI now provides a means by
which analog and ISDN calls can be supported over an ATM infrastructure --
a fundamental requirement for many ISPs planning to migrate to higher
speed network environments.

Compared to alternative solutions, the new DASI will provide dramatically
higher-density call processing between Ascend and StrataCom equipment --
increasing call capacity by allowing virtual circuits to be dynamically
allocated without users having to upgrade equipment to support frame relay
switched virtual circuits (SVCs) [see technical note to editors]. DASI
also provides the added advantage of being able to interface to the
installed base of dial access servers.

USER BENEFITS

The benefits of DASI translate into higher availability and better
performance for end users. At the same time, Internet Service Providers
now have a more cost effective Internet dial-up solution that enables them
to make more efficient use of valuable network bandwidth and access
ports.

"We are essentially taking the virtual private networking concept -- which
has been widely successful within the voice world -- and applying it to
the Internet," stated Alex Mendez, vice president of marketing at
StrataCom. "Now Internet Service Providers can not only operate a more
robust and scaleable infrastructure, but they can provide more advanced
and secure corporate Intranet services to their customers."

Mendez noted that the current interface between a dial access server and
the network is limited in how many customers it can support by the number
of PVCs available on the switch access port. DASI removes this limitation
and the associated bottlenecks by enabling the dial access server to
dynamically establish a frame relay PVC based on the identity of the
calling party. With this method, PVCs are only used when a call is active
rather than being "nailed up."

"This saves network resources by allowing a large pool of virtual circuits
to be shared by all network users. In addition to providing a more
scaleable and cost effective dial-up solution for Internet applications,
the new DASI interface will be used to support analog, point-to-point
(PPP), and Serial Line Interface Protocol (SLIP) calls over
StrataCom-based frame relay and ATM networks.

AVAILABILITY

DASI will be available for $2,000 as a value-added feature of StrataCom's
INS Dial Access Switching application, and on Ascend's MAX family of
products as a standard feature, in the third quarter.

ASCEND

Ascend Communications, Inc. is a leading, worldwide provider of remote
networking solutions for corporate central sites, Internet Service
Providers' points of presence, remote offices, mobile workers and
telecommuters. Ascend develops, manufactures, markets, sells and supports
products which utilize bandwidth on demand to extend existing corporate
networks for applications such as remote LAN access, Internet access,
telecommuting, SOHO connectivity and videoconferencing/multimedia access.
Detailed information on Ascend products, news announcements, seminars,
service and support is available on Ascend's home page at the World Wide
Web site http://www.ascend.com.

STRATACOM

StrataCom, Inc. (NASD:STRM), based in San Jose, California, USA, develops,
delivers and supports FastPacket networking systems for ATM applications
in private wide area networks and public carrier service offerings, such
as Internet, frame relay and ATM. StrataCom's family of products,
including IPXR, IGX, BPX, AXIS, FastPAD, and EdgeConnect, is used to
integrate and transport a wide variety of corporate information, including
voice, data, video, LANs, image and multimedia traffic in narrowband to
broadband ATM network applications. Visit StrataCom's home page at
http://www.stratacom.com.

Technical Note To Editors

DASI: WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT WORKS

The new dial access service interface (DASI) is an intelligent signaling
interface that enables dial access server equipment to establish
individual connections on a dynamic basis. Ascend's MAX 4000, equipped
with DASI, receives end user modem or ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI)
calls and conducts the necessary authentication checks - presenting the
call to a standard frame relay port on a StrataCom switch.

The dial access server uses standard Q.931 call setup messages which
indicate to the switch the identity of the calling customers and also the
data link control identifier to be used. The call is then processed
through StrataCom's Intelligent Network Server (INS) to determine the
details of the frame relay connection that needs to be established. The
INS then instructs the switch to establish a connection from the DASI port
to the predefined destination frame relay port that is specified in the
subscriber database.

Ascend is headquartered at 1275 Harbor Bay Parkway, Alameda, CA 94502
Phone: 800-621-9578; fax 510-214-2300;
E-mail: info@ascend.com.
Ascend's World Wide Web address is http://www.ascend.com.
 
 =========================================================
 From the 'New Product News' Electronic News Service on...
 AOL (Keyword = New Products) and Delphi (GO COMP PROD)
 =========================================================
 This information was processed from data provided by the
 company/author mentioned. For additional details, please
 contact them directly at the address/phone# indicated.
 Trademarks are the property of their respective owners!
 =========================================================
 All submissions for this service should be addressed to:
 BAKER ENTERPRISES,  20 Ferro Dr,  Sewell, NJ  08080  USA
 Email:   rbakerpc@aol.com   --or--   rbakerpc@delphi.com
 =========================================================
