Expert in quality, support and cost-engineering enters market with seven full-featured router choices that come complete with value-added features that others charge for

Bothell, WA, May 9, 2000 - Allied Telesyn International (www.alliedtelesyn.com), a worldwide leader in simplifying networking for businesses of all sizes, today announced that it is entering the router market with a product line that targets the small- to medium-sized business and education markets.

A natural extension of Allied Telesyn’s already diverse LAN product line for those markets, Allied Telesyn has been working since its acquisition of specialist WAN capabilities in mid-1999 to apply its strengths in cost and reliability engineering to its full line of WAN solutions. The first seven products in Allied Telesyn’s new AT-AR family of remote access routers are available now.

"We have a simple goal with this new product line," said Vince Ricco, Allied Telesyn’s Senior Vice President of Sales. "To provide choices. We want to provide the best overall value in WAN connectivity for small to medium-sized businesses. Overall value means a fair purchase price, and a feature-rich, quality product that’s backed-up with excellent development and support engineering, and excellent warranties. The feedback we’re getting already says we’re achieving our goal already."

The AT-AR family offers a selection of routers designed to support organizations with anywhere from four to 500 WAN access clients with different combinations of basic and primary ISDN, frame relay, X.25, T1 and dial-up analog support. Allied Telesyn’s emphasis on standards-based features that guarantee full interoperability with existing networks is carried through in these products. These routers are shipped complete: including the operating system and advanced features for security, management and performance as part of the basic AT-AR router package. With US List prices ranging from $325 for the AT-AR130, a basic SOHO-focused router, to $1095 for the AT-AR720, a router that incorporates state of the art network security and VPN capability, these routers represent an incredible value.

"We’re raising the standard for the industry. No nickel-and-diming," adds Ricco. "Our approach to packaging – including everything that the client will want in terms of software and features is an honest approach."

One of Allied Telesyn’s early customers in the education market was Seattle-area Northshore School District. "Allied Telesyn’s products blew me away – first with the feature set, then, with the price. These routers present an unbelievable value. They are consistently better-priced, and extremely reliable," said Jon Wiederspan, the district’s Network Operations Manager.

They’re ideal for the ISPs environment as well. Chicago-based UNETY Systems is using AT-AR350 routers to support clients’ T1 connectivity. "We chose to go with the back-to-back router pair configuration because it makes the most sense for a growing company like ours," said Sandra Wearne, UNETY’s President and CEO. "As we sell more T1 service, we just add the router pair to do the job. Allied Telesyn made that growth-oriented reasoning work well for us with reliability, a robust feature set and pricing that makes pay-as-you-grow practical."

Allied Telesyn AT-AR Series Routers