ARUBA NAMED THE "CLEAR CHOICE" FOR VOICE OVER WIRELESS IN THE INDUSTRY'S FIRST-EVER COMPETITIVE TESTING

Consistently Delivers the Highest Quality for Voice Calls with the Lowest Delay, Jitter and Roaming Handoff Times

SUNNYVALE, CA, January 12, 2005 - Aruba Wireless Networks (Aruba) today was named Network World's "Clear Choice Award" winner in the industry's first-ever competitive testing of voice over wireless fidelity (VoFi) products.

According to independent testing commission by Network World, Aruba's system was identified as the clear choice for implementing voice within a wireless LAN over competitive products from Cisco Systems, Chantry and Colubris. Other vendors claiming advanced capabilities for voice over WLANs, including Airespace, Meru Networks and Trapeze Networks, declined to participate.

"Aruba's gear just worked," said David Newman, president of Network Test, Inc., who performed the testing. "For network managers looking to deploy VoIP on WLANs in the near future, there are three choices: make very few calls, don't ever send data; or look for equipment, such as Aruba's, that handles time-sensitive traffic in a timely way," stated Newman.

Newman noted that the Aruba 2400 and 800 WLAN switches along with Aruba 61 grid points consistently delivered strong performance, posting generally excellent numbers, despite additional background data traffic or delay introduced during the tests.

Aruba's winning performance included:

• Best voice quality with and without QoS with consistent R-values above 75
• Lowest average delays under 22 milliseconds with jitter under 40 milliseconds
• Fastest roaming performance

"Network World has clearly separated industry fact from vendor fiction," said Partha Narasimhan, Wireless Architect at Aruba. "From the beginning we engineered our system to deliver enterprise speed, security and scalability for all traffic types regardless of the access method. The proof is always in the testing and the test results are definitive."

Voice transmissions over Wi-Fi technology are extremely sensitive to delay, packet loss and slow roaming times, particularly in the presence of data traffic. Unlike any system on the market, Aruba's WLAN switches integrate a patent-pending classification engine and unique queuing and scheduling mechanism. These capabilities let network managers automatically identify, classify and prioritize voice traffic through the Aruba system. Administrators, for example, can specify that only voice (eg. SIP) traffic be allowed on a specific SSID further securing the WLAN.

Test Details and Results

Network World's VoFi testing evaluated products on five key criteria: audio quality, QoS enforcement, roaming capabilities, features and price.

The testing examined a WLAN system's ability to consistently provide voice call quality. The tests utilized up to 14 of SpectraLink's NetLink e340 VoIP handsets and a SpectraLink SVP Server. Audio quality was measured for up to seven concurrent full-duplex calls. Up to one megabit of UDP background traffic was introduced on select tests with QoS enabled and disabled.

To determine call quality, Network World measured the R-value, an ITU specification (G.107) that quantifies packet loss, jitter and delay. The R-value threshold for near-toll-utility voice is generally considered to be around 75. VeriWave's WaveTest system was used to measure the critical metrics for the testing, such as the precise measurements of delay and jitter on wireless networks.

The test results showed the Aruba system consistently maintaining an R-value of over 75 for tests with and without QoS enabled. In addition, Aruba posted the lowest delay and jitter times with average delays ranging from 17.4 to 21.9 milliseconds and jitter averaging from 38.9 to 39.2 milliseconds even under load.

In addition, Network World's VoFi tests measured roaming times, the time needed for a call to move from one AP to another with APs attached to the same switch. Aruba "excelled in the roaming tests" demonstrating the fastest roaming performance with handoff times from a half-second to 1 second. These are worst case roaming times under AP failure conditions. In addition Aruba also provides the industries most scalable centralized encryption system eliminating the need to proactively distribute keys through proprietary fast roaming techniques greatly reducing overall system load and improving security when used with 802.1X authentication and opportunistic key caching techniques.

"This test is one of the most comprehensive ever conducted to verify real-world behavior of voice over Wi-Fi systems," said Eran Karoly, vice president of Marketing for Veriwave. "Network World's methodology not only addresses the voice quality a user can expect in a sterile environment, but more-importantly, the interaction between voice and other types of traffic that are present in an enterprise environment. Voice over Wi-Fi is becoming a major focus for enterprises everywhere and is just too strategic to be left to the claims of vendors."

"Enterprise customers demand a high level of performance and voice quality for Wi-Fi telephony applications," said Ben Guderian, director of market strategy for SpectraLink, a leading provider of wireless VoIP handsets. "We've seen Aruba's wireless system meet these demands in real world installations. These test results validate Aruba's capabilities and strengths."

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