NetLabs, Inc. & Washington University in St. Louis Partner on BGP Design for Metropolitan Access and Internet 2

["NetLabs" <>]

NetLabs, Inc. & Washington University in St. Louis Partner on BGP Design for
Metropolitan Access and Internet 2

ST. LOUIS, Mo.-January 13, 2003-Washington University in St. Louis Utilizes
NetLabs Engineering Expertise for Metropolitan BGP Network Design

NetLabs, Inc., a leading provider of network design and infrastructure
engineering services, and Washington University in St. Louis, one of the
world's leading teaching and research universities, announced an agreement
to provide BGP engineering services to the St. Louis Internet Access
Consortium (SLIAC). Internet 2 is a consortium being led by over 200
universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop
and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the
creation of tomorrow's Internet.

Universities, governments, and large enterprises face a daunting challenge
as new network partners and service providers attach to the edge of their
networks. As networks expand, the internal BGP network designs become
proportionally complex and difficult to manage. "In many instances, large
enterprises are beginning to resemble small ISP's or service providers given
the extent and reach of their internal network infrastructure and their
connections to other service providers and extranet business partners," said
David Sandel, Chief Technical Officer for NetLabs, Inc.

Drawing on NetLabs extensive Service Provider and BGP design experience,
NetLabs helped resolve Washington University and SLIAC's BGP design issues
by providing a forward-thinking, scalable solution to support a large
network with a large number of subscribers. Moreover, NetLabs created a
design with custom safeguards to protect access networks (customers) and the
I2 backbone in the event of routing errors propagated by individual
subscriber networks.

 "As we went through the design process for the SLIAC network, we began to
realize that SLIAC more closely resembles a cooperatively owned ISP service
than a simple layer 2 inter-connection between member partners and the
Internet 2 backbone at Indiana University in Indianapolis," said Steve
Wiese, Associate Director of Network Operations at Washington University.

David Barmann, Senior Network Engineer with NetLabs added, "when we met with
Washington University and the SLIAC engineers, it became apparent that
NetLabs needed to create a BGP design that would provide Internet 2 access
with a minimal amount of policy work at the edge of each members network."

"Once we worked through the various requirements and design issues of the
SLIAC network and individual members networks, NetLabs helped us to build
safeguards into the design to protect each members network in the event that
a routing error was propagated between member networks. We are very
satisfied with the design that NetLabs proposed for the SLIAC network," said
Steve Wiese.




About Washington University

Washington University in St. Louis is a medium-sized, independent
university, dedicated to challenging its faculty and students alike to seek
new knowledge and greater understanding of an ever-changing, multicultural
world. The University is counted among the world's leaders in teaching and
research, and draws students and faculty to St. Louis from all 50 states and
more than 110 nations.  The University offers more than 90 programs and
almost 1,500 courses leading to bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in
a broad spectrum of traditional and interdisciplinary fields.


About SLIAC

The St. Louis Internet Access Consortium (SLIAC) supports regional research
and education networking and provides economical and scalable access to
Internet2, commodity Internet and other network services.  SLIAC members
include Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis University, and the
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.


About NetLabs Inc.

NetLabs is a leading provider of network engineering and network
infrastructure engineering services. NetLabs designs and deploys
high-bandwidth metropolitan and wide-area networks, provides advanced
product development and engineering services specific to the design and
implementation of those networks for businesses, state and local
governments, and universities.

For additional information see NetLabs website:

Phone: 314-655-3033
Email: 

Web: www.netlabs-sp.com




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