Equinix, NeuStar Team Up

FOSTER CITY, Calif. -- Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq:EQIX - News), the leading provider of network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services, and NeuStar (NYSE:NSR - News), a provider of essential clearinghouse services to the global communications industry and Internet network operators around the world, today announced an agreement to jointly develop the first in a new generation of services to enhance the interconnection of networks providing advanced services under Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Trials for the new service are currently underway, and are open to interested participants, with a planned product introduction in the first half of 2006.

With the growing importance of IP based applications, network service providers and content providers are seeking new solutions that enable them to provide these performance-sensitive services to their customers in a cost-effective manner. The immediate benefits of the service aim to improve performance and lower costs of end-to-end Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls. However, of far more significance, this service will lay the foundation for rapid adoption of converged IP-enabled applications in voice, video, gaming, mobility and content streaming.

With more than 200 network service providers and the largest content providers operating within Equinix's Internet Business Exchange(TM) (IBX®) centers and Equinix's leadership in network and content data exchange, or "peering," the company is well positioned to leverage NeuStar's leadership with ENUM telephony and SIP standards development to build upon proven technologies to provide this solution. The new service will leverage many elements of NeuStar's SIP IX platform currently under trial.

SIP is the proposed standard for a number of advanced applications including voice, video, multimedia, instant messaging (IMS), multiplayer online games and virtual reality, with VoIP and IMS being the most immediate focus. Given the immaturity of standards and architectures for the interconnection of networks for end-to-end SIP services, such as VoIP, most services originating or terminating as SIP are constrained to their home network island, or, in the case of VoIP, still end up being routed through Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) gateways and legacy phone switches. This creates an additional process and adds unnecessary expense, reduces performance, and ultimately constrains the delivery of new services that can only be delivered on an entirely IP-enabled session.

The planned service will be comprised of three primary elements: an ENUM and SIP-redirect capable directory allowing providers to control which other providers can route traffic to them; a security model preventing attacks from the open Internet, and; interoperability to enable carriers with different vendors or architectures to work with each other. ENUM is a supporting standard for VoIP and other services that leverages Domain Name System (DNS) functionality to determine the IP address of the phone number being called and supports end-to-end IP calls without the PSTN handoff. SIP Redirect provides a similar function for carriers that do not yet support ENUM.

In an effort to accelerate the adoption of the service on a global basis, Equinix is supporting NeuStar's development of similar SIP peering exchange services with other exchange providers in markets outside of those covered by the Equinix-NeuStar agreement.

"As the adoption of SIP services, such as VoIP, increases and more sessions are originating and terminating on SIP networks, there is a strong and increasing demand for a high-performance platform for the exchange of these sessions between service providers," said Peter Van Camp, CEO of Equinix. "We are pleased to be working with NeuStar on this important initiative which will provide the vital infrastructure to open the door to a whole new era of converged IP-enabled applications in voice, video, gaming, mobility and content streaming."

Equinix Inc.

NeuStar Inc.