WOBURN, Mass. -- Acme Packet(R), the leader in session border control, successfully demonstrated interoperability with 26 other vendors at GMI 2004, the Multiservice Switching Forum (MSF) interoperability event, which took place October 4 - 16, 2004. Acme Packet Net-Net Session Directors (SD) were located at each of the four interconnected host network facilities that included British Telecom in Europe, Korea Telecom and NTT Communications in Asia and Qwest in North America. GMI 2004 is the MSF's global interoperability testing and verification event designed to demonstrate a deployable and operationally ready IP network with security features, enhanced quality of service (QoS) and network management. The Acme Packet session border controllers played an integral role in all four locations as they are critical to the end-to-end delivery of secure, high-quality IP services such as voice and video over IP.

"The companies that have committed to participating in GMI 2004 are the Who's Who of the telecommunications industry," said Roger Ward, MSF President. "The physical scenarios we have created for the event will stretch the technical capabilities of the participants by providing a demanding, realistic test setting. Participating companies will have a chance to showcase their products to the world's biggest carriers in a real-world environment."

All the test sites were interconnected by live network facilities, creating a realistic test environment to examine the interoperability and deployment of multiservice next-generation networks on a global scale. GMI 2004 tested application servers, media servers, service brokers, session border controllers, call agents, bandwidth managers, and other control and management systems against the specific protocols defined in MSF Interoperability Agreement (IA) specifications.

"At GMI 2004, Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers successfully interoperated with products from the world's leading IP networking vendors in four of the largest service provider networks on the planet - BT, KT, NTT, and Qwest," said Jim Hourihan, vice president marketing and product management, Acme Packet. "Acme Packet continues to exceed the requirements of service providers offering secure, high-quality hosted IP services across multiple IP networks. As the only session border controller tested in this global event, Acme Packet further validated that our products are purpose built to handle the stringent demands presented in the largest and most complex network environments."

The event tested basic point-to-point voice over internet protocol (VoIP) within a single service provider's network and then increased in complexity as value added services (including video), connectivity to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and direct connectivity between two VoIP carrier networks were demonstrated on a global basis.

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