Agilent Buys Stress-Test IP

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced an agreement to purchase intellectual property (IP) from Synthetic Networks Inc. (SNI) for SNI’s NetPressure network stress tester.

Agilent has been offering NetPressure as the Agilent N4180A Network Tester since June 2003 under a distribution agreement with SNI. The tester is designed to accelerate the development and deployment of connection- and content-aware devices that enable delivery of enhanced network services, including firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and virus/URL/SPAM filtering gateways. The tester focuses on layer 4 through 7 performance testing, operates in an open systems environment, and is designed to scale easily and cost-effectively from small to large systems.

“By acquiring the IP for this tester, Agilent is making a long-term commitment to the future of data network testing,” said Dave Bass, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s Data Networks Division. “Content networking and security services are a growing aspect of data networks. In the test arena realistic traffic, scalability, cost per transaction, and breadth of protocol support are key. NetPressure leads in all these dimensions. Combining the NetPressure capability with the Agilent RouterTester allows Agilent to address testing needs from layers 2 through 7.”

“Agilent has the global resources and market leadership to drive this product forward,” said Andrew Copeland, president of SNI. “We feel the boost they will provide will serve everyone’s interest.”

Using the tester, equipment developers and enterprise and public network operators can easily and quickly load and stress new products with real-world, multi-protocol, and Internet-scale traffic under a wide variety of user-definable scenarios. Network developers can reduce development costs and cycles by identifying functional performance problems prior to product release. Network operators can use the tester to verify capacity and performance claims, perform multi-vendor evaluations and identify potential traffic issues in their labs prior to deployment.

Agilent Technologies Inc.