Agilent Technologies' OmniBER offers most accurate 2.5 Gb/s jitter measurements for OTU-1 and OC-48/STM-16

Analyzer offers greater insight into higher layer services through Ethereal protocol decode support

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 31, 2005

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that the industry's most accurate 2.5 Gb/s jitter measuring instrument now has low intrinsic OTU-1 and OC-48/STM-16 jitter capability. The 2.5 Gb/s OmniBER communications performance analyzer now provides the most accurate and repeatable jitter with ITU-T O.172 jitter accuracy maps. OmniBER provides a receiver-only, fixed-jitter accuracy error of less than 20 mUI at 2.5 Gb/s. This small error gives much greater assurance of conformance to the 100 mUI industry standard, enabling a higher pass/fail threshold and improving throughput.

The accuracy maps provide the basis for a receiver-only performance calibration and specification, enhancing absolute accuracy and box-to-box consistency.

Accuracy maps are now standard on the OmniBER jitter products and are supplied with every new OmniBER unit shipped. These maps provide a detailed indication of the individual receiver accuracy performance.

Not only is the accuracy map a method for verifying the accuracy of jitter test equipment, but it is also used to set an optimal pass/fail threshold, thus improving device throughput. The accuracy map enables a higher pass/fail limit to be applied when compared with the pass/fail threshold that should be used when using the O.172 specification.

In addition, the Agilent OmniBER has been enhanced with the following capabilities:

• Expanded protocol decode coverage by providing a utility to support free-of-charge Ethereal protocol analysis software. This utility allows the encapsulated protocol to be fed into the Ethereal software for further analysis by removing the GFP-F structure.
• The Ethereal software enables link layer protocols to be captured and analyzed, which means that Ethernet encapsulated higher layer packet transport protocols such as MPLS, IPv6, L2TP, PWE3, etc., can be captured, analyzed and debugged.
• A USB memory stick support, which vastly simplifies the process of saving captured data on OmniBER and transferring the stored data to Ethereal software for the higher layer protocol analysis.

About the Agilent OmniBER

The Agilent OmniBER is a second-generation OTN, NGSONET and jitter analyzer, scalable to 40 Gb/s, and is designed to have extremely low intrinsic jitter, a key enabler of greater measurement accuracy. The Agilent OmniBER provides both functional and jitter conformance testing in a single product.

More information about the Agilent OmniBER is available at www.agilent.com/comms/omniber. Product photos are available at www.agilent.com/find/otn_images.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

The Agilent J7233A OmniBER is available now at prices starting from $86,198. The J7233A OmniBER is available up to 2.67 Gb/s with OTU-1, NG SONET/SDH plus jitter. (The J7231B OmniBER is available up to 10.7 Gb/s with OTU-2, NG SONET/SDH plus jitter).

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is the world's premier measurement company and a technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company's 28,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenue of $7.2 billion in fiscal year 2004. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com.

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Contact:

Janet Smith, Agilent
+1 970 679 5397
janet_smith@agilent.com

Johanna Vallecillo
Weber Shandwick, for Agilent +1 408 530 8400 X2232
jvallecillo@webershandwick.com