San Francisco, CA — June 12, 2006 — Riverbed Technology, Inc. today announced that QinetiQ, one of the world's leading defense technology and security companies, working for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Royal Navy, has accelerated application performance over UHF, HF and satellite links for TCP-based naval communications traffic using Riverbed’s Steelhead® appliances.

On behalf of the Royal Navy, QinetiQ selected Riverbed to overcome some of the critical limitations of using a mix of satellite, UHF (both wide and narrow band) and HF bearers for operational data communications. Performance over these links can be dramatically poorer than the slowest civil dial-up connection. Although its underlying network for data transmission functions for SATCOM-fitted ships, the Royal Navy was looking for ways to allow its existing command support systems to operate seamlessly with all its ships around the world, using any potential network bearer. This means that it must optimise end-to-end performance to make best possible use of whatever bandwidth is available.

Ideally, the Royal Navy wanted to enhance user experience, when using poor quality tactical bearers, to the levels it was able to achieve using its wider bandwidth SATCOM systems. They had been testing other application performance enhancing products, but these other contenders invariably required frequent user intervention, which the Royal Navy wanted to avoid. In total, QinetiQ evaluated products from five application acceleration, wide area file services (WAFS), and WAN optimization vendors, and found that Riverbed’s Steelhead appliance provided the highest baseline performance for TCP optimization and bandwidth utilization, while at the same time delivering unparalleled ease of installation and use across the complete range of communications links. QinetiQ has extensively tested the Steelhead appliance using the new Maritime Tactical Networking Command and Control (MTNC2) system under the most demanding of network conditions.

As well as optimizing all TCP traffic, the Riverbed appliances optimize the performance of a range of applications including Microsoft Office, Exchange 5.5, Oracle, Apache Webserver and specialist tactical picture applications such ICS/C2PC, which are used to communicate and display the location of ships and aircraft across the globe.

“In the three and a half week sea trial period in a recent operational deployment, QinetiQ achieved at least a 3.5 times average performance improvement across all Royal Navy Command Support System (RNCSS) applications in seven ships using the new MTNC2 tactical network.” said Siôn Evans, a senior network and systems consultant for QinetiQ. “With the C2PC applications, the improvements were up to 44 times. In addition to these advantages, Steelhead can actually make transmission data more secure, since only small references to previous data are being sent.”

This project was undertaken as part of the UK MoD’s Applied Research Program (ARP) and the work will also inform a large number of related network-enabling projects such as the Defence Information Infrastructure (DII). Under the DII initiative, numerous individual information systems throughout the MoD are being replaced with a single more efficient information infrastructure. DII will be a component of the UK’s’ network-enabled capability (NEC) - the ability to transform the capability of the armed forces through a single network of information, announced in the UK’s Strategic Defence Review New Chapter.

QinetiQ is one of the world's leading defence technology and security companies. QinetiQ was the world's first top flight national defence laboratory to transition to the private sector. It gives customers access to the output of 50 years of national investment at the forefront of technology. Today, QinetiQ has grown to offer its global customer base technology rich services and solutions, from an expanding base of leading capabilities in both Europe and North America.

QinetiQ operates at the leading edge of technology which enables it to give civil customers access to solutions that are often beyond those readily available in commercial markets. From integrating legacy weapons systems with state of the art sensors and software for the British MOD, to fielding advanced robotic systems for the US Department of Defense; providing port security products for the US Department of Homeland Security, or designing advanced security systems for many of London’s computer systems, QinetiQ is committed to delivering innovative solutions to important problems.

QinetiQ's business is all about innovation and solutions. Its heritage is well-founded in using its wealth of expertise to develop and apply intellectual property. This provides a unique angle to take on critical problems for its customers and to provide them with tailored solutions.

Riverbed Technology is the performance leader in wide-area data services (WDS) solutions. By enabling application performance over the wide area network (WAN) that is orders of magnitude faster than what users experience today, Riverbed is changing the way people work, and enabling a distributed workforce that can collaborate as if they were local. Riverbed's Steelhead appliance has been named InfoWorld's "Technology of the Year" in both 2005 and 2006 as the "Best WAN Accelerator". In addition, Riverbed was named the winner of The Wall Street Journal's 2005 Technology Innovation Award in the Network/ Broadband/Internet category, Network Computing's 2006 Well-Connected Award for Remote Office Network Infrastructure, and eWeek's 2006 Excellence Award for Networking Infrastructure. Riverbed's award-winning solutions are available worldwide from resellers who are members of the Riverbed Partner Network, from Riverbed OEM partners, or directly from Riverbed.

Riverbed Technology, Riverbed, Steelhead, RiOS and the Riverbed logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riverbed Technology, Inc. All other trademarks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

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For more information, visit www.riverbed.com.

Media Contact:

Kim Kapustka
(415) 344 4476
kim@riverbed.com

 

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