Dulles, VA. April 3, 2003 – Encore Networks today announced that it has signed an agreement and commenced delivery of its Virtual Private Network (VPN) secure router, the BANDIT™, to Amadeus North America, the U.S.-based operations of the leading global distribution system (GDS) and technology provider to the world's travel and tourism industries. The agreement, representing the largest BANDIT™ contract to date, further solidifies Encore's rapid expansion into the global VPN hardware market. The agreement allows Amadeus to purchase the BANDIT™ product line globally under the same terms and conditions.

Through the Amadeus reservation system — which offers more than 95 percent of the world's scheduled airline seats — travel agencies and airline offices can book reservations with 467 airlines. The network also provides access to 61,560 hotels, 48 car rental companies serving 24,400 locations, and other provider groups including ferry, rail, cruise, and tour operators. Now, with Encore's BANDIT™ VPN product line, the Amadeus network serving the U.S. and Canada will provide a secure IP environment to its clients to conduct their business transactions. Amadeus chose the BANDIT™ product line to facilitate the conversion of legacy protocols to its IP network. Its rich feature set allows for a dramatically reduced host network port count, ease of installation and management, and comprehensive IPsec VPN capabilities.

"The feedback on the BANDIT's performance has been extremely positive," stated Lincoln Rodon, Amadeus Senior Vice President of Information Technology. "In addition to connecting to our host network, travel agents can now also communicate with other travel-related databases, receive graphics, and securely connect to public online services over the Internet."

The BANDIT™ product line is at the core of Encore's strategy for migrating legacy protocols to a secure standards-based IP VPN infrastructure. It is a versatile VPN gateway that can originate, switch, multiplex, and terminate IPsec tunnels at the same time. A built-in hardware accelerator that handles security encryption, IP routing, and dynamic firewall protection enables the BANDIT™ to provide excellent overall performance and throughput, and its dial backup capability protects against network outages. The use of private IP addresses at customers' locations can be preserved through the built-in support of Network Address Translation (NAT) and Private Address Translation (PrAT). This significantly eases the provisioning of large-scale rollouts of VPN services.

"We are excited to be working with Amadeus as they move forward in upgrading their network," said Peter Madsen, President of Encore Networks. "The Amadeus network is one of the largest private networks ever deployed, and this is a great opportunity to show how the BANDIT's encryption, firewall, and network management capabilities excel, both in terms of performance and cost savings, in a network of this size."