Dulles, VA. January 21, 2003 – Encore Networks, a leading developer of integrated network security and access products, today announced its entry into the Utilities market with the EtherFRAD™, optimized to support the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition protocol (SCADA). All Utility companies — including the providers of gas, electric, and water —- as well as pipelines and railroads, rely on hundreds of thousands of SCADA devices.

For decades, utility companies have monitored and gathered information such as water pressure, power consumption, and gas usage over slow, expensive leased analog lines via modem. And they used these same lines to control and monitor switches, valves, and other settings at remote locations from central operations centers.

Already shipping and installed in networks using SCADA devices, Encore's entire EtherFRAD™ product line now enables utility companies to migrate these important measurement and control functions to a faster, more reliable digital transmission format, like public or private Frame Relay. In addition, the EtherFRAD™ sets the stage for moving these operations to the even more efficient and cost-saving solutions of IP and IP Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

"Using Frame Relay as the transport technology for SCADA networks is the first phase in implementing a private infrastructure over public carrier networks," said Abir Hnidi, Encore Networks' Senior Director of Technology and Applications Development. "The EtherFRAD™ enables utility companies that currently have slow legacy networks to move to a Frame Relay-based VPN architecture, and additionally paves the way for a smooth and gradual migration towards an IP VPN solution."

The SCADA migration to digital transmission gets an extra push from changes occurring within telephone companies. Internally, phone networks are entirely digital, and carriers find analog access lines more expensive to maintain and harder to repair than digital services. Accordingly, utilities using SCADA are experiencing not only rising costs for analog lines, but also slower restorations after outages.

According to William Flanagan, Principal of Flanagan Consulting, "Cost savings drive most changes in networks. This is particularly true of the move from expensive, cumbersome analog leased lines to the more cost-effective and easier to maintain digital services. The EtherFRAD™ gives double value by enabling utility companies to leave leased lines behind while providing many troubleshooting functions that optimize the maintenance of the digital services on Frame Relay networks."