Toys “R” Us Selects Peribit To Accelerate Inventory Tracking Application And Optimize WAN Bandwidth

Retail Leader Achieves LAN-like Application Performance at Remote Sites with Peribit Solution delivering 300 Percent Bandwidth Improvement

Santa Clara, Calif. – March 21, 2005 – Peribit™ Networks, a leader in application delivery over the WAN, today announced that retail giant Toys “R” Us [NYSE: TOY] has accelerated the performance of key applications and tripled the WAN bandwidth of its existing network by deploying Peribit Sequence Reducer™ products. The Peribit solution has helped the retailer accelerate the performance of a critical inventory tracking application while increasing WAN bandwidth by 300 percent for its existing network. In addition, Peribit is delivering essential management and reporting tools that provide Toys “R” Us with critical WAN visibility and control capabilities.

With headquarters in Wayne, N.J., Toys “R” Us is an $11.5 billion enterprise with 1,500 stores worldwide. The company maintains a hub-and-spoke network with two data centers connecting 20 distribution centers to its headquarters. The distribution centers provide support for the retail stores and maintain the inventory and flow of products through a mix of retail, e-mail and file-sharing applications. To ensure peak performance, the Network Department constantly monitored WAN bandwidth usage, making adjustments as necessary to maintain a consistent flow of data.

In 2004, however, a sophisticated new inventory processing application pushed the Toys “R” Us network to its bandwidth threshold, causing some applications to time out sporadically. “Since the time-outs were intermittent, we had a hard time identifying which applications were causing the spikes in traffic,” said Paul Pansini, director of communication systems for Toys “R” Us.

Pansini suspected the problems were related to a recent departmental reorganization, combined with an increase in remote users accessing information at the distribution centers. The Network Department made some short-term fixes at the router to improve data flow, but those changes put an additional load on the router CPU, causing other issues on the network. “At that point, our main priority was to stabilize the business applications in the distribution center,” Pansini said.

Pansini and his staff conducted an in-depth analysis of the network infrastructure and weighed their options for optimizing the WAN. “We were trying to avoid upgrading the bandwidth since that would be a recurring monthly expense, and we didn’t want to be locked into a costly, multi-year contract,” said Pansini. The right solution had to offer a fast return on investment (ROI) and needed to install easily without introducing complexity, latency or maintenance overhead. “I wanted a product that a technician could easily install, manage and troubleshoot remotely,” Pansini said.

After testing a Peribit Sequence Reducer in its lab for two weeks, Toys “R” Us deployed Peribit equipment at its hub in New Jersey and in all 20 distribution centers nationwide. “We plugged in the Peribit devices, verified the IP addressing, made sure primary and backup links came up, and watched them do their learning process,” said Pansini. “Peribit was the easiest piece of equipment I’ve ever rolled out.

Toys “R” Us uses Peribit Networks’ flagship Molecular Sequence Reduction™ (MSR™) compression algorithm along with bandwidth allocation and quality–of–service (QoS) capabilities for managing WAN bandwidth. By leveraging MSR technology, WAN bandwidth increased three to seven times on the existing network, thereby fulfilling an essential Toys “R” Us objective.

Toys “R” Us applies bandwidth allocation and QoS policies to the company’s inventory system, which tracks all the products that flow in and out of the distribution centers, as well as manifest information from corporate headquarters to the retail stores. The inventory application receives higher priority, while applications such as e-mail, Internet access, and FTP traffic are treated with lower priority across the WAN.

“The deployment with Toys “R” Us is a great example of how Peribit has been able to have an impact on the business economics by accelerating business-critical applications and increasing the manageability of their wide area network,” said Mike Banic, vice president of corporate marketing with Peribit Networks.

About Peribit Networks

Peribit Networks improves business efficiencies by resolving the technical limitations of WANs. The company’s integrated PeriSphere architecture accelerates application performance, simplifies application rollouts, facilitates data center consolidation, and improves disaster recovery, backup, and regulatory compliance. Peribit Sequence Reducer and Sequence Mirror platforms, combined with the Sequence Reduction System and PeriScope Central Management System software, accelerate applications, increase WAN capacity, enable application control, and provide unprecedented visibility into WAN performance. The result: greater employee productivity, more efficient use of WAN resources, and rapid return on IT investments. For more information, visit the company's website at www.peribit.com.