FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2005

Network Instruments, LLC
10701 Red Circle Dr.
Minnetonka, MN 55343 USA

Observer® Suite Awarded Product of the Year
Network Instruments’ Distributed Network Analyzer Recognized as Top Troubleshooting Tool

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – July 7, 2005 – Network Instruments®, the leading developer of network analysis, monitoring, and management solutions, announced today that Observer Suite was awarded Top Troubleshooting Tool at the annual Techworld 2005 Awards Gala. Backed by the resources of IDG Communications, the largest IT publishing company, Techworld is considered the UK’s premier site for IT professionals.

Network Instruments’ Observer Suite version 10.1 beat out Fluke Networks’ Etherscope™ Network Assistant, Netscout Systems nGenius® Flow Recorder v2, OPNET® Technologies’ IT Guru® version 11.0, and WildPackets’ Omni3™ version 2.0 Distributed Fault Analysis Platform and Omnipliance™.

“We are thrilled to be recognized as the top troubleshooting product of the year,” said Ian Cummins, European sales director for Network Instruments. “Observer Suite continues to receive numerous accolades and recognition from reviewers, industry pundits, and press. Techworld is yet another publication to recognize the enormous value and comprehensive feature set that Observer Suite brings to the field of network analysis.”

A key advantage of Observer technology lies within Network Instruments unique Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture. With NI-DNA, all Network Instruments’ products work together seamlessly to monitor multiple topologies, technologies, and locations. For example, Observer Suite is capable of monitoring WAN, Gigabit, and WLAN links as well as SNMP, VoIP traffic, and application-specific data at both local and remote locations.

“Customers appreciate Observer’s single user interface,” said Cummins. “Our competitors sell multiple consoles to monitor different aspects of the network. We see the network as an integrated system and have designed one technology to manage it all. For example, every type of Network Instruments probe can report to the same Observer Suite console. This offers tremendous value, monitoring efficiency, and ease-of-use for our customers.”

Pricing for Observer 10.1 begins at $995 and includes Advanced Filtering, Network Trending, and Statistical Drill Down by station and protocol. Expert Observer 10.1 starts at $2,895 and includes everything in Observer plus Application Analysis, over 500 Real-Time Experts and the industry’s largest 4GB Memory Buffer. The Observer Suite 10.1 package includes everything in Expert Observer plus Expert Analysis, an SNMP console and Web Reporting for $3,995. A free product demonstration and additional information about Observer and Network Instruments is available at the company’s web site at www.networkinstruments.com.   

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About Network Instruments
Network Instruments is the industry-leading developer of distributed, user-friendly and affordable network management, analysis and troubleshooting solutions. The award-winning Observer family of products combines a comprehensive management and analysis console with high-performance probes and network TAPs to provide integrated monitoring and management for the entire network (LAN, 802.11a/b/g, gigabit, WAN). All Network Instruments products are designed utilizing a Distributed Network Analysis (NI-DNA™) architecture. With NI-DNA, the Observer solution set simplifies network troubleshooting and management, optimizes network and application performance and scales to meet the needs of any organization. Founded in 1994, Network Instruments is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota with offices in London, Munich, Paris, Toronto, and multiple cities throughout the United States with distributors in over 50 countries. More information about the company, products, innovation, technology, NI-DNA, becoming a partner, and NI University can be found at: www.networkinstruments.com.