GTE Internetworking Offers ISPs Wholesale Managed Remote Access Service; MindSpring to Use DiaLinx Dedicated(SM) to Expand Remote Access Service

GTE Internetworking, one of the nation's leading providers of Internet access and value-added services for businesses, today announced significant enhancements to DiaLinx, its nationwide remote-access network. The new enhancements include expansion to nearly 100 countries through International DiaLinx and the addition of 150 new points of presence (PoPs) nationwide as well as ISDN capability. These service enhancements expand DiaLinx's current capabilities to meet business customers' demand for increased availability with faster, more reliable remote access to corporate extranets, intranets and the Internet.

International DiaLinx
Beginning in the first quarter of 1998, GTE Internetworking will offer businesses remote access through its International DiaLinx service available in 100 countries worldwide. International DiaLinx is a single-source solution providing multinational business customers with cost-effective, highly reliable, remote-access services, including 24x7 real-time monitoring and a wide range of optional value-added services such as managed authentication services. Through its partnership with EQUANT, a leading provider of advanced telecommunications solutions to the global business community, DiaLinx traffic will be carried over the EQUANT network to the nearest GTE Internetworking International SuperPoP, for routing to a customer's local area network (LAN) or to the Internet.

'With this aggressive expansion of our network and the additional services being made available for our DiaLinx corporate users, GTE Internetworking continues to show its commitment to making our remote-access services the most comprehensive and reliable offering available,' said Patrick Kloepfer, Director, Remote-Access Services, GTE Internetworking. 'With the launch of our International dial-up services we can provide customers with seamless, reliable access to the Internet wherever they travel.'

Domestic Network Build-Out and ISDN Capability
As part of GTE Internetworking's domestic network build-out, the company will substantially increase its DiaLinx nationwide remote-access by adding 150 PoPs with ISDN capability to cities across the continental United States. This brings GTE Internetworking's DiaLinx coverage in major metropolitan areas to nearly 400 dial-up locations. The availability of ISDN capability provides greater flexibility to the DiaLinx service for better performance and increased cost savings to the corporate customer. ISDN will initially be made available in over 100 major metropolitan areas, with broad coverage provided by the end of the year.

Additional Remote-Access Services
GTE Internetworking's end-to-end managed services for secure remote-access now includes managed authentication services based on the standard protocol RADIUS. RADIUS hosting provides DiaLinx users with simplified administration, higher reliability, and cost savings. Businesses retain control of network access and user authentication via a simple Web interface.

To facilitate connectivity for DiaLinx users, GTE Internetworking also offers Microsoft's dialer/phone book software. This software provides users with an easy-to-use mechanism for finding the nearest dial-up location, both domestically and internationally, making DiaLinx coverage seamless to corporate users and travelers regardless of their location.

Tony Bawcutt, Marketing Manager, Microsoft Corp said, 'We're pleased that GTE Internetworking has chosen the Microsoft Connection Manager phone book and Connection Point Services to provide dialer updates for their DiaLinx remote access service. By integrating this application into the DiaLinx service, GTE Internetworking's business customers will have access to a continually updated list of local DiaLinx numbers even as the network continues to expand.'

Interoperability and compatibility between a business' firewall and the DiaLinx service is required create end-to-end encrypted virtual private networks (VPNs). To ensure compatibility, GTE Internetworking has tested and certified firewall products from leading security vendors such as TIS Gauntlet, Check Point Firewall-1, Raptor Eagle, Digital Alta Vista and Unified Access Communications.

About DiaLinx
DiaLinx is a private-label, high-availability and high-performance, multinational remote access service that provides businesses with a cost-effective, turn-key solution to connect employees, customers and business partners to corporate intranets, extranets and the Internet. DiaLinx is ideal for organizations looking to provide their mobile professionals or telecommuting employees with connectivity to enhance their productivity, as well as a secure, reliable, private dial-up network.

About GTE Internetworking
GTE Internetworking, a unit of GTE Corp. (NYSE:GTE), includes the recently acquired BBN Corporation, which 28 years ago developed the ARPANET, the forerunner to today's Internet, and GTE Intelligent Network Services, which provides Internet services to consumers and small businesses.

GTE Internetworking offers customers, from consumers to Fortune 500 companies, a full spectrum of Internet services and solutions including dial-up and dedicated Internet access, end-to-end network management, high-performance distributed hosting and applications solutions, managed security, and systems integration, for customers migrating their
mission-critical business applications to the Internet. GTE Internetworking draws upon BBN's expertise in funded research and development of advanced technologies, including satellites, digital radio, multi-gigabit routers, security and speech, and GTE's strong existing telecommunications services, including local and long distance, wireless, paging, video and Internet. The address for the GTE Internetworking's home page is http://www.bbn.com.

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DiaLinx is a service mark of GTE Internetworking Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.