Mesh485™ Wireless Mesh Networking System Developed for Building Automation Markets

Millennial Net Eliminates Need for RS-485 Network Cabling for Significant Cost Savings

Burlington, Mass. - Jan. 18, 2005 - Millennial Net, Inc., the leading developer of self-organizing, wireless sensor networking systems, today announced the release of Mesh485™, the first complete wireless sensor networking system developed specifically to replace RS-485 cabling. RS-485 cabling is used extensively throughout commercial buildings for energy management and building automation applications.

"Millennial Net's wireless networking platform integrates well with IUE® our Enterprise Energy Management System," said Dirk Mahling, chief technology officer of WebGen Systems, Inc., provider of advanced software for energy conservation and control in commercial buildings. "Some of our customers, with smaller or complex commercial buildings, can now choose wireless technology to implement our energy management system in their buildings without the expense or disruption associated with wiring. This allows us to easily and quickly install our system."

The new Mesh485 system delivers significant benefits to both building automation OEMs and to their customers. OEMs can quickly develop and deploy sensor networks using existing RS-485 controls and devices to enhance current offerings and to develop new offerings not possible before, for example in buildings where wiring is prohibitively expensive or impractical. Mesh485 has already been added to and tested with energy management applications by leaders in the building automation and energy management systems market including WebGen Systems, Basys and Tridium.

The Mesh485 system delivers a suite of software and hardware components for OEM integration. The system software, which is tuned for energy management and building automation control systems, provides a low-power, self-configuring networking protocol with redundant paths that is efficient, responsive and resilient. The hardware modules are specifically packaged to work with industry-standard building automation control devices. Today, the system has been optimized for interface with control devices from TCS Basys, WebGen Systems as well as the JACE platform from Tridium. Support for other devices and controllers is currently being developed for future release.

The ad hoc mesh architecture created by the Mesh485 system provides a highly reliable, extremely robust network that is highly fault tolerant since each control point and sensor node has multiple paths back to the gateway and to other nodes. If an obstruction to an established RF path occurs, the network will reconfigure itself automatically.

"At TCS Basys, we’ve added Millennial Net’s Mesh485 wireless platform as a key element of our extensive controls product family," said Jack Toal, CEO of TCS/Basys. "Employing Millennial Net's mesh networking platform has lowered the system cost to our customers and has improved the speed and ease at which our systems can be installed by our integration partners. This has had a significant positive effect on our deployment of our Ubiquity networking solution."

"The completeness of the Millennial Net wireless networking platform helps our customers move quickly through the prototyping and development stage to product installation. The potential for wireless sensor networking capabilities is very broad." said Mark Pacelle, vice president of marketing at Millennial Net. "Our Building Automation initiative is focused on identifying the needs within these industries and delivering the solutions as we have with Mesh485. This includes adding other devices and controllers to the Mesh485 product line, as well as adding new product lines to support other physical networking standards and protocols."

The Millennial Net Mesh485 product family can be coupled with a host of building automation unitary and control elements as well as environmental sensing devices to provide wireless sensor networking solutions to monitor and control additional factors such as occupancy, lighting or access control. The Mesh485 product line is part of a larger Building and Industrial Automation initiative for Millennial Net. This initiative seeks to identify areas in the building and industrial automation industries where wireless sensor networking can improve existing functionality and create new opportunities and deliver a wireless sensor network platform optimized for those uses.

Millennial Net has fully featured wireless sensor networking products including evaluation kits that accelerate OEM prototyping and application development for building automation, industrial automation, medical monitoring and other applications. An evaluation kit for the Mesh485 product line is available. For more information contact Millennial Net at (781) 222-1030 or go to www.millennialnet.com.

About Millennial Net
Millennial Net develops wireless sensor networking systems that help OEMs and systems integrators quickly and cost-effectively implement wireless sensors to enable the remote monitoring and management of critical devices while providing data to enable more informed decision-making, better control and increased revenue opportunities. Millennial Net's patented ultra-efficient, highly scalable, self-organizing wireless sensor networking leads the industry in power efficiency, support for dynamic systems and mobile sensors, portability and scalability. Millennial Net also leads the industry in real-world deployments with networks installed across commercial building, industrial and medical environments. Millennial Net is backed by top-tier venture firms and is headquartered in Burlington, MA. For more information, visit www.millennialnet.com.