Cabletron's SmartSwitch Router Certified by the Tolly Group

Business Wire, March 17, 1998

ROCHESTER, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 17, 1998--

Delivers Full-Function Routing, Security And Accounting

Benefits With Industry Leading Performance

Cabletron Systems (NYSE:CS) today announced that its SmartSwitch Router has been "Certified Up To Spec" by The Tolly Group, an independent testing organization based in Manasquan, NJ. The Tolly Group conducted a series of tests to prove the real-world functionality of Cabletron's SmartSwitch Router, including performance and interoperability testing with legacy routing solutions.

The tests reflect the actual and immediate requirements of enterprise network managers and service providers, demonstrating the the SmartSwitch Routers ability to perform at over 15 million packets per second. The SmartSwitch Router simultaneously provides critical value-added features such as accounting, security and full-featured routing -- with no degradation in performance.

"It is unprecedented in our experience that router performance is unaffected by features like security and accounting. The SmartSwitch Router has no performance degradation when important value-added functionality like Access Control Lists, RMON, and RMON2 are enabled," said Kevin Tolly, President and CEO of the Tolly Group. "Router performance generally degrades significantly when value-added features are utilized."

The Tolly Group's independent evaluation clearly underscores key areas of leadership:

--No Performance Penalty -- The SmartSwitch Router maintains wire speed Gigabit routing of IP traffic with zero packet loss with Access Control Lists and RMON2 enabled. The SmartSwitch Router maintained a routing throughput of 15 million packets per second

--Interoperability -- The SmartSwitch Router is fully compliant with industry standards and Tolly tested for compatibility with the legacy routing solution Cisco IOS(r).

Please see The Tolly Group's test document #8265 at www.tolly.com for further details.

According to Curtis Varner, manager of technical operations, University of California, Riverside, and an early user of the product, "Cabletron is going to make a lot of friends with this product. The SmartSwitch Router has been completely stable and the more I use the interface, the better I can appreciate how simple it really is. Configuration is extremely quick and efficient."

Traditional routers are no match for bandwidth hungry applications like distance learning, electronic commerce and voice/video/data convergence.

In an effort to keep pace with the dramatic bandwidth and performance demands being placed on the network, customers are identifying compelling reasons to upgrade existing backbones. Cabletron's SmartSwitch Router is the solution. It performs 100 times faster than traditional routers, at a fraction of the cost.

The SmartSwitch Router maintains wire-speed performance while providing policy- based quality of service (QoS), full RMON2 accounting, and Access Control List security. Layer 4 decision making and extensive management capabilities deliver pin-point application control which can be leveraged for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Capacity Planning purposes.

Cabletron offers one of the industry's lowest entry costs for switch routers. Pricing begins at $499 per port for Fast Ethernet, with availablity expected in May.

Cabletron Systems, a recognized leader in high-performance computer networking products, provides dependable network access and communications to millions of people throughout the world. With scaleable products designed for Fortune 1000 enterprise networks, service providers and small businesses, Cabletron delivers simple, reliable and cost-effective business solutions for the information age. -0-

Certain statements in this press release concerning YAGO and Cabletron constitute forward looking information. The actual results achieved by Cabletron following the acquisition could differ materially. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ are delays in completing the development and introduction of products based upon YAGO's technology, technological or manufacturing problems in achieving expected performance, competition from existing competitive products and new products expected to be introduced, the difficulty of integrating YAGO and Cabletron, including the difficulty of coordinating geographically separated organizations, and the distraction from day-to-day business resulting from the required dedication of management resources. For a more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties related to the Company's business, please refer to the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal 1997. a Registration Statement on Form S-4, as amended, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 10, 1998.

Cabletron's World Wide Web site can be reached on the Internet at http//www.cabletron.com.

The Tolly Group's SmartSwitch Router test is available at http://www.tolly.com

Cabletron and SmartSwitch are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cabletron Systems.

IOS(r) is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems, Inc.