Foundry Networks Announces a Complete Suite of Standards-Based 10-Gigabit Ethernet Products for High Performance LAN, MAN AND WAN

Business Wire, May 7, 2001

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2001

Performance Leader Extends Market Leadership Position

with a New Generation of 10 Gigabit Ethernet Products

Foundry Networks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced a family of 10 Gigabit (10 Gbps) Ethernet modules for the Enterprise, Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) service provider, and Internet Service Provider (ISP) markets. Designed to enhance and extend the power, performance, capacity, and ease of use of the BigIron(R) Layer 3 switch, these new 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules enable network infrastructure expansion by magnifying the overall speed, efficiency, and potency of the world's most widely understood and deployed networking technology. Furthermore, these state-of-the-art 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules are compatible with the existing Foundry BigIron chassis-based products allowing customers to migrate to the new 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet technology cost-effectively with minimum disruption to their existing networks.

Delivering Tenfold Performance Gain Without the Forklift Pain

The BigIron switch, introduced in 1997 was the first ASIC-based modular device to announce support for 10 Gbps Ethernet without requiring a chassis swap-out or forklift upgrade. Foundry's unique 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet module architecture extends support of the advanced switching and routing feature sets offered on all of Foundry's Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet modules to 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) of packet forwarding throughput. These functions include Dynamic VLANs based on port, protocol, and subnet; IronClad QoS with the ability to prioritize traffic based on a multitude of customer-definable policies; full and robust IP and multicast support; extensive security through wire-speed Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Extended ACLs; and up to 15 Million packets per second (Mpps) wire-speed performance per 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports while supporting all the existing IEEE 802.3 and 802.3ae standards.

"Increasing the need for bandwidth to support Internet enabled processes for knowledge workers has resulted in a steady growth of Gigabit Ethernet ports within government organization and installation level networks. I expect this growth to continue as government workers become more conversant with and more dependent upon modern productivity tools including distributed, real-time modeling and simulation, voice and video collaborative environments, multi-media, multi-user applications, and interactive, collective, virtual training and education environments," said Colonel Ronald R. Heuler, Project Manager, Signals Warfare U.S. Army, a long time Foundry customer. "It appears obvious that, as Gigabit Ethernet desk-tops continue to proliferate, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution for the network core will be required to support the aggregation of data and provide effective data handling. I expect to see the implementation of 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbone connectivity become a fairly commonplace solution for Army installation infrastructures within the next two or three years."

The Ultimate Flexibility for 802.3ae Standard-based Optics

Employing field-upgradeable and replaceable 10 Gigabit Ethernet optics makes Foundry's 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution the industry's most flexible accommodation, which assures full compliancy with the emerging 10 Gigabit Ethernet physical medium dependant (PMD) optical specifications as defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.3ae 10 Gigabit Ethernet Working Group.

By employing this unique modular architecture, Foundry's 10 Gigabit Ethernet products will have the ability to support a new modification made to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, not supported by the lower speed versions of Ethernet. The first is the inclusion of a long haul (40 Km) optical transceiver PMD for single mode fiber that can be used with either a LAN or WAN physical (PHY) standard, applicable for building MANs. The second is the WAN PHY option, which enables 10 Gigabit Ethernet to be transported, transparently, across existing OC-192c/SDH SONET infrastructures.

"One of the greatest advantages that 10 Gigabit Ethernet has to offer is that all the native Ethernet framing is preserved, as is the data structure, payload, 802.1Q virtual LAN (VLAN) tagging, 802.1p prioritization, DiffServ, and all the other Layer 2 and Layer 3 services," said Vipin Jain, vice president of systems engineering of Telseon, the leading metropolitan optical network provider. "In addition, you retain all the established standardized protocols used to increase the resiliency and redundancy created for Ethernet such as 802.3ad link aggregation and 802.1w rapid spanning tree. It also means that you end up with the same features and no learning curve as you ratchet up, by ten times, the bandwidth in your network."

10 Gigabit Ethernet Applications for High Bandwidth Enterprise,