Riverstone Networks Introduces the First Layer 3 Switch to Deliver Wire-Speed Ten Gigabit Ethernet Switching and Routing for $9,995 Per Port

Business Wire, April 7, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 7, 2003

Riverstone Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:RSTN) today introduced a new family of switches that delivers true wire-speed 10 Gigabit performance at less than $10,000 per port, including optics -- more than 50 percent below the cost of other available solutions. Independently tested and certified as wire-speed by The Tolly Group, Riverstone Networks' XGS family of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) Layer 3 switches combines the performance, scalability, intelligence and carrier class features that telecommunications carriers, government organizations, large corporations and educational institutions demand for their mission critical networks, at a price that makes the widespread deployment of 10 GbE practical.

"Today, Riverstone revolutionizes high performance networking with the industry's first true wire speed 10 Gig switch at a price that was thought to be years away," said Riverstone Networks President and CEO Romulus Pereira. "Riverstone's XGS has established the 10 Gig benchmark for price and performance -- the benchmark against which all others will be compared."

According to industry analysts The Dell'Oro Group, widespread deployment of 10 GbE requires the price per unit of bandwidth to be equal to or less than Gigabit Ethernet technology. At $9,995 per port, Riverstone's XGS family provides unparalleled 10 GbE performance at a price below the average cost of 10 one Gigabit Ethernet ports.

"Riverstone's solution is the only one we have seen that delivers true 10 Gig performance at a price point competitive with Gigabit Ethernet," said Jack Costanza, manager of IT services at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This is very important to us as no one demands more of a network or pushes the performance limits further than our world class faculty, students and research teams."

Designed for high performance networking environments, Riverstone's XGS family provides mission critical network operators with massive 10 Gigabit capacity as well as the intelligent bandwidth they need for emerging applications. With hardware-based multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), quality of service (QoS) and IPv6, the Riverstone XGS family incorporates the critical technologies that will shape future networks. These features, combined with wire-speed switching and routing and Riverstone's carrier class technology, including its Hitless Protection System, bring a new level of reliability, performance and intelligence to mission critical networks.

The XGS family of switches complements Riverstone's RS family of routers, which are deployed in mission critical networks around the world, including KT, Telefonica de Espana, the Pentagon and Cox Communications. With the introduction of the XGS, Riverstone now delivers a seamless solution from the carrier edge to campus networks.

"The Riverstone XGS family is the industry's first 10 Gig platform engineered to deliver wire-speed performance at the price necessary to drive deployments," said Praveen K. Mandal, vice president of Riverstone's advanced switching technology group. "The Riverstone XGS shatters the current thinking on what is possible with 10 Gig architecture, functionality and scalability."

Independent Tests Verify True 10 Gigabit Ethernet Performance

In tests conducted by The Tolly Group, Riverstone's XGS family of switches demonstrated true wire-speed 10 Gigabit throughput across all packet sizes. Additionally, the Riverstone XGS family demonstrated consistently low jitter and latency.

With wire-speed, zero-loss throughput across all 10 GbE ports for frame sizes ranging from 64 to 1,518 bytes and non-standard jumbo frames, Riverstone's XGS family is the first to receive The Tolly Group's True10 certification. The Tolly Group's recently launched True10 program puts vendor platforms through a series of rigorous tests designed to measure critical performance metrics to certify that the solutions deliver wire-speed 10 Gigabit per second performance. To attain certification, solutions must deliver full wire-speed 10 GbE throughput for a variety of packet sizes and traffic loss must be less than 0.001 percent.

"Riverstone's XGS family of switches is the first we've tested to deliver true 10 Gig throughput across all ports and packet sizes, including jumbo frames," said Kevin Tolly, president of The Tolly Group. "Other devices may have come close to achieving full 10 Gig line rate, but Riverstone's XGS family is the first we've seen to deliver that throughput with such low latency and nearly nonexistent jitter."

The complete report from The Tolly Group on the Riverstone XGS, along with competitive product price and performance comparisons are available at http://www.riverstonenet.com/products/xgs_performance.shtml.> "Riverstone is the first vendor to deliver line-rate 10 Gigabit throughput with full function MPLS, and they do it at a revolutionary price point," said Bradley Frye, data services manager at Knology, a Georgia-based provider of advanced broadband services across the Southeast. "Riverstone's solution provides the network capacity and intelligence we need to extend our video on demand service offerings."