'City of Heroes' Online Game Developer Increases Performance and Reliability of Its Virtual Worlds with Force10 TeraScale E-Series

Business Wire, Oct 17, 2005

MILPITAS, Calif. -- Force10 Networks today announced that NCsoft Corp., a leading developer of online games, is leveraging the high density and resiliency of the TeraScale E-Series to provide a reliable, high performance online gaming environment that connects tens of thousands of users. As the foundation of its gaming infrastructure, the Force10 TeraScale E-Series delivers the scalability NCsoft needs to expand its network as it adds new virtual environments.

"We rely on a complex network infrastructure to provide our customers with an advanced virtual world in which they have more control of their characters than ever before," said Eung-Soo Youk, director of service operations team at NCsoft. "The Force10 solution solidly grounds our gaming infrastructure by providing the reliability and performance we need at the center of our network to create these online worlds."

The Force10 TeraScale E300 provides the reliability and scalability NCsoft needs to create highly innovative virtual worlds. The TeraScale E-Series aggregates more than 50 servers that connect the gamers to each other and provide the online world in which they play. With industry-leading density, the TeraScale E-Series enables NCsoft to cost effectively and seamlessly expand its network as it develops new virtual worlds and as new gamers join its existing ones.

The unique three CPU architecture of the Force10 TeraScale E-Series distributes switching, routing and management functionalities between three distinct processors, each with protected memory, to deliver increased reliability and network uptime to NCsoft's online gaming center. Additionally, full redundancy of all critical components and a robust failover technology ensures greater network stability.

"Companies like NCsoft that are pioneering online gaming are demonstrating the value and revenue potential of clustering architectures for mainstream enterprises," said Andrew Feldman, vice president of marketing at Force10 Networks. "With the TeraScale E-Series providing the reliable, high performance network core, NCsoft can leverage the power of its cluster infrastructure to revolutionize the video game industry by providing a service that connects gamers around the world in multiple virtual worlds."

Based in South Korea, with North American headquarters in Austin, Texas, NCsoft develops online games in which thousands of gamers can simultaneously inhabit virtual worlds. In NCsoft's "City of Heroes," which was named Best Game of the Year by Billboard in 2004, more than 130,000 gamers custom design superheroes and team up with other people on the network to overthrow evil forces. NCsoft's other titles include Lineage, Lineage II, Tabula Rasa and Guild Wars.

Industry analysts anticipate that, over the next several years, the market for online games will increasingly comprise a larger share of the $10 billion video game industry. Market research firm DFC Intelligence estimates that the worldwide market for online gaming will grow from an estimated $3.5 billion in 2005 to nearly $5 billion in 2006.

About Force10 Networks

Force10 Networks is the pioneer in high performance switching and routing. Based on a revolutionary system architecture that delivers best-in-class resiliency and massive scalability, Force10's TeraScale E-Series switch/routers ensure predictable application performance, increase network availability, and reduce operating costs. Today, many of the world's largest Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks depend on Force10 Networks. For additional information, please visit the company's website at www.force10networks.com.

Force10, E-Series and S-Series are trademarks of Force10 Networks, Inc. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.