Level 5 Networks' EtherFabric Attains Tolly ''Up-to-Spec'' Certification; Tests Certify 100 Percent Ethernet-compatible Solution Accelerates Application Performance With Reduced Latency, Increased Bandwidth

Business Wire, Sept 8, 2005

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Level 5 Networks, an innovator of high-speed server interconnect solutions, today announced that EtherFabric(TM) has achieved The Tolly Group "Up-to-Spec" Certification. EtherFabric is the industry's first low-cost Ethernet-based solution designed to eliminate the critical server bottleneck caused by the use of the existing Ethernet network interface in high-performance environments. Tests conducted by The Tolly Group certify that EtherFabric is 100 percent Ethernet compatible and accelerates application performance by offering low latency, increasing bandwidth, and optimizing CPU efficiency. The certification validates that EtherFabric delivers significant performance benefit to applications running in high-performance computing (HPC) cluster environments and supports data center consolidation trends, such as grid and utility computing. The Tolly Group, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, has tested technology products since 1989.

"The Tolly Group Up-to-Spec certification eliminates any doubt that a 100 percent Ethernet-compatible technology can dramatically reduce latency and increase throughput," said Dan Karr, President and CEO of Level 5 Networks. "This is an important step in educating IT managers about a rock-solid, cost-effective, easy-to-deploy alternative to the expensive rip-and-replace interconnect technologies that deliver far less value than they promise."

In June of 2005, The Tolly Group conducted three tests on the EtherFabric EF1-21022T, Level 5 Networks' dual-port Gigabit Ethernet network interface card (NIC), and compared its performance to two leading LAN-on-Motherboard (LoM) chipsets, a Broadcom BCM 5721 NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Controller chipset (embedded in an IBM eServer xSeries 336) and an Intel 82541EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller chipset (implemented in a Dell PowerEdge 1850 server).

The tests certify that EtherFabric is 100 percent compatible with existing applications, control plane, and management software, and that the technology:

--Delivers up to a 10X reduction in application-to-application packet latencies

--Offers twice the bandwidth for 64-byte messages

--Provides 4 Gbps of aggregate throughput (across two ports) to a single TCP socket connection using the dual-port NIC in port-striped mode

The complete Up-to-Spec summary is available at www.tolly.com.

About Level 5 Networks

Level 5 Networks helps Fortune 2000 companies maximize the return on their investment in data center hardware and software by enabling servers to respond more quickly to client requests and to get more processing done in less time. The company's EtherFabric is the only interconnect solution that provides high performance and complete compatibility with existing data center software and hardware infrastructure. Level 5 Networks' founding team members are world-class researchers in high-performance networking who built the world's fastest LAN in 2000.

Level 5 Networks and EtherFabric are registered trademarks of Level 5 Networks. Other names are property of their respective owners.