INTERCONNECTS

SAN JOSE, Calif., -- Foundry Networks(R), Inc., a leading provider of high- performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing and Web traffic management solutions, today announced its FastIron(R) Modular and FastIron Edge Switch families have received a CMP Media LLC's prestigious Network Computing 2003 Editor's Choice Award. Foundry's complete set of high- performance networking products won this award based on their performance in Network Computing's Real World Labs. This high-performance test was built around the converged data, voice and video network design needs of a simulated life insurance firm. Foundry won the competition based on its ability to provide the most fault-tolerant, scalable and standards-compliant network infrastructure for high-bandwidth network applications. The life insurance test case network carried high volumes of valuable voice and data traffic through a dozen high- end servers and 1,100 desktops requiring standards-based VoIP, Quality of Service and Power over Ethernet. The resulting network connected the insurance company's headquarters operations across a campus-wide network with data centers and remote offices. "We gave our Editor's Choice nod to Foundry, which demonstrated the best ability to meet all our technical requirements while maintaining a commitment to standards -- a primary consideration," said Network Computing editors. "As we said in 'Shoot for the Moon,' standards are the key to maintaining flexibility, and Foundry is secure enough in its designs to allow its customers this openness. Foundry also provided the widest set of options and the most redundancy," added Network Computing editors. Network Computing editors also stated: "Foundry not only responded to all four variations of our wiring-closet scenarios, it was the only vendor to give us both a chassis-based and a stackable solution for each. Our testing also stated 'there are also TCO (total cost of ownership) benefits [with Foundry] because we could use the same chassis for every piece of the network. This simplifies training and makes swapping boxes easier and less expensive in that C2G [test bed] would have fewer spares to purchase and track." "The total solution of Foundry's intelligent switching products helps our 5,500 global customers deliver reliable, high performance networks," said Ken Cheng, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Business Unit at Foundry Networks. "Leading enterprise customers in healthcare, finance, entertainment, government and education sectors benefit from converged voice, video and data networks with value-added capabilities like Foundry's wire- speed network-traffic monitoring and accounting technology based on the sFlow standard (RFC 3176). Foundry's unique ability to offer standards-based excellence in Power over Ethernet, Intelligent multiplayer switching, wiring closet solutions and backbone-class products is extremely important to our growing customer base," added Cheng.