INTERCONNECTS

SAN JOSE, CA -- Foundry Networks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a leading provider of high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing and Web traffic management solutions, announced today expansion of its strategy to target the Metro service provider market with new purpose-built Metro Routers for both MPLS and Layer 2 Metro networks. Foundry's Metro strategy is specifically designed to allow service providers to generate incremental revenue with new service offerings with minimal additional investment, while protecting existing investment in their SONET infrastructure. Foundry's four-part Metro strategy will: -- Provide a complete Metro solution including Multi-Tenant Unit (MTU), Provider Edge (PE), Provider Core (PC), and Internet Edge (IE), based on the NetIron(R) family of Metro Routers, allowing a purpose-built feature set and optimization. -- Provide a range of features for both MPLS and Layer 2 Metro architectures with industry-leading scalability and reliability. -- Introduce the new MetroLink(TM) Interface strategy to embrace SONET and 10-Gigabit Ethernet technologies with Ethernet-over-SONET (EoSONET) and offer a consistent feature set and a common management interface. -- Offer compelling and disruptive prices for MetroLink interfaces, especially SONET, that allow service providers to protect their SONET investment, while exploiting next-generation 10-Gigabit Ethernet technologies. "Foundry's strategy of embracing SONET and Ethernet in their Metro offering provides a compelling approach to the carriers with significant investments in SONET," said Dave Passmore, research director at Burton Group. "Further, Foundry's new pricing, especially OC-48c SONET, is potentially disruptive in the Metro markets and will offer Metro service providers a cost-effective way to leverage SONET with 10-Gigabit Ethernet." As Metro service providers build the next-generation network infrastructure to offer Transparent LAN services, Foundry offers a complete range of solutions from VLAN-based Layer 2 network services to MPLS-based VPN services with Draft-Martini and Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS). Foundry's NetIron routers now support VPLS and ISIS-TE functionality, thereby complementing the existing Draft Martini, RSVP-TE, LDP, and OSPF-TE. Foundry is the first vendor in the industry to provide the complete suite of MPLS functionality, including the new VPLS, to offer new services beyond those made possible by Draft- Martini. Foundry's new VPLS implementation allows Metro service providers to build scalable MPLS-based Metro networks that can offer multi-point-to-multi-point enterprise VPN services with on-demand bandwidth provisioning. Foundry's VPLS and Draft-Martini implementations accommodate different customer interface points including 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, OC-3c ATM, OC-3c SONET, OC-12c SONET or OC-48c SONET. This simplifies service provider operations and allows them to dramatically expand their target customer bases. With Foundry's NetIron Metro Routers, service providers can offer differentiated services to their customers over a single access point by identifying different traffic flows and mapping them onto different MPLS services. "The ability to offer multipoint-to-multipoint MPLS VPN Services is a key requirement for most major carriers," said Michael Kennedy, managing partner at Network Strategy Partners. "Foundry is the first vendor to address this key requirement with VPLS and is likely to accelerate the market adoption of MPLS based Metro VPN services." Along with new VPLS functionality, the NetIron Metro Routers feature MPLS-enabled Gigabit Ethernet interfaces complementing the existing MPLS enabled OC-3c, OC-12c and OC-48c SONET modules. These new MPLS-enabled Gigabit Ethernet interfaces allow NetIron Metro Routers to be deployed as cost-effective MTU or PE devices aggregating multiple customer interfaces and offer VPLS based VPN services. Foundry is now offering two major high availability features purpose-built for Layer 2 Metro networks which offer an alternative to Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) based Metro designs. First, Metro Ring Protocol (MRP) offers sub-second fault-detection, isolation and fail-over for Metro access rings. Second, Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP) offers sub-second fail-over for full mesh or partial mesh Metro topologies. Together, the MRP and the VSRP complement the existing Spanning Tree based innovations such as Rapid STP (802.1w) and SuperSpan(TM). "One of the key problems in running Layer 2 Metropolitan Area Networks is the need for rapid reconfiguration if outages occur," said Paul Strauss, research manager of Enterprise Networks at IDC. "While the new Rapid Spanning Tree provides a dramatic improvement over the standard Spanning Tree algorithm, there is a market need for faster alternatives to spanning tree, including the Foundry approach." Along with the new MRP and VSRP for high availability, Foundry's NetIron Metro Routers now feature significant scalability enhancements, including new Metro trunk capabilities and MAC address table expansions. The NetIron systems now support Metro trunk groups of up to four 10-Gigabit Ethernet links for an aggregate bandwidth of 40 Gbps. This allows 40 Gbps bandwidth connectivity between Metro core systems without the use of expensive optical equipment. In addition to the new Metro trunks, the NetIron systems now support up to 2,000,000 MAC addresses per each system in order to scale the Layer 2 Metro networks to new levels.