F5 Scores High Marks With Cavium

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Cavium Networks, the leader in content and security processing with the industry's broadest product line, today announced that F5 Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FFIV - News) has introduced a new member of its FirePass SSL VPN product line that incorporates the Cavium Networks NITROX XL NFB FIPS 140-2 Acceleration Board. The FirePass product line is an industry leading family of products that provide ubiquitous VPN connectivity to employees, customers and partners of organizations using SSL encryption and Web browser technology. The FirePass 4100 product supports FIPS (Federal Information Processing Support) SSL encryption that is essential for government and financial networks. The NITROX XL NFB Acceleration Cards have been integrated into F5's FirePass 4100 product. With the industry leading FIPS SSL encryption performance enabled by Cavium Networks, government and financial networks will enjoy security at performance levels previously available only in non-FIPS enterprise networking products. For more information on FirePass, please visit the F5 Networks website at: http://www.f5.com/f5products/products/FirePass/

"Cavium Networks provided us with a market leading technology that enabled us to offer new data and key protection capabilities to Government and Financial networks with the FirePass Family," said Igor Plotnikov, VP of Engineering at F5 Networks. "Additionally, the similarity between the Cavium Networks' FIPS and non-FIPS software interfaces enabled us to eliminate duplication in our product development efforts for the enterprise, government and financial market segments."

Cavium Networks' NITROX FIPS 140-2 Acceleration Card brings together the unmatched performance of Cavium Networks' NITROX security processors, and the trusted strength and security of the FIPS 140-2 standard in a complete high- security hardware and software system. The resulting board implements a tight FIPS140-2 level 3 cryptographic boundary around the board's card-edge. The Accelerator Card comes complete with a rich, full-featured set of software drivers, utilities, and reference application software, all delivered in C source code. Together with a complete software development kit, it significantly reduces the cost, complexity, and time to develop products targeted at high-value, high-security government, financial and healthcare applications. The NITROX XL NFB family includes three cards ranging in performance from 3500 to 10000 RSA OPS and up to 500 Mbps bulk encryption performance. The cards have successfully completed FIPS Laboratory compliance testing and are expected to be NIST certified by Q1 '05.

"Cavium Networks has already enabled fast, robust and feature-rich security in a variety of enterprise and service provider applications," said Rajiv Khemani, VP of Marketing at Cavium Networks. "Typically, security products for government and financial markets have had limited performance and high costs. With the deployment of the NITROX XL NFB Acceleration Cards in the F5 FirePass 4100 product, we are extending the compelling features and benefits of our product line to government, financial and healthcare applications."

F5 Networks Inc.

Cavium Networks Inc.