SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Foundry Networks(r), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced the FastIron(r) LS Series of compact 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet edge switches. The new FastIron LS switches feature triple-speed 10/100/1000 Mbps network connectivity, optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) uplinks, enterprise-class security, wire-speed performance, and Foundry's powerful suite of advanced Layer 2 services in a compact, one rack unit (1U) high and 12.92" deep switch. The FastIron LS Series switches are ideal for environments that require secure, high-performance 10/100/1000 Mbps endpoint connectivity, and the flexibility to upgrade to one or more ports of 10 GbE in a compact switch.

Industry analysts are forecasting accelerated deployment of 10 GbE in both enterprise and service provider environments. The Dell'Oro Group reports that the market for 10 GbE is experiencing dramatic growth and port shipments are expected to more than triple in 2007. Mark Seery, vice president switching and routing for Ovum-RHK Research states, "The market for 10 Gigabit Ethernet is exploding and the driver for the growth is low-cost Gigabit Ethernet. New IP/Ethernet platforms need to address this growth by combining advanced features such as IPv6, security, and the ability to include modular 10 Gigabit Ethernet."

With its powerful switching, security, bandwidth scalability and compact design features, the FastIron LS Series is well-matched for wide range of applications. For enterprises, the FastIron LS provides high bandwidth network access for desktops, servers, workstations, wireless LAN networks and other Ethernet connected endpoints. Within data center environments, the switches' low latency and wire-speed switching make the FastIron LS ideal for high-performance server connectivity. Expanding beyond the enterprise, the FastIron LS Series can also be deployed in metro area networks with features that include Metro Ring Protocol (MRP), used for building resilient ring-based topologies, VLAN stacking and advanced multicast capabilities including Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and MLD v1/v2 snooping for controlling multicast traffic in high-bandwidth content distribution applications.

Making Security Top Priority

The 2006 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey reported that unauthorized access to information "continues to be the second-greatest source of financial loss." It also indicates nearly 40 percent of the respondents attributing more than 20 percent of their organization's losses to insider threats. To prevent similar attacks and completely secure customer networks, the FastIron LS leverages embedded sFlow(r) traffic monitoring and open source security applications, such as Snort(r), to deliver highly scalable security and threat mitigation without added costs or performance degradation of secondary security sensors.

Available in 24-port and 48-port configurations, the FastIron LS also delivers advanced security features including rate limiting of multicast and broadcast traffic, protection against TCP and ICMP denial of service (DoS) attacks, inbound and outbound rate limiting, standards-based network access control (NAC) with multi-endpoint authentication. Additionally, spanning tree Root Guard and BPDU guard protect the network topology from protocol-level attacks. To allow organizations to control network access by Ethernet device, the FastIron LS switches support MAC-based VLANs enabling MAC-based network access control.

"Our customers' bandwidth demands are rapidly growing, but their equipment budgets are not. At the same time, the requirement for high-value and resilient solutions continues to guide our customers'

equipment choices," said Bob Schiff, vice president and general manger for Foundry's enterprise business unit. "We built the FastIron LS Series products to address these competing goals -- low cost and high value. The FastIron LS Series complements the FastIron GS Series power over Ethernet edge switches Foundry introduced last year. Together, the FastIron LS and GS Series provide customers with an intelligent edge solution for delivering secure, reliable and high-performance Ethernet services to laptops, servers, workstations, mobile networks, IP phones and other Ethernet connected endpoints."

Foundry Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FDRY)