3Com Corporation Forms New Business Partnership With Extreme Networks; Extreme Offers Aggressive and Enhanced Migration Path For CoreBuilder Customers.

Business & Technology Editors

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2000

3Com Corporation (Nasdaq:COMS) announced an enhanced migration plan for its high-end core switching customers and has formed a strategic relationship with Extreme Networks(R) (Nasdaq: EXTR). Beginning immediately Extreme will provide existing CoreBuilder customers with a migration path to its industry leading Summit(TM) and BlackDiamond(R) broadband Internet switching solutions. This alliance supports 3Com's transformation announced today.

3Com and Extreme are committed to maintaining superior customer relationships. To ensure a smooth migration path for CoreBuilder customers, Extreme will employ more than 200 3Com sales, engineering and marketing staff. 3Com's last customer shipments for CoreBuilder products are scheduled for June 30, 2000. 3Com will continue to support customers as committed in 3Com's existing warranties and support contracts.

"3Com understands the demands of the advanced core switching market, but our focus was too broad to adequately leverage our strengths and resources to meet the needs of our customers," said Eric Benhamou, chairman and CEO of 3Com. "Since 3Com's relationship with Extreme began in 1996, there has been very good synergy among the two companies. Extreme's i-series architecture, high-performance products and vision fit seamlessly with where CoreBuilder customers have told 3Com they want to go in the future."

For 3Com customers, the transition to BlackDiamond chassis switches represents a seamless, "drop-in" replacement for all features currently offered by CoreBuilder. More importantly, CoreBuilder customers immediately benefit from BlackDiamond's currently available advanced broadband switching features such as full redundancy with no single point of failure, DiffServ Quality of Service, bandwidth provisioning, BGP4, PIM Dense/Sparse Mode, server load balancing and web cache redirection.

Extreme Networks also intends to deliver near-term enhancements to BlackDiamond, including 10 gigabit Ethernet, packet over SONET, twice the current port density, fixed-latency for delay-sensitive traffic and quad-redundant backplanes. This will make it easier to migrate to a more scalable solution that meets the demands of service provider, web content, co-location and hosting, metropolitan area enterprise, and multi-tenant building applications.

3Com and Extreme have also completed initial interoperability testing between BlackDiamond and CoreBuilder to ensure all existing features interoperate. Key switching and routing standards like RIP, OSPF, DVMRP, IGMP snooping, Spanning Tree, IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging, link aggregation and auto-negotiation have been tested to date. A full test report is available at http://www.extremenetworks.com.

"We are excited about welcoming 3Com's high end core switching customers to Extreme," said Gordon Stitt, president and CEO of Extreme. "Our broadband core switching solutions offer a future-proof migration plan to CoreBuilder customers. And we are equally excited about the 3Com CoreBuilder sales, marketing and engineering team's arrival, which will augment our ability to expand our reach and initiatives in metro area networks and service provider data centers."

For more information on the migration strategy, current CoreBuilder customers can call the Extreme Networks CoreBuilder Migration Hotline at [phone] or visit the web site at http://www.extremenetworks.com

About Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks is a leading provider of high-performance, multilayer network solutions designed for the Internet economy. The Company's family of Summit and BlackDiamond switching solutions are built on a unique combination of ExtremeWare(TM) software and an ASIC-based common architecture that enables service providers, e-businesses and enterprises to expand their businesses and be more competitive by speeding traffic through a simplified, super scalable network infrastructure.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., Extreme Networks distributes its solutions in more than 40 countries through authorized resellers. For more information, visit www.extremenetworks.com.

About 3Com Corporation

With more than 300 million customer connections worldwide, 3Com Corporation connects more people and organizations to information and each other in more innovative, simple and reliable ways than any other networking company. 3Com delivers web-enabled solutions to consumers, small- to medium-sized business locations and network service providers. For more information, visit 3Com's web site @ www.3com.com/pressbox.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements relating to future events or future financial performance that involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should, " "expects,"" plans," "anticipates," "believes," 'estimates," " predicts", "potential" or "continue" or the negative of such terms or comparable terms. These statement are only predictions and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these statements based upon a number of factors including those identified in the Company's filings with the SEC.

Extreme Networks and BlackDiamond are registered trademarks of Extreme Networks, Inc. Summit and ExtremeWare are trademarks of Extreme Networks, Inc. 3Com and CoreBuilder are registered trademarks of 3Com Corporation.