3Com Expands Its Enterprise Access Router Portfolio Providing a Complete Solution Offering.

MARLBOROUGH, Mass. -- 3Com Delivers New Enterprise Router Solutions for Larger Sites With the Router 6000 Family and Expands its Remote Office Router Product Line With the New Router 3000 DSL Family

3Com Corporation (Nasdaq: COMS) today introduced the Router 6000 Family, which is the latest in 3Com's string of new products that are designed for enterprise customers. The Router 6000 family brings enterprise-class wide area network (WAN) features and performance to the regional offices of large enterprise customers and to the headquarters of medium-sized enterprises. Beneficial to customers with large, distributed networks, the Router 6000 series has proven to be interoperable with Cisco routers, according to The Tolly Group testing. Furthermore, 3Com delivered new enterprise-class DSL routers, expanding its existing Router 3000 family designed for remote sites and small offices of larger organizations.

"We see opportunities to give enterprise customers full-featured routers with better price/performance, offering them a choice for enterprise-class WAN routers," said Udaya Shankar, senior director of router product management, 3Com. "The buying criteria for routers have changed over the past few years. A multi-vendor routed and switched network is a reality among larger customers today. 3Com's network solutions work in all types of business environments. With our new WAN routers and LAN switches, enterprise customers create an optimized IP infrastructure and can then deliver new services, such as voice over IP and security services."

Advantages of 3Com WAN Routers for Enterprise Customers

3Com's WAN routers deliver a variety of business and technical benefits that enable customers to deploy multiple new services over a network that has a lower cost of ownership than competing products can establish. As routers are a critical part of a corporate network for securely transmitting voice and data packets, 3Com offers enhanced redundancy with the new router solutions. On the Router 6000, 3Com offers high resilience with hot swappable and redundant power supplies and modules, and dual imaging. On the Router 3000 DSL family, ISDN back-up interfaces are included on some models. 3Com's new WAN routers can, therefore, be used by customers wanting to run business-critical services such as IP telephony over their corporate networks.

The 3Com Router 6000 family is a standards-based, fully-featured product in its class of enterprise routers. Like the Router 3000 and the Router 5000 family, this router comes fully configured. 3Com's router solutions do not contain "hidden costs" or confusing memory and software upgrades, according to The Tolly Group. The Router 6000 provides a multi-service platform for customers that are planning to add future technologies and software features over time. As well as a full range of routing protocols, this router supports MPLS, stateful packet inspection (SPI) firewall security Quality of Service (QoS), and IPsec VPN services. At first release, the WAN options include serial, E1, T1, E3, T3, ADSL and OC-3 ATM interfaces.

The Tolly Group recently performed the "Tolly Verified for Cisco Interoperability" test suite and determined that 3Com's Router 6000 family is compatible with routers from Cisco and other standards-based vendors. "The new 3Com routers have once again proven interoperability across a laundry list of standards-based WAN and routing protocols," said Kevin Tolly, President/CEO of The Tolly Group. Not only did the 3Com routers prove interoperability with Cisco but engineers also Tolly Verified many of the resilience and hot-swap capabilities. "This makes the 3Com routers an attractive option to enterprise providers looking for a second source access provider," Tolly added.

Additional testing at The Tolly Group also confirmed 3Com Router 6000 WAN interoperability with a Juniper M7i router using standards-based IP RIP and OSPF protocols. This interoperability makes the routers an ideal access solution for carriers who have selected that vendor for their core transport. In addition, instead of having inflexible and multiple software code bases adding to the complexity that other vendors often provide, 3Com has standardized on a single fully-loaded code base for its routers and gives customers greater ease of support coupled with deployment flexibility with the 3Com router solutions.

The 3Com Router 3000 DSL series of ADSL and G.SHDSL routers consists of six new router models and brings a series of fixed configuration DSL routers to 3Com's router family. These new models offer superior price/performance compared to the Cisco 82x/83x series of routers. Service providers that are deploying DSL-based managed business-class services can use the Router 3000 DSL to give customers advanced features, such as QoS and sophisticated firewall security, and a richness of protocol and application suites.

Pricing and Availability

The 3Com Router 6040 and 3Com Router 6080 start at $5990 and $8390 (US list) respectively and include 512MB operating memory and the full software suite of routing, VPN and security software. Both routers are available now.

The 3Com Router 3000 DSL family are priced between $595 and $795 (US list), depending on whether ISDN backup port is required. All models include 64MB operating memory and the full software suite including routing, VPN and security software. The 3Com Router 3030, 3Com Router 3031, 3Com Router 3032 and 3Com Router 3035 are available now. 3Com Router 3033 and 3Com Router 3034 are expected to be available by mid-November 2004.

About The Tolly Group

The Tolly Group, an independent testing and strategic consulting organization based in Boca Raton, FL., offers a full range of services designed to furnish both the vendor and end-user communities with authoritative and unbiased information. Additionally, The Tolly Group is recognized worldwide for its expertise in assessing leading-edge technologies. For more information on The Tolly Group's services, visit its Web site at http://www.tolly.com, E-mail [e-mail], call [phone], or fax [phone].

About 3Com Corporation

3Com is a leading provider of innovative, practical and high-value voice and data networking products, services and solutions for enterprises of all sizes and public sector organizations. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.

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