Acacia unveils NovaSwitch 12000lx, industry's first Gigabit-ready stackable LAN switch; Newest member of NovaSwitch family extends Fast Adaptive Switching solutions.

LOWELL, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 9, 1996-- Acacia Networks leapfrogged the competition in the high-performance network switching market today when it unveiled its NovaSwitch 12000lx, the first and only truly stackable 10/100 Mbps local area network (LAN) switch engineered to support the emerging Gigabit Ethernet technology.

The NovaSwitch 12000lx will offer customers maximum network performance, with the ability to scale from Megabits to Gigabits speed through all levels of its architecture - from the switch, to the Stackplane and a range of high-speed uplinks. The 12000lx achieves this unique Gigabit-ready capability with internal switching capacity of 1.9 Gbps, support for up to 3.4 Gbps of non-blocked stacking bandwidth, and 9 Gbps of aggregate system bandwidth. No competing switch offers such a powerful combination of switching and stacking bandwidth.

For customers, a Gigabit-ready architecture means the NovaSwitch family can meet their performance needs today and in the future as new networking standards emerge.

"Acacia broke the barrier for price/performance and Web-based management with their truly stackable 10/100 workgroup switch at the last Interop show," said Nicholas Lippis, president of Strategic Networks Consulting, Inc. "With their new 100 Mbps stackable segment switch, they have proven again that their underlying technology and architecture scales effectively from megabits to gigabits."

NovaSwitch 12000lx offers investment protection never achieved before in a network switch. Incorporating 80 percent of the programmable silicon technology found in Acacia's award-winning NovaSwitch 2400ex, the 12000lx quickly and easily accommodates changing market demands and advances in networking standards.

"Organizations want products that complement their existing technology investment. With NovaSwitch 12000lx, Acacia has shown that its core technology can expand to meet new demands while enhancing the performance of earlier generations of switches. This is an economical upgrade path that does not leave an expensive trail of outmoded networking equipment behind it," said Acacia Vice President of Marketing Jeff Low.

Fast, adaptive switching taken to a new level

The NovaSwitch product line "future proofs" customers' investments with its award-winning programmable SNaP (Switched Network adaptive Processor) ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) chipset. DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technology in the chipset allows users to upgrade the switch's features by simply downloading new software while delivering the top-level performance of an ASIC.

NovaSwitches deliver the flexibility and performance of a chassis with the freedom and cost effectiveness of a stackable. Each of the NovaSwitch 12000lx's 12 full duplex, 10Base-T or 100Base-T ports can operate at either 10 or 100 Mbps automatically, and offers the full feature set and port density of an enterprise-level switch. The 12000lx can be stacked four units high and support as many as 40 100 Mbps ports, and can be stacked with the 2400ex and 1600ex models to optimize support of networks from small workgroups to thousands of users.

In addition, NovaSwitch 12000lx has the full range of performance, adaptability and management features of NovaSwitch 2400, including:

-- Wire speed performance on each port; -- Stackable to four 12000lx units, or up to seven units mixing 10 and 100 Mbps technology; -- Stacking bandwidth of 3.4 Gbps.; -- "Hot swapping" in and out of stacks for hardware upgrading with no network downtime or expensive reconfiguring; -- Per port RMON management with no performance degradation; -- Innovative "miniNOC" for simplified management; -- Probe support for monitoring both 10 and 100 Mbps data streams for network evaluation, capacity planning, and other pro-active management tasks; - Expansion modules (FDDI, Gigabit Ethernet, ATM, advanced management) can be used across all NovaSwitch platforms; -- Support for up to 5,000 Media Access Control (MAC) addresses.

Performance, flexibility on the front lines

Randy McRae, micro computer systems analyst for the Virginia Beach, Va., Police Department, selected Acacia switches for a network expansion after testing several brands of switches and finding that only Acacia switches have the combination of price/performance and expandability he needs to provide the bandwidth for high-speed links between servers and users.

McRae is in the process of adding seven Microsoft Windows NT servers and an SQL server to the department's network to accommodate a new criminal incident reporting system. McRae said the 12000lx's high performance will support the city's new system and provide an affordable expansion path as it grows.

"This system's going to need a lot of horsepower and that's where these switches come in - providing the necessary bandwidth," McRae said. "Also, flexibility is not an option for me; I can't lock myself into one hub and then have to switch it out later, and with the Acacia switches I won't have to. If I need additional modules, I can backplane and stack them," McRae said. "Other workgroup switches I tested were not expandable by backplaning. They stacked by 'trunking,' or attaching a patch cord to two 10Base-T ports. But I didn't want to do that because the network traffic bottlenecks there."

Pricing and availability

NovaSwitch 12000lx is available in December for $9995, or $832 per port.

About Acacia Networks

Acacia Networks was founded in January 1995 to apply a powerful new generation of programmable silicon, transplanted from high-volume consumer applications, to the LAN switching market. Acacia's NovaSwitches offer breakthrough price/performance to networking customers. The privately held company is headquartered in Lowell, Mass., and has 50 engineers and scientists developing high-speed LAN products and technology. For more information see Acacia's Web site at http://www.acacianet.com. -0-

Acacia Networks, NovaSwitch, NovaLink, StackPlane, NovaView, NovaWeb, mini-NOC, SNaP ASIC and Megabits to Gigabits are trademarks of Acacia Networks Inc. Other products and company names are trademarks of their respective holders.

CONTACT: Alan Raderman

Acacia Networks

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Glen Zimmerman

Beaupre & Co. Public Relations 

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