BIG-IP Controller with Exclusive OneConnect Content Switching Feature Provides a Breakthrough System for Maximizing Server and Network Performance.

Business Editors, High-Tech Writers

Networld + Interop 2001

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2001

New OneConnect(TM) Feature Helps Reduce Bandwidth Costs Up to 20%

F5 Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIV), the leading provider of Internet Traffic and Content Management (iTCM) products, today announced the BIG-IP(R) Controller 4.0 with OneConnect(TM) Content Switching, enabling groundbreaking web acceleration to help customers increase their return on investment by reducing their total cost of ownership for web infrastructures.

The award-winning BIG-IP Controller provides the richest and most flexible features for Internet traffic management and has the unique ability to take preemptive measures to prevent application, server or network problems. The BIG-IP Controller is part of F5's Internet Control Architecture(TM), which defines a complete, unified and open architectural solution for the distribution, delivery and control of traffic, content and applications.

"peoples.com has been recently rated one of the top five financial services Internet sites across the United States, Canada and Latin America, and we pride ourselves on providing premier online services to support our customers' needs 24 x 7," said Brian Terry, Vice-President, Information Technology at People's Bank. "Today, the BIG-IP Controller provides us with the advanced features and granular control over traffic that we need to maximize uptime for both our Internet and intranet applications and deliver the highest quality of service to our customers. BIG-IP's new functionality will help us extend uptime even further and increase the overall efficiency of our servers and network, directly translating to lower cost of deployment and increased ROI of our existing infrastructure."

Networking resources, including equipment, bandwidth, skilled professionals and data center real estate, are steadily rising in cost. The BIG-IP Controller 4.0 directly addresses this problem by (1) significantly increasing the customer's existing web server and network capacities, (2) reducing rack space, power consumption, and simplifying management by consolidating best-of-class local and wide area traffic management, and (3) and cost-effectively scaling enterprise, managed services, and e-Business applications while delivering on the promise of 99.999% uptime.

"Our enterprise and service provider customers are looking to deploy truly flexible and adaptable infrastructures that can support multiple application types and maximize infrastructure ROI," said Peter Firstbrook, Senior Research Analyst at the META Group. "The IP load balancer is increasingly the lynchpin component in the data center that ultimately determines the Quality of Experience of Web applications."

"Our customers depend on BIG-IP to support their business-critical applications, so web site uptime is absolutely crucial to them," said Jeff Pancottine, Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Business Development at F5 Networks. "At F5, we've always been obsessed with helping customers achieve high availability, reliability and optimal performance for their Internet sites. BIG-IP 4.0 can now make even more informed traffic management decisions through its unique ability to collect key information from server applications and aggregate connections for better bandwidth optimization. BIG-IP, with its unprecedented intelligence and performance, is able to help customers achieve 99.999% uptime and decrease the total cost of ownership of their web infrastructure."

The BIG-IP Controller 4.0 builds upon the unique advantages that F5 has already delivered to the market such as superior Layer 7 features and performance, integrated load balancing with SSL acceleration, and the industry's richest set of persistence features. Highlights of the BIG-IP Controller 4.0 include:

OneConnect(TM) Content Switching -- Enterprise web sites consist of many servers and devices responding to multiple users accessing different content and applications. Deploying the applications and content on different servers is a common practice. OneConnect(TM) reduces network bandwidth and significantly improves the end user experience by not requiring network-intensive TCP connections to be opened and closed for each object (HTML, GIF, etc) requested. BIG-IP's OneConnect helps enterprises save money by reducing bandwidth costs up to 20% and increasing the capacity of back-end servers. More traffic can be accommodated without buying more equipment or bandwidth.

Client Aggregation

Client Aggregation takes requests from separate users and consolidates them on BIG-IP. Consolidated traffic is then sent to appropriate web servers -- minimizing the number of connections to the server and enabling more efficient use of existing servers and network resources.

Consolidate Best-of-Class Local and Wide Area Traffic Management--

Infrastructure is expensive. The equipment, manpower, rack space, and electricity costs continue to rise. The combination of BIG-IP for local area load balancing and the award-winning 3-DNS(R) Controller for wide-area load balancing in a single unit, reduces overall deployment costs, including management, rack space, and electrical overhead.

Application Performance Monitoring -- Web applications respond to users' requests differently at any given time. Traditionally, load balancing has attempted to predict the ability of the server to handle the next user's request. Application Performance Monitoring, allows applications to have more input on how traffic is managed. With Application Performance Monitoring, BIG-IP can receive input from applications and take preemptive measures to avoid system failures. Application Performance Monitoring offers an innovative approach to effectively scale enterprise, managed services, and e-Business applications.

About F5 Networks

F5 Networks is the leader in Internet Traffic and Content Management (iTCM), and delivers application aware networks through its open Internet Control Architecture. F5 features the industry's leading set of integrated products and services that manage, control and optimize Internet traffic and content. Our solutions automatically and intelligently deliver the best possible Internet performance, availability and content distribution for service providers, enterprises and e-businesses. Our products remove bandwidth congestion and optimize the availability and speed of mission-critical Internet servers and applications, including web publishing, content delivery, e-commerce, caching, firewalls and more. Our solutions are widely deployed in large enterprises, the top service providers, financial institutions, government agencies, healthcare, and portals throughout the world. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and has offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. F5 Networks is located on the web at www.f5.com.

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 statements 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.