Cabletron SmartSwitch 6000 Promotion Raises Enterprise Switching Price/Performance Value to New Heights.

ROCHESTER, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 1998--

Free Chassis with the Purchase of Three Line Cards

Cabletron Systems (NYSE:CS), the premier provider of enterprise-class networking solutions, announced today an aggressive new promotion for its award-winning SmartSwitch 6000 switch.

The SmartSwitch 6000 promotion offers customers a SmartSwitch 6000 chassis and power supply for free with the purchase of any three SmartSwitch 600 Fast Ethernet modules. This worldwide promotion is effective immediately and runs through February 1999.

"The SmartSwitch 6000 promotion gives customers an incredibly competitive entry price for state-of-the-art wiring closet connectivity," said Bill Naas, Cabletron's director, LAN switching. "The value of a SmartSwitch 6000 is hard to beat when you consider it has full fault-tolerance, high port densities and the performance, scalability and flexibility of a backbone switch."

The SmartSwitch 6000 is an important component to the enterprise switching leadership that Cabletron demonstrated within a recent Dell'Oro Group report. According to the Dell'Oro Group, Cabletron holds 20 percent of the worldwide Ethernet Switched Layer 2 Modular market.

The SmartSwitch 6000 is a modular, five-slot, chassis designed to provide customers with a cost-effective solution for deploying high-performance Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet switching. It also provides the flexibility of any-to-any connectivity by supporting multiple high speed interfaces. Delivering the functionality of a highly manageable, extremely flexible and fault tolerant system, the SmartSwitch 6000 is capable of meeting any customer requirement at an affordable price. Offering the same features found throughout the widely-praised SmartSwitch family, the 6000 solution includes port mirroring, SmartTRUNKing, embedded RMON, and advanced VLAN and QoS functionality. The SmartSwitch 6000's distributed, high-speed architecture delivers an aggregate system throughput in excess of 10 million packets per second.

SmartSwitch 6000 Promotion Module Options:

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Part #                 Description                         List Price

6H202-24  24 Port High-Performance 10/100 Mbps                $7,995
          Switching Module (RJ45 UTP connectors)

6H203-24  24 Port High-Performance 10/100                     $7,995
          Mbps Switching Module (RJ21 UTP connectors)

6H252-17  16 Port High-Performance 10/100 Mbps                $6,495
          Switching Module (RJ45 UTP connectors)
          with one VHSIM/HSIM slot

6H253-13  12 Port High-Performance 10/100 Mbps                $6,495
          Switching Module (RJ21 UTP connectors)
          with one VHSIM/HSIM slot

6H258-17  16 Port High-Performance 10/100 Mbps Switching     $12,995
          Module (MTRJ multimode fiber connectors)
          with one VHSIM/HSIM slot

6H123-50  48 Port 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet MicroLAN Module   $9,995
          (RJ21 UTP connectors) with two FE-PIM slots

6H133-37  36 Port 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet MicroLAN Module   $8,995
          (RJ21 UTP connectors) with one HSIM slot

About Cabletron

Cabletron Systems, the premier provider of enterprise-class networking solutions, delivers dependable network access and communications to millions of people worldwide. With scaleable products designed for Fortune 1000 enterprise networks, service providers and small businesses, Cabletron provides simple, reliable and cost-effective business solutions for the information age. Cabletron's web site can be reached on the Internet at http://www.cabletron.com.

The Dell'Oro Group web site can be reached on the Internet at http://www.delloro.com. Cabletron, SmartSwitch and SmartTRUNK are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cabletron Systems