Denver City and County Upgrades Government-Wide Network to High-Speed ATM/Fast Ethernet 3Com Systems.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 1999--

3Com Enterprise Network to Accelerate Voice, Video and Data

Applications for Denver's 60 Government

Agencies, Local Businesses and Citizenry

3Com Corporation (Nasdaq:COMS) today announced that Denver, Colo., is upgrading its city and county-wide network using advanced 3Com ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) and Ethernet systems. The heart of the 5,000-user infrastructure is a metropolitan area network (MAN) with a dual 155 megabits per second (Mbps) OC-3 backbone based on 3Com CoreBuilder(R) 7000HD (high-density) ATM/Ethernet switches. Denver is also using 3Com systems for wide area network (WAN) connections linking its 300 government buildings, most of which utilize 3Com local area networks (LANs). The city and county additionally rely on 3Com remote access solutions, providing offsite users with fast access to all network services.

Using the new $2 million, fault-tolerant 3Com network, Denver can now quickly and reliably share voice, video and data communications among its 60 agencies. The network also will soon allow businesses and citizens to use the Internet to access real estate information, pay parking tickets and apply for permits online for the first time.

Home to two-time Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos, Denver is well-known as the Mile High City tucked under the majestic Rocky Mountains. The city and county of Denver are geographically identical, and both function under one entity that governs 150 square miles of central Colorado with a population of 500,000. Taking advantage of Colorado's Traffic Signaling Project, an initiative that laid fiber cable throughout the state, Denver began planning fiber installations for city-owned sites in 1996, paving the way for an advanced network to reduce its costs and improve the delivery of government services.

Powered by its new 3Com network, Denver is poised to deliver several more new applications that will greatly improve both internal and external government operations. Chief among these is the PeopleSoft suite of financial and human resources management applications. The software will expedite Denver financial operations by centralizing cost accounting for all city and county government agencies, and will consolidate human resource management functions for all agencies in one application. The network will also support an intranet that will give all agencies email, Internet access and the ability to reduce data duplication and inaccuracies by letting them share common information. The intranet will feed a public web site that Denver businesses and citizens can access via the Internet.

Denver additionally plans to take advantage of the 3Com network's scalable bandwidth by rolling out a variety of new video-based applications. A telemedicine application will let doctors at the Denver Health Hospital provide timely medical attention to inmates at Denver County Jail without having to travel to the jail. A jail-to-courthouse video- conferencing application, replacing existing coaxial cable, will provide a similar benefit to judges, public defenders and district attorneys, letting them depose and interview inmates without leaving their offices. Denver is also considering placing network-driven video cameras on top of traffic lights to more effectively route rush-hour traffic and running city and county telephone calls over the 3Com network to generate substantial savings.

"Denver has a history as a pioneer, and we want to continue that tradition by applying leading-edge technology to run the most effective and efficient government we can for our citizens and business community," said Alonzo R. Matthews, Denver's manager of the Department of General Services. "With our 3Com infrastructure, Denver maintains its heritage by leveraging the power of high-speed networks to deliver new and faster government services to all our constituents."

High-Speed Network for 21st Century Government

One hundred times faster than Denver's previous architecture, the new ATM backbone network is rooted in a larger vision to improve government services. Prior to the 3Com MAN/WAN, Denver relied on an ISDN MAN to link seven core downtown buildings, including the Police, Treasury, Public Works, Human Services and Budget Management offices, the city's convention center and its airport, and other agency sites. Already congested with increasing traffic, the ISDN network was unsuited to support the planned implementation of PeopleSoft, the city- and county-wide intranet, the public Web site, etc.

Having proven its performance and reliability in Denver LANs, which the city and county began using in 1993, 3Com was again chosen to provide the systems, project management and support for this crucial network upgrade. "Our first-hand experience over the years confirmed 3Com's superior products and service," said Lonnie Shinault, acting deputy director of Denver's Information Services Division. "The CoreBuilder 7000's price/performance, scalability and reliability typify the excellence we've come to expect from 3Com. With the huge amounts of traffic we plan to move between our buildings and out to our businesses and citizens, we couldn't settle for anything less."

Slated for completion in July 1999, Denver's city- and county-wide infrastructure is anchored by a seven-building MAN whose core is split between its data center and its City and County building. Each of the two core MAN buildings has a CoreBuilder 7000HD switch equipped with a 7600 module with 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connections to a CoreBuilder 3500 Layer 3 switch, a CoreBuilder 5000 high-function switch, a NETBuilder(R) II intelligent router. The two CoreBuilder 7000 switches connect to each other via an 155 Mbps OC-3 ATM dual-fiber ring.

The five other MAN buildings employ either a SuperStack(R) II Switch 3000 or 3300 Fast Ethernet switch, which provides 100 Mbps over fiber connections to the CoreBuilder 5000 switch in the City and County building. Fueled by 3Com LANs, the majority of Denver's remote buildings use OfficeConnect(R)Ethernet hubs for LAN connectivity and for ISDN connections to the two NETBuilder II routers. The 3Com routers also provide an ATM WAN connecting the data center and City and County Building to several facilities, including the County Jail, Human Services building and Denver's ISP, at speeds ranging from 1.54 Mbps TI circuits to OC-3. Mobile users and a few remote sites use 56kb dial-up modems to connect to 3Com's Total Control(R) multiservice access platform at Denver's Information Services Division site for remote access to the network.

The LANs at the Data Center and the City and County building employ a mix of SuperStack II 1000 ethernet switches and SuperStack II Hub 10s and Hub 100s hubs at the network edges for shared and switched 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet desktop connections. The CoreBuilder 3500 switches at the two core sites are used to create virtual LANs (VLANs) to segment traffic by department, while CoreBuilder 5000 switches provide 100 Mbps links to network servers and Denver's enterprise computers. The five other MAN buildings use SuperStack II Hub 10s and Dual Speed Hub 500s hubs for shared 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet connections to desktops.

In addition to 3Com's hardware, Denver is using 3Com's Transcend(R) Enterprise Manager management software to control, configure and manage its local and remote networks from a single management console. Using 3Com Care(SM) professional services, 3Com provided Denver with complete network installation, design, configuration and performance checks. 3Com is also delivering 24 X 7 support, free software upgrades and advance hardware replacement through its Guardian(SM) service program.

"3Com provided us with a complete solution for creating an efficient, responsive city and county network," said Ivan Drinks, director of Denver's Information Services Division. "Their systems are scalable and stable, and their implementation and on-going support have served us very well. 3Com is also helping us reduce the costs of government services while we increase the quality of those services. Looking forward, we see 3Com technology continuing to play a lead role in our operations for many years to come."

About 3Com Corporation

With more than 200 million customers worldwide, 3Com Corporation connects more people in more ways to information than any other networking company. 3Com delivers innovative information access products and network system solutions to large, medium and small enterprises; carriers and network service providers; PC OEMs; and consumers. 3Com -- More connected(tm). For further information, visit 3Com's World Wide Web site at www.3com.com or the press site at www.3com.com/pressbox.

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