F5 Networks Smashes the Performance Barrier for Layer 7 Traffic Management.

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 17, 2000

BIG-IP(R) Enterprise Controller v3.3 with FastFlow Architecture

Delivers Leadership Performance to Intelligently

Manage Traffic in Business-Critical Web Sites

F5 Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIV), the leading provider of Internet traffic and content management (iTCM) products, today announced that BIG-IP(R) Enterprise v3.3 has set a new performance standard for intelligently managing traffic to web servers and caches based on Layer 7 information.

Deployed either as a standalone or integrated with F5's other leading iTCM products, BIG-IP delivers the highest throughput with more granular traffic control than any other product in its class, based on published data.

The new BIG-IP Enterprise v3.3 introduces FastFlow software architecture, increasing performance and providing a smooth transition to multi-processing features for future BIG-IP Enterprise releases. Platform hardware enhancements provide further performance gains in session rate and network bandwidth. Together these improvements enable BIG-IP Enterprise v3.3 to deliver up to three times greater throughput than previous versions of BIG-IP.

"Establishing an impeccable first impression and delivering the highest quality of service to our clients are vital to our business, which is centered around delivering reward and loyalty functionality to our clients," said Mike Thorpe, from the Technical Operations Group at Rewardstream. "The BIG-IP Controller helps Rewardstream to ensure that our applications and the right content are always available to our clients. We plan to continue to leverage the BIG-IP Controller's advanced Layer 7 capabilities, like Cookie persistence, in order to continue to differentiate our services."

Smashing the Layer 7 Performance Barrier

BIG-IP Enterprise v3.3 is capable of processing over 17,000 HTTP requests per second based on Layer 7 decisions. These requests are independent web switching decisions based on Layer 7 information such as URL, cookies, browser type, or language. BIG-IP Enterprise performance at Layer 7 is nearly three times greater than published data for Alteon's Ace Director 3 (6,300 HTTP 1.0 requests/sec)(a), and nearly four times greater than Arrowpoint's CS-150 (4,400 HTTP 1.0 requests/sec)(b). Supporting over 1.4 billion connections per day, BIG-IP Enterprise can saturate a gigabit up-link with a rich set of Layer 7 features enabled.

The Performance Facts

Vendor performance claims of Layer 7 performance can be confusing. Performance claims based on HTTP 1.1 measurements can be used to artificially inflate measured throughput. For example, in one vendor's performance claim using HTTP 1.1, each client made 20 requests for the same URL and all requests were directed to the same server. While this approach yields good performance, it can hardly be considered a real world measure of Layer 7 throughput. Comparative performance measurements at Layer 7 require that each request is independently processed and that these requests are directed to multiple servers. This can easily be accomplished by measuring either HTTP 1.0 performance or by forcing a single request per connection by disabling "keep-alives" when using HTTP 1.1.

The performance impact of enabling true Layer 7 switching in competing products can be disastrous. Products that focus on Layer 4 switching can see up to 80% performance degradation when Layer 7 features are enabled. BIG-IP offers consistent performance at Layer 4 and Layer 7, enabling customers to manage their web sites without worrying about performance degradation. "This huge difference between BIG-IP and its competitors reflects how F5's expertise at application layer management is paying off for customers," said John McAdam, president and CEO of F5 Networks.

Other vendor's products often require customers to selectively enable Layer 7 features and to accept limitations on Layer 7 processing. BIG-IP enables the use of all Layer 7 features simultaneously without imposing limitations on the length of the URL, cookie, or location of cookie. "The bottom-line is that BIG-IP's unique handling of Layer 7 switching addresses the performance needs of customers like no one else. Others may claim impressive statistics but they just don't match BIG-IP when deployed to manage real-world applications," McAdam said.

The Importance of Layer 7 (Application Information) Compared to Layer 4.

Vendor claims of high connection rates can be misleading unless a customer understands the difference between Layer 4 and Layer 7 switching. Examining traffic at Layer 7 allows the most intelligent quality of service (QoS), routing and management decisions to be made based on application information. Layer 4 switching only provides basic traffic direction. For example, a financial institution may have multiple web-based applications that can be accessed by different user groups. Managing these specific user groups and their associated applications requires Layer 7 information, and is very different from simply directing "generic" user traffic to general-purpose web servers based on simple Layer 4 information.

BIG-IP's unique Layer 7 switching capability enables the successful delivery of business critical applications for 7x24 availability, scalability and high performance. Devices whose capabilities focus on Layer 4 are blind to application information, so they treat all traffic the same without regard to the sophisticated Service Level Agreements and QoS requirements that businesses need to enforce. "In fact, BIG-IP is the traffic management product of choice for over 30 financial institutions worldwide. Once again, customers have voted for BIG-IP as the winner in performance and QoS when it comes to Layer 7 switching," McAdam said.

Pricing and Availability

BIG-IP Enterprise prices range from $27,250 to $47,250. Other BIG-IP products are priced from $9,990. BIG-IP Enterprise v3.3 with the new platform enhancements will be available beginning next month.

note(a) Source: www.alteonwebsystems.com/products/whitepapers/layer7switching/page6.asp note(b) Source: www.arrowpoint.com/products/switches/matrix.html (Or, go to www.tolly.com and reference report No. 200204)

About F5 Networks

F5 Networks is the leader in Internet Traffic and Content Management (iTCM). Our award winning integrated suite of high-performance best of breed products provides an end-to-end solution for automatically and intelligently managing Internet content and traffic -- globally. 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. F5 Networks helps companies avoid the risk of being burdened with ill-performing networks that do not meet end user expectations, while enabling network administrators to better control and predict the performance of their e-Business infrastructure. Our products 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.

F5 Networks (Nasdaq:FFIV) Internet Traffic Management products support a wide range of operating systems and hardware platforms including those from: Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq:SUNW), Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HWP), Compaq (NYSE:CPQ), Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT), Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL), IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC). F5 products work with leading IP-based applications, including legacy host, mainframe, Java, CORBA-based, and client/server applications from vendors such as SAP (NYSE:SAP), BAAN (Nasdaq:BAANF), Novell (Nasdaq:NOVL), Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL), and PeopleSoft (Nasdaq:PSFT).

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.