Force10 Leads the Industry in Layer 3 Ten Gigabit Ethernet Growth over Last Year According to Dell'Oro Group.

MILPITAS, Calif. -- Force10 Networks was the fastest growing Layer 3 Ten Gigabit Ethernet vendor during the last four quarters, according to Dell'Oro Group's most recent Ethernet switch report. For the third quarter of 2004, Force10's Layer 3 Ten Gigabit Ethernet port shipments were up 545 percent from the same quarter a year ago, far outpacing the rate of growth in the total market and among other competitive vendors. While expanding its port shipments faster than any other vendor in the industry, Force10 also doubled its 10 Gigabit Ethernet revenue over the last year.

"The adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet has accelerated significantly over the last 12 months, and Force10 has leveraged that growth to significantly increase its market share and customer base," said Andrew Feldman, vice president of marketing for Force10 Networks. "The Force10 TeraScale E-Series, with the industry's highest port density and resiliency feature set, is the only product on the market today ready to take that growth head on."

During the third quarter, Force10 introduced the TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers, which leads the industry in density, performance and resiliency. The TeraScale E-Series supports 672 line-rate Gigabit and 56 line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports in a single chassis and can process one billion packets per second, the highest in the industry. And, with support for an industry-leading one million access control lists (ACLs), the TeraScale E-Series provides scalable protection against denial of service attacks. According to The Tolly Group, the Force10 TeraScale E-Series is the industry's first Terabit Ethernet switch/router.

Over the last 12 months, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet market has grown beyond expectations as port prices have fallen dramatically from more than $16,000 a year ago to $8,399 today. According to the Dell'Oro Group Five Year Ethernet Forecast, growth will continue for the next several years as the 10 Gigabit Ethernet market expands from $358.2 million in 2004 to $2 billion in 2008.

New trends, such as data center consolidation, grid/cluster computing and the proliferation of bandwidth-intensive services, are driving the adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology into new industries and applications. Most recently, Japanese service providers, including SRS Sakura Internet, Japan Cablenet, NTT-ME and BIGLOBE, have begun deploying 10 Gigabit Ethernet backbones to provide a new array of advanced services to growing subscriber bases. Beyond service providers, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is also finding a home in the oil and gas industry, among Internet portals and in other industries that rely on their network for revenue.

About Force10 Networks

Force10 Networks is the pioneer in high performance switching and routing. Based on a revolutionary system architecture that delivers best-in-class resiliency and massive scalability, Force10's TeraScale E-Series switch/routers ensure predictable application performance, increase network availability, and reduce operating costs. Today, many of the world's largest Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks depend on Force10 Networks. For additional information, please visit the company's website at www.force10networks.com.

Force10, E-Series, EtherScale, TeraScale and FTOS are trademarks of Force10 Networks, Inc. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders.