Foundry Networks Extends Industry Leadership Role With New Board Member Elected to the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 11, 2002

Foundry is the First Vendor to Ship Current Draft

Standards of 10 Gigabit Ethernet 802.3ae Interfaces for

Enterprise and Metro Service Provider Markets

Foundry Networks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a leading provider of high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing and Web traffic management solutions, today announced that Val Oliva has been elected as a member of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance Board of Directors. Mr. Oliva is also vice president and the chair of the Technical Committee of the 10GEA. The members of the 10GEA have united together to promote the acceptance of 10 Gigabit Ethernet and the adoption of universally accepted product standards within the IEEE committee.

Foundry is at the forefront in the development and delivery of standardized 10 Gigabit Ethernet products and interfaces. "Foundry is not only the first to have a 10 Gigabit Ethernet ready platform, but also the first to ship a draft compliant 802.3ae 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface," said Bobby Johnson, president and CEO of Foundry Networks. "As a member of the 10GEA, we are contributing our part in evangelizing the power of Ethernet with 10 Gigabit Ethernet and its applications in the LAN, MAN and WAN," continued Johnson.

After more than 25 years of evolution, Ethernet has evolved to be the world's most popular and dominant networking technology. The advent of 10 Gigabit Ethernet represents a major milestone in the Ethernet evolution and represents a unique opportunity for enterprise and Metro service providers to scale and build next generation networks. Enterprise customers can scale their backbone networks ten-fold by simply utilizing the new 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Foundry offers a unique value proposition to Metro service providers by unifying SONET and 10 Gigabit Ethernet technologies with MPLS and Ethernet over SONET. This allows service providers to protect their existing investment in SONET infrastructure while leveraging the compelling price/performance and scalability of 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

"Foundry's 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Global Ethernet products have enabled us to create a high-speed Carrier-class network infrastructure, enabling us to offer variable bandwidth service offerings and accommodate more customers," said Brad Randall, general manager of Enersource. "Extended features, such as RFC-3176, will allow us to account for network traffic flows from our service offerings such as extranet services, back-office hosting and virtual data center, disaster recovery and remote back-up services, and voice and on-demand video conferencing."

Foundry offers a full range of 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces to accommodate configurations across a wide variety of networking infrastructures. Foundry's 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules support all the advanced switching and routing feature sets available in the Foundry award-winning FastIron(R) Enterprise modular switches, BigIron(R) Layer 3 backbone switches and NetIron(R) Metro routers. Foundry currently supports three 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface that support a range of distances from 300 meters to 40 kilometers:

-- 10-G Base-SR (850 nanometer) for up to 300 meters

-- 10-G Base-LR (1310 nanometer) for up to 10 kilometers

-- 10-G Base-ER (1550 nanometer) for up to 40 kilometers

All the above are shipping and generally available now.

About Foundry Networks

Foundry Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY) is a leading provider of high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing and Web traffic management solutions including Layer 2/3 LAN switches, Layer 3 Backbone switches, Layer 4 - 7 Web switches and Metro Routers. Foundry's 4,000 customers include the world's premier ISPs, Metro service providers, and enterprises including e-commerce sites, universities, entertainment, health and wellness, government, financial, and manufacturing companies. Some of these customers include: AOL (NYSE:AOL), EarthLink, China Telecom, MSN (Nasdaq:MSFT), Verio, Cable & Wireless (NYSE:CWP), Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO), Incyte Genomics, Inc. (Nasdaq:INCY), Deutsche Bank, The University of Washington, University of Miami, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) of France, The British Library, U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy, NASA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan. For more information about the company and its products, call 1.888.TURBOLAN or visit www.foundrynetworks.com.

Foundry Networks, NetIron, FastIron, BigIron and the `Iron' family of marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Foundry Networks, Inc. in United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.