Yipes Appoints Bob Metcalfe to Advisory Board; Co-Inventor of Ethernet Will Help Advance Yipes' Industry Leadership.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 15, 2001

Yipes Communications, Inc., the defining provider of scalable Ethernet services, today announced the appointment to its advisory board of Robert M. ("Bob") Metcalfe, the co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com Corp., publisher and venture capitalist.

Consisting of distinguished business, technology and media leaders, the Yipes advisory board assists with strategic planning and the evolution of Yipes' business and technology model. Other members of the board include former Ziff-Davis President J. Scott Briggs, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, lawyer and writer Peter Huber, telecommunications industry consultants David S. Isenberg and Nick Lippis and Telecordia Technologies Vice President Dr. Robert W. Lucky.

Metcalfe is a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners, focusing on information technology startups in the Boston area. He is a director of Avaki, Avistar, Camden Technology Conference, Ember, IDG, IDC, Kelmscott Rare Breeds Foundation, MIT, MediaLabEurope, Nanosys, and Narad. Metcalfe serves on the technical advisory boards of Invisible Hand and Sockeye.

Metcalfe had three careers before becoming a venture capitalist. As an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Metcalfe helped build the early Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he co-invented Ethernet, the international local-area networking standard on which he shares four patents.

As an entrepreneur-executive (1979-1990), Metcalfe founded 3Com Corp., the billion-dollar networking company. And as a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Metcalfe was CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992-1995) and widely read columnist. He also produced conferences including ACM97, ACM1, Agenda, Pop!Tech, and Vortex.

Metcalfe received the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1980 from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 1988, he received the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In 1995, Metcalfe was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he received the IEEE's Medal of Honor. In 1997, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. And in 1999, he was elected fellow of the International Engineering Consortium.

After 22 years in Silicon Valley, Metcalfe now lives with his family on a farm in Maine and a townhouse in Boston.

"In the years since we invented Ethernet, it has been adopted in the vast majority of local area networks, jumped orders of magnitude in speed, and through Yipes, made its debut in metro and wide area networks," Metcalfe said. "I am excited to help Yipes foster the rapid advance of Ethernet services."

"We have been fortunate to attract some of the best minds in the industry to our advisory board," said Jerry Parrick, CEO of Yipes. "None is more distinguished than Bob Metcalfe, whose pioneering work on packet technology made our optical Gigabit Ethernet networks possible. His farsighted vision and expertise as a scientist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist will provide invaluable guidance as we offer new services and penetrate new markets. Building on our many existing accomplishments, he will significantly enhance our company's reputation as a leader in our industry."

Yipes is the first national provider of dynamically scalable bandwidth, ranging from 1 Megabit per second to 1 Gigabit per second in 1 Mbps increments. Yipes serves 21 markets across the country with its unique optical IP networks. The company's customers include Fortune 1000 enterprises, financial institutions, real estate companies, law firms, medical facilities, software developers, Web-based businesses, ISPs and ASPs, universities, school districts and government agencies.

Yipes is the defining provider of scalable Ethernet services. Yipes' highly affordable services, currently available in 21 markets coast-to-coast, include Yipes MAN (Metro Area Networking), Yipes NAN (National Area Networking), Yipes NET (high-speed Internet access), Yipes TOUGH (extended redundancy options), Yipes VPN (secure IP connectivity between remote offices), Yipes WALL (managed firewall service) and Yipes WEB (managed Web services). The Yipes NOW Web interface enables customers to instantly scale their bandwidth from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps (in 1 Mbps increments), enabling the next generation of Internet services. Yipes has received $291 million in equity funding from more than 30 investors including Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), The Sprout Group/CSFB, Focus Ventures, JP Morgan Partners, BancBoston Ventures, Soros Private Equity Partners, Focus Capital and Intel Capital.

Yipes has been honored for innovation and excellence by America's Network, Computerworld, Enterprise Systems, Inter@ctive Week, The Net Economy, Network Magazine, Red Herring, tele.com, Telephony and Upside, as well as COMNET, NetWorld + Interop, Supercomm and World Communication Awards. The company is based in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.yipes.com.