Demonstration Highlights Scalability and Interoperability of 10 Gigabit Ethernet Technology for Networked Storage Applications

Milipitas and Cupertino, California — March 29, 2005 — Market leaders Neterion Inc. and PyX Technologies Inc. announced a new benchmark for IP Storage Area Networking. Working together, the companies used a standard 10 Gigabit Ethernet fabric to demonstrate the scalability and interoperability of their technologies. They accomplished a world-record peak throughput of 7.5 Gb/s (937.5 MB/s) that included network headers and full featured iSCSI with Error Recovery Level Two (ERL 2) using three iSCSI initiators and one iSCSI target.

The record-breaking performance transported the data over a heterogeneous 10 Gigabit Ethernet network infrastructure. The results were achieved using a TeraScale E-Series Terabit switch/router from Force10 Networks interoperating with Neterion's Xframe?10 GbE network adapters and running Full Error Recovery iSCSI software from PyX Technologies. The architecture can be built leveraging lower-cost, commodity storage hardware and delivers unparalleled performance for IP storage area networks. Featuring the same quality of service and system robustness at a fraction of the total cost of ownership and maintenance of Fibre Channel architectures, iSCSI with Full Error Recovery is also free of the distance limitations of Fibre Channel, enabling a truly global SAN.

"From a software perspective, the throughput we observed is only possible because our iSCSI implementation supports multiple connections per session (MC/S) ," said Nicholas Bellinger, Chief Software Architect for PyX Technologies, "and this is unique within the storage industry."

"By implementing all mandatory and optional feature sets of the protocol as defined by IETF RFC 3720, PyX iSCSI software with Full Error Recovery can aggregate bandwidth across subnets, multipath and combine those features with active/active task migration to ensure that there is no single point of failure at any point in the SAN," noted Andre Hedrick, Chief Technical Officer of PyX Technologies. "These features are essential to properly support 10 Gigabit throughputs and provide the reliability which is demanded by enterprise storage managers."

"This testing provides a great proof point that iSCSI technology is coming of age," said Dan Tuchler, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Force10. "The ability to combine storage with other networking needs on a single Ethernet infrastructure is very exciting to our customers, saving them both equipment and operating costs."

"This new benchmark is another outstanding example of the level of performance that 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Xframe?can help deliver," stated Neterion's President & CEO, Dave Zabrowski. "I believe that IT managers who are seeking a lower cost IP SAN solution will be very interested in this type of network."

For more information regarding the potential of iSCSI over 10 Gigabit Ethernet, visit the companies' websites and download the free white paper: "The Storage Area Network Goes Global."

About Force10
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 http://www.force10networks.com

About Neterion
Neterion delivers 10 Gigabit Ethernet hardware and software solutions that enable OEMs to solve their customers' high-end networking problems. The company's line of Xframe?products is based on Neterion-developed technologies that deliver new levels of performance, availability and reliability in the datacenter. Xframe (PCI-X 1.0), Xframe II (PCI-X 2.0) and Xframe E (PCI express) include full IPv4 and IPv6 support, and comprehensive stateless offloads that preserve the integrity of current TCP/IP implementations without "breaking the stack." Xframe drivers are available for all major Operating Systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Sun's Solaris and SGI's Irix. Formerly known as S2io, the company changed its name to Neterion in January 2005.

About PyX Technologies
PyX Technologies, Inc. headquartered in San Ramon, California, delivers iSCSI software solutions that are unique in providing the only fully IETF standards compliant Error Recovery Level Two (ERL 2) functionality available in the market today. Full Error Recovery (ERL 2) iSCSI carries data requests to and from networked storage with multi-path migration and ensures that there is no single point of failure between any two iSCSI nodes. This high quality of storage transport has previously only been available in expensive Fibre Channel architectures. For more information, please visit the PyX Technologies website at: http://www.pyxtechnologies.com

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