[September 10, 2001]

NETGEAR Intros New Family Of Modular Fast Ethernet Switches For The Small Business Market

NETGEAR Inc. announced the availability of an unmanaged 48-port (FS750) and the company's first 24-port (FS726) Modular Fast Ethernet Switches. The new family of switches enables users to migrate from fiber to copper networks, work with the flexibility to expand and grow their networks, and provide users with the technology to connect to the server or network backbone at Gigabit speeds. The FS700 series is the company's first line of switches with higher port density and modular gigabit uplinks.

NETGEAR is also enhancing its Powershift Partner Program for Solution Providers to accommodate the growth of its product offering for the small business market. The company offers a variety of services, including marketing, training, online service and support as well as direct senior level support for authorized Powershift partners.

"The introduction of NETGEAR's FS750 and FS726 Modular Fast Ethernet Switches asserts our strategy of continuously providing reliable and easy-to-install networking products and are ideal for readily connecting many small business users to a choice of fiber and/or copper gigabit networks," said Patrick Lo, president and chief executive officer of NETGEAR. "Attractively priced starting at $900 and below, the FS700-series further broaden NETGEAR's family of industry-leading 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet networking products to satisfy the demands for performance, quality and ease-of-use for small business customers."

"Small businesses are interested in the latest performance benefits, but they are also concerned about price and compatibility with what they currently have," said Raymond Boggs, vice president of Small Business research with IDC in Framingham, MA. Boggs noted that NETGEAR's products address these concerns as well as those of the channels that provide small businesses with advanced technology. "According to a small business VAR survey we fielded August 2001, the leading criteria for deciding on vendors are reliability, performance and product support," he said. "The NETGEAR family gives the channels the products they need to bring high-speed performance at affordable prices to small business and home office customers."

The FS750 is the industry's first unmanaged 48-port Modular Fast Ethernet Switch that allows up to 48 10/100 Mbps client users to connect to gigabit-speed servers and to gigabit-speed backbone networks that may be either fiber, copper or both. The two gigabit modular bays allow for the flexibility of the FS700 switches to connect to fiber and or gigabit networks when needs arise maximizing investment protection. The high-speed, auto-sensing, 10/100 Mbps ports of the FS726 and FS750 support Auto Uplink for ease-of-use and automatic configuration. Flow control technology based on the IEEE 802.3x standard prevents any packet loss and supports maximum network performance.

Built using advanced chip sets from Marvell/Gallileo the NETGEAR FS726 and FS750 ensure non-blocking, wire-speed filtering and forwarding of traffic, giving both switches maximum performance and the largest bandwidth available in the market today. Easy-to-read, front-panel LEDs show ongoing switch status and simplify troubleshooting.

"We are pleased that NETGEAR has selected Marvell as its provider of Networking Integrated Circuits (ICs) for the FS276 and FS750 products," stated Gary Smerdon, Marvell's Vice President of Marketing for the Communications Business Group. "NETGEAR's newly released products utilize our proven, high-performance, GalNet-2+ switching chipset as well as our industry-leading Fast Ethernet and Alaska Gigabit Ethernet physical layer (PHY) devices."

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