SAN FRANCISCO (November 11, 1996) - ZNYX Corporation today announced that it has joined the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, a multi-vendor forum committed to driving the industry's adoption of networking standards. The Alliance, aimed specifically at providing customers with open, cost-effective and interoperable Gigabit Ethernet solutions, supports the CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection) protocol of the original Ethernet standard.

Over eighty-seven companies have joined the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance to address customer needs for interoperability among a broad range of Gigabit Ethernet products.

The Alliance is concerned with issues closest to IS managers and purchasers of leading-edge technologies, such as cost savings, bandwidth capacity, response times and overall hardware reliability. By leveraging customer relationships and utilizing in-house research and development, ZNYX Corporation, along with other member companies, will work to establish standards which will support both the corporate IS manager and end-user in their efforts to adapt to constantly changing networked environments.

"The Alliance supports the adoption of industry-wide standards for Gigabit Ethernet technology, currently being developed by the 802.3z standards committee of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) organization. In addition, the Alliance is committed to the adoption of standardized interoperability test procedures and processes for this new technology," said Tony Lee, the chairman of the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and senior product manager at Sun Microsystems. "Our goal is to establish and publish formal standards for Gigabit Ethernet and vendor interoperability."

Gigabit Ethernet will initially be deployed in backbone environments as the preferred interconnection for switches which support multiple transmission speeds between (10 and 100 Mbps) Ethernet segments. High performance file servers will benefit from the ten-fold increase in bandwidth provided by Gigabit Ethernet over Fast Ethernet. The technology will also provide an upgrade path for crowded-bandwidth application environments such as high-end imaging, pre-press, and CAD/CAM, which were the first to adopt Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps.

Technical proposals developed by Alliance members will be submitted to the IEEE 802.3z standards committee, furthering efforts to standardize 1000Mbps Ethernet technology. To date, individuals representing more than 87 companies have expressed their intent to participate in the Gigabit Ethernet standards activities.

ZNYX Corporation, a privately-held company located in Fremont, California, is a leading worldwide supplier of scaleable, PCI-based switching solutions. As a PCI technology pioneer, ZNYX was the first company to ship single and multi-channel PCI Ethernet and Fast Ethernet adapters. Since the company was founded in 1992, ZNYX has doubled sales annually. Information about ZNYX’s products is available on the Worldwide Web at http://www.znyx.com.

The Gigabit Ethernet Alliance was formalized around four common objectives -- to fully support the Gigabit Ethernet standards activities being conducted in the IEEE 802.3z Task Group, to contribute technical resources to facilitate convergence and consensus on technical specifications, to provide resources to establish and demonstrate product interoperability, and to foster two-way communications between potential suppliers and consumers of Gigabit Ethernet products.

The Gigabit Ethernet Alliance headquarters is located in Cupertino. Telephone: 408/241-8904, Fax: 408/241-8918, Email: 73530.2267@compuserve.com, Home Page: http://www.gigabit-ethernet.org.