FREMONT, CALIFORNIA (May 30, 2000) - ZNYX Networks today announced the ZX370 series of 64 bit / 66 MHz PCI multi-port high performance Fast Ethernet adapters. The first available model with be the ZX374 with four 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports driven by ZNYX Networks' RAINlink™ High Availability software.

The ZX370 series addresses three shortcomings found on other multiport network adapters: size, bandwidth, and latency. The short-form PCI card of the ZX370 series fits in virtually any size PCI slot including those on Sun® Netra™ t1 servers. To reduce bottlenecks on the host computer's bus, the ZX370 uses a wide 64-bit PCI bus, providing nearly twice the bandwidth of a standard bus. Even more important is the ZX370's use of a 66 MHz bus connection.

"Our customers were demanding a faster response time between the network adapter and their high-speed CPUs," explained Jay Cowan, ZNYX Networks' Director of Marketing. "When processing the small data packets common in telecommunications, valuable clock cycles were being wasted waiting for the standard 33 MHz bus to pass packets to the CPU. The 66 MHz bus reduces this latency by nearly half, cutting empty clock cycles in the server's CPU and minimizing contention on the host PCI bus." Because the ZX370 series also operates in 32 bit and 33 MHz PCI slots, other PCI computers used by the telecommunications industry including the full line of Sun Netra and Enterprise™ PCI servers can take advantage of this adapter.

A key requirement in the telecommunications networking infrastructure is high availability. Embedded into the driver, RAINlink high availability software provides continuous connectivity to LAN infrastructures through link redundancy with fast deterministic failover, as well as system-to-system and system-to-switch trunking. On the ZX374, RAINlink's automatic load balancing and link aggregation allow creation of 400 Mbps (800 Mbps full duplex) high bandwidth connections between server clusters.

GNP Computers, a premier Carrier Class teledatacom solutions provider, has been testing the ZX374 in their new developments. "I was particularly impressed by the ease of installation and support provided for the ZX374," commented Sandy Gabucan, Systems Engineer at GNP. "GNP has evaluated many solutions and the ZNYX Networks card with RAINlink best matched our requirements for quality Ethernet cards that provide high performance and bandwidth."

The ZX374 will be first available under an OEM partners program. General availability is scheduled for August 2000 with a list price Of $988, including embedded RAINlink drivers. Initial support will be for Solaris 2.6, 7, and 8 on both SPARC and Intel processors, with Linux, Windows 2000, LynxOS, and VxWorks to follow shortly. An optional Boot ROM is available for custom applications.