Foundry Networks is aggressively going after an 3COM Corebuilder accounts. We will match any offer from Extreme or will provide trade-in credit. 

By now, you've heard that 3Com is exiting the Enterprise LAN marketplace.

Foundry Networks™ would like to help ease your migration dilemma by offering aggressive financial incentives* allowing you to replace your existing Corebuilder™ devices with more advanced Foundry Networks BigIron™ chassis-based Layer 3 solutions.

Over the last twenty months our BigIron switches have delivered the highest packet-forwarding rates and total switching capacities in the industry at 96 Mpps and 256 Gbps, respectively. We also have a broad feature set:

San Jose, Calif. - April 17, 2000 - Foundry Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDRY),
announced today it is expanding the BigIron switching router product
family to now include the BigIron 15000. The BigIron 15000 is a 15-slot
Layer2/3 switching router that scales routing performance to 178 Million
packets per second (Mpps) in a single chassis and measures 29.75 inches
high by 19 inches wide by 15.25 inches deep - giving it half the size and
twice the performance of the nearest competitor.

"With BigIron 15000, we continue to demonstrate that our IronCore ASIC
designs and distributed switching architecture continue to push the
performance envelope and lead the industry in price/performance,
capabilities and scalability with a feature-rich high end switching router.
 Now, with the introduction of BigIron 15000, Foundry offers our customers
a complete and comprehensive set of scalable Gigabit Ethernet products,"
said Bobby Johnson, President and CEO of Foundry Networks.

Carrier Class Reliability
The BigIron 15000 is a carrier class chassis-based switching router that
delivers an immense 480 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of total switching
capacity and 178 Mpps of routing throughput. The BigIron 15000 can scale
up to 120 Gigabit Ethernet ports making it the highest Gigabit density
switching router in the industry. Each BigIron module houses an eight Gbps
full duplex backplane connection, for a massive 240 Gbps of non-blocking
inter-module switching capacity.

Based on Foundry's IronCore ASIC designs shipping for the past 21 months,
the BigIron 15000 offers customers the ability to deploy high density
10/100/1000 Mbps, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Packet Over SONET interfaces by
simply adding the new interface modules into the chassis. All these
technologies will be available on Foundry products without costly backplane
upgrades or the disruption normally caused by swapping out or replacing
switch fabric modules, supervisor modules or existing interface modules.
The BigIron 15000 also continues Foundry's tradition of offering complete
software and hardware redundancy and high-availability through a fully
distributed switching architecture with redundant management modules, N+1
load-sharing and hot swappable AC and DC power supply options, hot
swappable interface modules, SONET Automatic Protection Switching (APS), as
well as support for the IETF Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) and
the Foundry Standby Routing Protocol (FSRP) - providing for full router
fault tolerance.

Rich Layer 2/3 Feature Set
The BigIron 15000 delivers unique product features including fully dynamic
VLAN capabilities, wire-speed Access Control Lists (ACLs), and full support
for QoS classification and prioritization. BigIron 15000, like its
siblings the BigIron 4000 and BigIron 8000 modular chassis, are all 10
Gigabit Ethernet ready. The BigIron 15000 is a high performance,
wire-speed switching router which supports a robust set of protocols
including IP, IPX, Appletalk, RIPv1/2, OSPF, BGP4, IGMP, DVMRP, PIM Dense
and Sparse Modes.

The other high value features supported by the BigIron 15000 include
policy-based switching and routing, multi-module trunk groups, and an
extensive set of network security and management features.

Upward Mobility
To guarantee investment protection and reduce cost of ownership, all
BigIron modules are interchangeable among the BigIron 4000, BigIron 8000
and BigIron 15000. Users can upgrade their existing infrastructures by
simply placing the BigIron 15000 in their racks and moving the modules from
their existing BigIron 4000 or BigIron 8000 to the new chassis. No
upgrading of switch fabric modules or interface modules is required.

"Six months ago, Lycos started standardizing on Foundry for Layer 2 and
Layer 3 networking devices, for a couple of reasons. One reason was due to
our expansive growth rate. We were looking for a way of consolidating all
of our devices together into an architecture that would scale both on the
LAN backbone and secondly, support our broadband requirements on the
Internet side," said Subra Kumaraswamy, Network Architect for Lycos. "We
are excited to learn about the high capacity and throughput aspects of the
BigIron 15000. We are confident that the BigIron 15000 will deliver the
same superior level of performance and reliability we have experienced with
Foundry's other BigIron chassis-based products," continued Kumaraswamy.

Foundry Introduces GBIC-Based Interface Modules
In addition to the BigIron 15000, Foundry also announced today its first
interface modules based on the Small Form-Factor Pluggable Multi Source
Agreement (SFP MSA) Optical GBIC Transceiver. The Gigabit transceivers are
fully compliant with the Gigabit Ethernet standard and occupy less than
half the board space of the existing GBIC products, which allows Foundry to
offer 120 ports of Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in one chassis with the
flexibility offered by the GBIC technology.

Pricing and Availability
The BigIron 15000 is available in September. The basic list price for the
chassis is $17,495 and it ships with an AC power supply. It supports the
choice of either AC or DC power supply options. All other BigIron modules,
which include 1000Base-T, 1000Base-SX, 1000Base-LX, 1000Base-LongHaul,
10/100Base-TX, 100Base-FX, OC-3c/STM-1, and OC-12c/STM-4 Packet Over
SONET/SDH modules are available for immediate delivery. OC-48c/STM-16 POS
module will be available in May and 2 and 4 port OC-3c/STM-1 ATM modules
will be available in the second half of 2000.

The 8 port mini-GBIC based module is available in July, at a list price of
$16,995. Pricing for the Small Form-Factor Pluggable, Multi Source
Agreement (SFP MSA) transceiver optics starts at $495 and is initially
available for 1000Base-SX and 1000Base-LX, also shipping in July. Long
Haul optics availability will be announced soon.

About Foundry Networks
Foundry Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDRY) is a leader in high performance
end-to-end switching and routing solutions including Internet routers,
Layer 2/3 switches and Internet Traffic Management switches. Foundry
products are installed in the world's largest ISPs including AOL (NYSE:
AOL), EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK), AT&T WorldNet, MSN, and Cable & Wireless
(NYSE: CWP). Foundry products are also installed in large enterprises,
entertainment, pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies as well as
e-commerce sites, universities and government organizations. Some of these
customers include: The University of Washington, LucasFilm, Yahoo! (NASDAQ:
YHOO), LTV Steel (NYSE: LTV), Incyte Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INCY), U.S.
Army, Air Force and Navy, NASA and NIH. 

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning
of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to
the safe harbor created by this section. These forward-looking statements
include anticipated support and feature additions to Foundry products and
expected availability and prices of future products. The results expected
by these statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties,
including continued acceptance of Foundry's current products in general,
Foundry's ability to introduce new and superior products and predict future
industry standards, the quality of new products offered by Foundry's
competitors in the intensely competitive networking market, and Foundry's
ability to attract and retain skilled employees in an intensively
competitive hiring market. Actual results may differ materially due to
these and other factors. The matters discussed in this press release also
involve risks and uncertainties described from time to time in Foundry's
filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see the
Risk Factors described in Foundry's final Prospectus dated September 27,
1999 for its initial public offering as well as its most recent Quarterly
Report on Form 10-Q and Annual Report on Form 10-K. Foundry assumes no
obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this
press release.

Foundry Networks, BigIron, IronWare and IronCore are trademarks of Foundry
Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the sole property of their
respective holders.