Editor Contact:
Cheryl Patstone
NetXen, Inc.
408-861-4547

For Immediate Release

NetXen Completes Multi-Vendor Interoperability Testing for SFP+ Direct Attach Copper Products

Cupertino, CA, December 8, 2008 -- NetXen, Inc., the market leader in 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter card port shipments, today announced that it has successfully completed multi-vendor interoperability testing of Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP+) direct attach copper products. Participants in the testing included industry-leading switch, cable and PHY vendors such as AMCC, Amphenol, Aristra Networks, Cisco, Molex, Quanta, Tyco and W.L. Gore.

The testing, conducted at NetXen's QA lab, used multiple SFP+ direct attach twinax copper cables of lengths varying from 1m to 10m connecting the NetXen NX3-20GCU adapter and switches. For establishing the testing baseline, the same adapter was used with optical SR modules to connect to the switches.

SFP+ copper twinax cables are hot-pluggable and have a smaller footprint and thickness than CX4 cables intended for datacom applications. The copper twinax interfaces offer the smallest, lowest-power option for 10 Gigabit Ethernet to enable increased density in enterprise applications. The electrical and mechanical interface specifications for SFP+ direct attach cables are under definition by the SFF Committee, a multi-source agreement group with broad industry participation. The cables are available from a variety of vendors.

The interoperability test consisted of passing traffic at line rate between two NetXen SFP+ adapters and an intervening switch while monitoring bit error rates on the links. Each test was run for sufficient time to establish at 99.99% confidence that the bit error rate was below the 10-12 allowed by the SFP+ standard.

SFP+ direct attach copper increases switch port density and dramatically reduces the overall cost of deploying 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology," said Rolwin Lewis, senior product line manager, NetXen. "By successfully completing this extensive, multi-vendor interoperability testing between different SFP+ direct attach copper products, we are giving end users the confidence they need to deploy SFP+ technology in their network environments."

About NetXen, Inc.

NetXen, Inc. manufactures intelligent 10-Gigabit Ethernet networking chips that advance enterprise datacenter performance and agility. Founded in February 2002 by chip design veteran Govind Kizhepat, the company is headquartered in Cupertino, California, with offices in Pune and Bangalore, India. NetXen's protocol- and OS-agnostic Intelligent NICs are designed for volume 10-Gigabit deployments and are targeted at server, storage, security and networking systems. Additional information about the company and its patented chip architecture is available at www.netxen.com.

NetXen, the NetXen logo and Intelligent NIC are trademarks of NetXen, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

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