SAN JOSE, Calif., August 7, 2000 -- High-bandwidth network IC developer Allayer Communications announced today the immediate availability of the industry's first reference board with eight 1000Base-T, Gigabit Ethernet ports. This board-level solution provides a building block for the design of multiport Gigabit Ethernet LAN systems.

The AL1023DM-8 is an eight port Gigabit Ethernet reference design that will help system OEMs reduce the time to market for advanced Gigabit Ethernet network systems. The reference design is targeted at OEMs designing switches with two, four, six, or eight Gigabit Ethernet ports or combinations of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet ports. Such systems enable high performance, high availability networks from the WAN edge all the way to the server and the desktop.

"This new reference board provides the highest level of integration and speed in a proven platform," states Mohan Maheswaran, vice president of marketing at Allayer Communications. "It gives our system OEMs the ability to start development of their high-end systems with a proven platform that they know will operate properly the first time. This eliminates weeks or even months of error-prone development time and enables immediate software/hardware integration. This new reference board is part of Allayerıs commitment to adding value and helping our customers succeed."

The new reference board features eight 10/100/1000BaseT ports for connection over standard Category 5 twisted pair cable. Included in the AL1023DM-8 are four AL1023 dual port Gigabit switches with the RoX-II interface. The AL1023 Gigabit Ethernet Switch supports essential network features such as quality-of-service, trunking and port-based as well as tag-based VLAN. The device supports four classes of service that allows a networking switch to recognize and give priority to delay-sensitive packets of data that have been marked for prioritized delivery.

The trunking feature is fully IEEE 802.3ad standard compatible and enables multiple Gigabit channels to be combined into a single logical channel with load balancing and trunk failover capabilities. The VLAN features enable the designer to create multiple logical LANs from one physical LAN. The AL1023 also supports such advanced features as broadcast storm control and Layer 2 based security per port. In addition it can be used in conjunction with Allayer's ALPOS48 Ethernet to WAN translator device to enable seamless connectivity from the LAN to the WAN.

The RoX-II system can be extended with additional RoX-II-based network devices such as network management circuits. The reference board provides connectors for adding Allayer's existing AL300A-based management daughterboard. The AL300A Management engine collects network management information from up to 32 ports and provides Spanning Tree Support. It provides all the MIB (Management Information Base) statistics required to support both SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and RMON (Remote Network Monitoring). The device also contains a separate bus that reports network management and/or normal data packets to an attached CPU.

Price and Availability

The AL1023DM-8 is available now and is priced at $4,000.

About Allayer

Allayer Communications is a leading producer of high bandwidth network ICs for the enterprise and optical network. The company develops scalable network architectures and mixed-signal switching and routing ICs for the Gigabit/Fast Ethernet and optical network markets. The corporate name -- pronounced "All-layer" -- represents the company's long-range intention to provide silicon solutions for all levels of the OSI networking model.

Founded in 1997, Allayer has received over $24 million in venture funding from Greylock, Acer Capital America, VenGlobal Capital. Allayer's corporate headquarters is in San Jose, California with worldwide consulting sales and engineering offices.

For more information please contact: Marketing Communication Department, Allayer Communications, 107 Bonaventura Drive, San Jose, CA 95134, phone: 408/570-0888, or visit the corporate website at: http://www.allayer.com.

RoX™ and RoX-II™ are trademarks of Allayer Communications.