FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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ENGLAND'S ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS AT KEW
PRESERVES BOTANICAL HISTORY WITH EXTREME NETWORKS' NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE
SANTA CLARA, Calif.; April 11, 2006 - Extreme Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq;
EXTR),
the leader in open converged networks, today announced that The Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew, outside of London, has chosen its award-winning
switching platforms with the aim of placing into digital catalogues its
entire collection of specimens, periodical titles, prints and drawings.
Extreme Networks®' local Solutions Partner, Data Integration, designed
and implemented a new network designed to provide a Gigabit switched infrastructure
with increased network resiliency and failover capabilities resulting
in maximum availability. The project, which began in December 2003, continues
to develop as Kew grows and more of the sites on the campus are connected
to the network, keeping Kew at the cutting edge of botanical research.
Kew houses volumes of botanical books and plant specimens dating as far
back as the fourteenth century. With over seven million dried plant specimens
- representative of 98 percent of the world's genera - in the Herbarium
alone, the scale of the digitization and archival projects is massive.
To capture the fine detail needed to distinguish species, Kew took the
unprecedented step of creating a single, organization-wide image database
to accommodate a range of photographic art and textual material. The existing
network would have struggled with this extra daily load created by scanning,
transferring and storing hundreds of gigabytes of digital scans while
continuing to service the ongoing scientific, administrative and visitor
facilities so it was decided that a new network was required.
"The Extreme Networks solution not only provided a very elegant
solution for what we needed but also a simple and unobtrusive changeover,"
said Ken Bailey, IT Manager at Kew Gardens. "We absolutely had to
ensure that during the transition any changes behind the scenes would
go unnoticed by users. Data Integration and Extreme Networks were able
to deliver this while meeting our budget and within the optimum time frame.
In addition to running the ongoing digitisation projects at this time,
we envisage the network expanding in the future to support new applications
such as Voice over IP, CCTV and other video and interactive information
facilities for visitors."
The initial deployment consisted of a new core network comprised of Extreme
Networks' Alpine® modular switches, installed in a dual ring topology.
Additional twin-fiber connections cut across this loop connecting the
four most populous building clusters. Extreme Networks' Summit® 200
edge switches also provide fallback connectivity back to the core for
three key buildings, including the administration department. With this
simple but effective design, Kew's core network can remain online in the
event of hardware or connection failures.
An Extreme Networks Summit® 48i has been added to the Herbarium to
provide additional support for the digitisation project and extra Summit
200 and 400 switches have also been added to accommodate extra network
growth and development. With two gigabit connections running between each
of the Alpine switches, there is now ample bandwidth available to support
the digitisation project. As traffic from Kew's other research and visitor
focused-activities increases, the scalability offered by the Alpine switches
will help ensure fewer network upgrades are needed and help keep the total
cost of ownership down.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Kew Gardens is a major international visitor attraction and its 132 hectares
of landscaped gardens attract over one million visitors per year. Kew
was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and represents over
250 years of historical landscape. The site houses over 40 listed buildings
and other structures including the Palm House, Temperate House, Orangery
and Pagoda as well as two ancient monuments, Queen Charlotte's Cottage
and Kew Palace. RBG, Kew is a world famous scientific organisation, internationally
respected for its outstanding living collection of plants and world-class
herbarium as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation
and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. www.kew.org
Extreme Networks, Inc.
Extreme Networks is the leader in open converged networks. Its innovative
network architecture provides Enterprises and Metro Service Providers
with the resiliency, adaptability and simplicity required for a true converged
network that supports voice, video and data, over a wired and wireless
infrastructure, while delivering high-performance and advanced security
features. For more information, please visit http://www.extremenetworks.com
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set
forth in this press release, including without limitation statements as
to scalability and performance of the Alpine and Summit products are forward-looking
statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions
of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking
statements speak only as of the date. Because such statements deal with
future events, they are subject to risks and uncertainties, including
network design and actual results of use of the product in different environments.
We undertake no obligation to update the forward-looking information in
this release. Other important factors which could cause actual results
to differ materially are contained in the Company's 10-Qs and 10-Ks which
are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (http://www.sec.gov).
Extreme Networks, Summit, and Alpine, are either trademarks or registered
trademarks of Extreme Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
All other names and marks are the property of their respective owners.
© 2005 Extreme Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved.