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Technology Stocks : F5 Networks, Inc. (FFIV) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Kim who wrote (1083)	6/14/2000 5:05:00 AM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 1801

The future is bright.........F5 Puts Switching Technology On A Chip CHRISTINE ZIMMERMAN Vendors of hardware-based Internet traffic and content management products have touted their approach as delivering superior performance over software-based products like those from F5 Networks Inc. F5 is ready to challenge that claim with its "switch on a chip," called the Big-IP Content Switch, to be announced this week. The product is not a traditional hardware-based switch, but a processor on a PCI card. IT managers can upgrade their F5 systems with new management functions by simply plugging the card into a server running F5's software. Big-IP Content Switch is the first product built on Intel's IXP1200 network processor. This allows the F5 product to compete head-to-head with ASIC-based switches in terms of application-layer performance and speed, said F5 officials. "F5's content switch addresses two things that I cannot get enough of: speed and capacity. It can push a lot of bandwidth at blistering speeds. I like anything that improves speed," said Dwight Gibbs, chief technical officer at The Motley Fool. Gibbs had been using F5's flagship Big-IP Controller for intelligent content management. "The new product is bigger, better, faster, stronger," Gibbs added.

To: Michael Kim who wrote (1083)	6/14/2000 7:59:00 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1801

A more bullish view - if total Net use keeps growing at current rates and FFIV's products are the best, it doesn't matter whether there are 500 or 50,000 dot.com customers out there. Most of the small dot.com storefront outsourced their site hosting anyway, so their expected demise won't make much difference. FFIV will still be in demand to cope with huge volume. Traffic management is traffic management. I would be more concerned if Internet penetration and usage started to slack off dramatically. But there is still a huge chunk of users in the US that aren't online yet. Wireless and post-PC devices mean they should be soon.