Farallon is First with Fast Ethernet Products for Macintosh Market

DEMO AT MACTIVITY AND NETWORLD+INTEROP SHOWS

ALAMEDA, Calif., March 13, 1995 -- Farallon Computing, Inc., today
announced that it is the first company to demonstrate Fast Ethernet
products for the Macintosh Market. The products were first shown at
MacWorld Expo in San Francisco in early January and will be seen again
this month at the Mactivity and Networld+Interop shows. Farallon announced
in January that it will add a complete line of Fast Ethernet products
including cards, hubs and bridges to its current offering of plug-and-play
networking solutions for the Macintosh market. Based on 3Com Corporation's
leading-edge Fast Ethernet Parallel Tasking technology, Farallon's new
cards will give current Ethernet customers a cost-effective and easy way
to expand the capacity of their Ethernet LANs and WANs to support
increasing bandwidth requirements of up to 100 Megabits per second
(Mbps).

Farallon's initial products will include Peripheral Component Interconnect
(PCI) cards for Power Macintoshes and NuBus 10/100 cards for Power
Macintoshes, Quadras, and Macintosh IIs. These new cards will support both
10Base-T and 100Base-TX, providing users with an affordable method to
migrate to faster networking speeds. Farallon will subsequently release a
Fast Ethernet workgroup hub and 10/100 bridge family.

Target customers for Farallon's new Fast Ethernet products are users
requiring higher bandwidth to support data-intensive network applications
such as engineering workgroups and publishing and prepress graphics
companies where users need to quickly share, transfer and print
multimegabyte color graphics files. Educational institutions, including
primary schools, will also benefit from the higher bandwidth of Fast
Ethernet, which will make it easier to transfer large multimedia files
from the media center to the classroom.

"We are very excited about what our Fast Ethernet products can do for
customers who are already pushing the limits of 10Base-T Ethernet," said
Alan Lefkof, president and CEO of Farallon Computing. "Farallon has made
its reputation developing innovative technologies that make networking
easier. We are continuing to lead the way with reliable Fast Ethernet,
taking particular advantage of the PowerMac RISC architecture and the new
Open Transport/Open Firmware environment."

Lefkof emphasized the value to customers of leveraging 3Com's Fast Ethernet
ASICs. "Building 3Com's Parallel Tasking technology into our EtherWave PC
products has been a big win for Farallon customers. Now we plan to lead
the way with affordable, high performance Fast Ethernet adapters for
Apple's PowerMac RISC-based machines."

Doug Spreng, vice president and general manager of the Network Adapter
Division of 3Com said, "Farallon's leading market presence and knowledge
of the Macintosh operating system will enable 3Com to grow its technology
advancements into a new market segment. The fruits of our earlier work
resulted in an award-winning product with Farallon's EtherWave and we
believe Macintosh customers can look forward to more leading-edge Farallon
products with great price/performance value."

FAST ETHERNET PROVIDES MIGRATION PATH FROM 10 MBPS TO 100 MBPS PERFORMANCE

Fast Ethernet is an emerging IEEE 802.3 100Base-T standard. It has achieved
broad support from many vendors and customers. Like its predecessor
10Base-T, it uses packets to send information over the network and
supports all twisted-pair cable types, as well as fiber. Fast Ethernet
allows users to upgrade an existing 10Base-T network without requiring a
costly, difficult and time-consuming overhaul of their cabling, yet
delivers up to ten times the performance. There are three types of cabling
alternatives supported in the 100Base-T standard: 100Base-TX, 100Base-T4
and 100Base-FX. The cards and hubs Farallon will introduce in 1995 are
100Base-TX, supporting Fast Ethernet transmission across two pairs of
standard Category 5 UTP cabling that is commonly installed in buildings.

The 100Base-TX hub and 10/100 bridge products will be important because
they will enable customers to migrate to Fast Ethernet as their
applications require. The hub will connect Macintoshes and PCs with any
standard 100Base-TX cards installed. The bridge will link the 100Base-T
segment to an existing 10Base-T network.

"Farallon has a history of protecting customers' networking product
investments. These new Fast Ethernet products will provide easy migration
to high-performance networking for both Ethernet and PhoneNET customers. A
PhoneNET customer can purchase the 10/100 Mbps card for use on their
10Base-T network, knowing they can upgrade later to 100 Mbps with the same
card," said Georganne Benesch, Farallon's director of product marketing.

According to Mike Heylin, senior associate for Creative Strategies
Consulting, "Increased LAN traffic from data-intensive applications, like
video and data conferencing, multimedia services and Internet gateways
continue to increase requirements for greater bandwidth and overall
throughput. For many of today's 10Base-T networks, 100Base-T technology
serves as a logical upgrade path. With the IEEE working group approval of
100Base-T, the market should feel comfortable making investments in this
solution."

"Farallon's long history of providing cost-effective networking solutions,
combined with the company's continued support for 3Com's industry-leading
implementation should foster further development and expansion of the
corporate marketplace for 100Base-T," added Heylin.

HIGH PERFORMANCE FROM THE SILICON TO THE FINAL PRODUCT

Farallon's products will be based on 3Com's high-performance Parallel
Tasking 10/100 Ethernet technology, which features auto-sensing,
dual-speed, 10/100 adapters with a single RJ-45 connector. The technology
supports both 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet for flexibility.

Farallon's PCI and NuBus cards will support 32-bit addressing and will
feature bus mastering, enabling the highest level of throughput. In
addition, Farallon's Fast Ethernet products will be compatible with
popular network software and will support industry-standard operating
systems and APIs including AppleShare, MacOS, MacTCP, NetWare, Open
Transport and Open Firmware.

Like all of Farallon's current products, the Fast Ethernet cards, hubs and
bridges will be easy to install, priced competitively and be covered by a
lifetime warranty.

INDUSTRY STANDARDS GIVE USERS INTEROPERABILITY

Farallon, a company with an extensive line of industry-standard products,
is joining the Fast Ethernet Alliance to participate in future standards
development and to assure compatibility of its Fast Ethernet products.
More than 60 leading network companies participate in the alliance,
including 3Com, Bay Networks, Digital Equipment, Grand Junction, Intel and
Sun Microsystems. These companies have worked since 1992 to extend the
existing Ethernet standard -- IEEE 802.3 for 100Base-TX -- in response to
industry demand for increased network bandwidth and the need to establish
standards for interoperability among different manufacturers' 100 Mbps
Ethernet products.

DEMOS, AVAILABILITY AND PRICING

Farallon's Fast Ethernet PCI and NuBus cards are on exhibition this week in
Farallon Booth #411 at the Mactivity show in Boston, and the week of March
27 in the Fast Ethernet Alliance Booth #5695 at the Networld+Interop show
in Las Vegas. The NuBus and PCI cards are scheduled to start shipping in
the spring. The hub and bridge will be available in the second half of
1995. Pricing will be announced at the time products are ready to ship.

For information on Farallon's current product offering, in North America,
check out the World Wide Web site at http://www.farallon.com, contact your
nearest Farallon reseller or contact Farallon Customer Service at
telephone (510) 814-5000, fax (510) 814-5023, Internet info@farallon.com.
Farallon customers in Europe, Asia/Pacific and Latin America should
contact their local distributors for company and product information. A
list of Farallon distributors worldwide is available also from Farallon
Customer Service.

ABOUT FARALLON

Founded in 1986, Farallon Computing, Inc. is a leading supplier of a family
of innovative plug-and-play networking products for personal computers.
Farallon products are available through distributors and resellers
worldwide, as well as through OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and
licensing relationships with other computer vendors. Headquartered in
Alameda, Calif., Farallon has offices located throughout the world.

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