(Source: PrimeNewswire)AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 17, 2008 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Foundry Networks(r), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced participation in this year's Bandwidth Challenge with Purdue University at SC08 in the Austin Convention Center from Nov. 17 to Nov. 20. The Bandwidth Challenge is an annual competition for leading-edge network applications developed by teams of researchers from around the globe. Past competitions have showcased multi-10 gigabit per second (Gbps) demonstrations. However, this year's SC08's Bandwidth Challenge will focus on real-world applications and data movement, including live demonstrations across the show's advanced SCinet network infrastructure.

Showing its continued support for high-performance computing (HPC), Foundry(r) will provide its award-winning BigIron(r) RX Series terabit-capacity switches as part of the SCinet high-performance backbone and as the integral switching platform for the show's annual Bandwidth Challenge with Purdue University. The scientific team at Purdue University will use Foundry's BigIron RX-4 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) switches for this year's Challenge. Together with BlueArc, a leading network-attached storage vendor, and Texas Memory Systems, a leading solid-state disk vendor, Purdue will leverage the BigIron RX-4 switch to test the limits of Network File System (NFS) scalability in a wide-area network. NFS has been in existence for decades, but the technology is generally limited to local area networks. This Bandwidth Challenge will allow Purdue's scientific team to analyze NFS applicability towards creating a region-wide data resource system while maintaining maximum bandwidth and performance.

"Our challenge entries at SC08 are all about pushing current technology to meet the demands of the scientific community," said John Campbell, associate vice president for information technology at Purdue. "We are pleased that Foundry Networks has joined with us in this challenge as we explore the limits of transferring data."

"It is our pleasure to participate in the 2008 Bandwidth Challenge with Purdue University," said Ken Cheng, vice president and general manager, High-End and Service Provider Systems Business Unit, Foundry Networks. "Thousands of BigIron RX Series switches have been deployed in many of the world's most demanding networks making it an ideal choice for this year's Bandwidth Challenge."

Cheng continued, "Our commitment to deliver industry-leading performance has positioned us as the switching and routing provider for 25 percent of the Top 50 HPC networks in the world.