“Ethernet has obtained ubiquity by evolving to higher levels of performance while maintaining full backward compatibility. Level 5 Networks has adopted this time-tested approach of maintaining full system compatibility, and has created a solution that delivers great customer benefit. EtherFabric will stall the adoption of non-compatible solutions such as iWARP and InfiniBand.”
- Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet
“EtherFabric helps enterprises finally realize Ethernet’s full potential. Because the solution does not require any changes to existing applications, operating systems or protocols, it has a very low impact on existing infrastructures, and is uniquely poised to become a ubiquitous offering. By providing significant performance gains without requiring users to accept the risk of changing how the system is used, Level 5 Networks is delivering what could very well be the key to Ethernet evolution.”
- Vernon Turner, Group VP and General Manager, Enterprise Computing, IDC
“Oak Investment Partners is delighted to be an investor in Level 5 Networks. The company now has the capital resources to bring to market its highly cost-effective and enabling 1 and 10 gigabit Ethernet acceleration technology. Level 5 Networks’ technology will extend the Ethernet standard to all areas of cluster computing, storage networking and high performance computing, which are currently served only by expensive, non-standard and specialized networks.”
- Bandel Carano, General Partner, Oak Investment Partners
“Some of the major issues in the use of molecular dynamics applications have been the difficulty of achieving scalability, and the high degree of difficulty in getting these applications to run on new clustering technologies. EtherFabric is a breakthrough on both ease-of-use and scalability and thus promises to have a very positive effect on the progress of fields that use molecular dynamics applications, such as pharmaceutical drug research.”
- Dr. Phil Williams, EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow and Reader in Theoretical Biophysics, School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham
“Level 5 Networks promises Fortune 2000 companies a host of tangible benefits at a very reasonable cost. The technology is single ended, meaning you can load it on any TCP device and that device gets faster and more efficient, without worrying about what is running on the other end of the connection. It is transparent to applications. And it leverages standard Ethernet, meaning infrastructure investments are preserved.
Alternative methods that have been available in the past have been missing some or all of the above. As a result, deployment has been for small niches where the application design was aligned with the capabilities of the acceleration technology and the criticality of the application. If Level 5 Networks delivers technology as promised, they will be far more plug and play, with out losing any performance or any other critical factor relative to the existing alternatives. As a result, I can see it being deployed much more extensively. Approaches like Level 5 Networks’s may perhaps eventually become the common way that TCP is implemented in all networked devices.”
- Mark Hoover, President, Acuitive Inc.
