Chris Lyon FCIA, Executive Director Clyon870@cs.com 425.317.9594

Chris Volpe UNH-IOL Public Relations volpe@iol.unh.edu 603.862.4349

SAN FRANCISCO and DURHAM, NH. -- Dec 9, 2004 -- The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA), a member-run industry consortium established to support and promote Fibre Channel technology and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) announced today that the 4GFC (4 Gbit/s Fibre Channel) plugfest will be held from January 10-14, 2005 at UNH-IOL. The UNH-IOL laboratory is hosting the event in its 32,000 square foot Durham facility. An open invitation to attend is extended to any company interested in advancing Fibre Channel technology and bringing new 4GFC products to market. Details can be found at www.fibrechannel.org.

The purpose of the plugfest is to ensure that the new 4GFC products manufactured by different companies will interoperate in Fibre Channel systems. 4GFC testing will include the whole range of components that a Storage Area Network (SAN) consists of, including next generation disk drives, HBA’s and fabric switches. Special considerations will be given to compatibility testing with 2GFC and 1GFC devices. As system integrators start to use these new high performance devices, downward compatibility ensures investment protection of existing storage infrastructure while enabling an orderly migration to 4GFC technology.

The plugfest will also include sessions on 10 Gbit/s Fibre Channel (10GFC) testing which will mainly focus on testing 10GFC fabric switches. The new 10GFC devices will allow the construction of high-performance fabrics with 10GFC interswitch links at the heart of the fabric.
Werner Glinka, Chairman of the FCIA Board of Directors and a Marketing consultant to Hitachi GST, states, “2005 will be the year when the industry transitions to 4GFC and 10GFC technology. Fibre channel plugfests are a vital part of this market transition as it provides vendors a testing forum to prove compatibility between different vendors and older Fibre Channel technology.”
“The UNH-IO lab is recognized as a world class testing facility for state-of-the-art interface technologies,” said David Woolf, UNH-IOL senior research and development engineer, storage technologies. “Fibre channel plugfest participants will benefit from UNH’s more than 16 years experience of testing interoperability of more than 25 serial technology standards.”

About the Fibre Channel Industry Association

The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a nonprofit international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators, developers, systems vendors, industry professionals and end users. With 80 member companies and FCIA affiliates in the United States and Japan, FCIA is committed to delivering a broad base of Fibre Channel infrastructure to support a wide array of industry applications within the mass storage and IT-based arenas. FCIA working groups focus on specific aspects of the technology, targeting both vertical and horizontal markets including storage, video, networking and SAN management. For more information on FCIA, please visit our web site: www.fibrechannel.org, contact us: info@fibrechannel.org or call 1-415-561-6270.

To register for the January 10-14, 2005 plugfest, please visit the FCIA web site at http://www.fibrechannel.org/events/FCIA_Plugfest.html.

About the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory

Established in 1988, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is a non-profit organization that offers comprehensive interoperability and conformance-based testing through 19 technology-based groups, called consortiums. Test solutions created at the UNH-IOL offer a set of methods to increase interoperability through protocol operations, signaling, point-to-point and multi-system scenarios. For more information, visit the UNH-IOL website at: www.iol.unh.edu.

The UNH-IOL also runs the Fibre Channel Consortium, a separate association of companies building new products and interested in testing them on an ongoing basis

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