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SAN JOSE, Calif. — October 9, 2012 — NETGEAR®, Inc. (NASDAQGM: NTGR), a global networking company that delivers innovative products to consumers, businesses and service providers, today announced the launch of the new NETGEAR ProSafe® Next-Gen Edge M5300 series, a family of top-of-the line stackable managed Gigabit switches that satisfy 10-Gigabit Ethernet backbone requirements and provide a resilient, future-proof access layer. The switches deliver line-rate performance for virtualization or convergence with two embedded 10-Gigabit uplinks, 10 Gbase-T (RJ45) and SFP+ (fiber), and two additional 10-Gigabit I/O bays for uplink or stacking. In an industry-first, NETGEAR is offering customers an easy path to upgrade from Gigabit Layer 2+ models to full Layer 3. As new applications and network requirements are added, the affordable upfront costs and the upgrade path to Layer 3 make it easy for customers to protect their investment.

NETGEAR ProSafe Next-Gen Edge M5300 switches feature virtual chassis stacking technology with 48 Gbps interconnect per switch to simplify network operations, and meshed stacking provides multi-resiliency and advanced load balancing capabilities. The modular main power supply and hot-swap redundant power supply/external power supply (RPS/EPS) capabilities ensure that networks operate at industry-leading high availability to support mission-critical applications.

Mid-sized organizations, hospitals and schools today have the same bandwidth needs as large enterprises. With the wide adoption of virtualization, the convergence of audio, video, and data and the rapid proliferation of bandwidth intensive applications, the widespread deployment of Gigabit to the desktop has become a bottleneck for any network access layer. High-performance connectivity enabled by10-Gigabit Ethernet has made it the de facto solution for supporting bandwidth-intensive business applications such as desktop and workstation data workload aggregation, IP voice and video applications and vertical industry applications, such as digital imaging for healthcare and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM).

The NETGEAR ProSafe Next-Gen Edge M5300 series, consisting of fully managed Gigabit Ethernet switches with embedded 10-Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, are a reliable, affordable and simple solution for any mid-sized organization considering 10-Gigabit Ethernet backbone architectures. As components of converged voice, video and data networking solutions, the switches deliver a resilient access layer in server rooms for virtualization, campus LAN environments and commercial buildings. Virtual chassis stacking technology, including meshed stacking, scales both the entire network's performance and its redundancy.

The NETGEAR ProSafe Next-Gen Edge M5300 series enables successful 10-Gigabit Ethernet deployments with advanced features such as integrated security, high availability, delivery optimization, enhanced manageability and support for new applications:

• 10-Gigabit virtual chassis hardware stacking technology and 10-Gigabit distributed link aggregation scale both the entire network’s performance and its redundancy.
• NETGEAR ProSafe Next-Gen Edge M5300 switches working with servers benefit from greater bandwidth capacity with active-active teaming (link aggregation control protocol [LCAP]) and load balancing.
• Redundancy is assured by distributing multiple connections across the stack, which acts as a single logical switch that is transparent to the server and aggregation switch.
• Thanks to virtual chassis stacking, IT administrators can easily add more ports to the switch fabric, simplifying management and increasing network resiliency.

“NETGEAR's new line of fully managed switches are ideal for growing organizations with evolving networking requirements,” said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst with Infonetics Research. “With a long list of standard features, including PoE+ and 10GbaseT, and the ability to upgrade to layer 3, these switches allow organizations to adapt as their requirements become more complex.”

“The NETGEAR ProSafe Next-Gen Edge M5300 Gigabit series is the ideal access layer for campus and enterprise networks with 10-Gigabit Ethernet backbone requirements. The switches deliver pure line-rate performance for virtualization or convergence, without the exorbitant acquisition and maintenance costs of solutions offered by legacy big IT networking vendors. The NETGEAR ProSafe Next-Gen Edge M5300 series combines the latest advances in hardware and software engineering for higher availability, stronger security, better scalability, better usability and greater energy efficiency,” said Laurent Masia, product line manager for managed infrastructure, NETGEAR commercial business unit.