BY JEFF CARUSO Foundry Networks is what you might call LAN hardware's dark horse. Its Layer 3 switches may not have the flash of Extreme Networks' purple boxes, and the company may not have the marketing muscle of Cisco, but Foundry has been quietly winning users with its products' low prices, high performance and range of features. Foundry's switches make forwarding decisions at Layer 2, 3 or 4, and send data over Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet. The company has more than 600 customers today, and it is profitable - a rarity among the Gigabit Ethernet start-ups that have come and gone in the past few years. Most of those start-ups have been swallowed up by other companies. Rival Extreme has garnered much attention since it filed for an initial public offering in January, but all eyes will shift to Foundry as it files for its IPO. CEO Bobby Johnson says such an offering is imminent, although Foundry hadn't gone public by press time. The company will also keep the heat on as it expands its product line over the next year. Foundry's flagship BigIron switch will get new WAN and copper-based Gigabit Ethernet interfaces next month, and Foundry will raise the capacity of its switches with wave division multiplexing later this year. The U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal revamped its network with Foundry switches last year, moving from a mix of switched and shared Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet switches. "The bandwidth is incredible," says Bob Nance, network administrator with Amtec, which contracts with the Huntsville, Ala., arsenal. Go to Inktomi Feedback Tell us your thoughts on this page. Comments: Name: E-mail address: What did you think of this page? Very useful Somewhat useful Not at all useful Would you want to see: More resources on this topic Fewer resources on this topic Thank you! When you click Submit, you'll be taken back to this page.