Ellen Fyock
Director, Marketing Communications
800-830-7304
732-764-5689 (f)

Rebecca Scanlan
The Hoffman Agency for Quantex
(720) 904-3790

Quantexâ Microsystems, Inc. today unveiled its next generation of WebXL Caching Appliances at Novell’s BrainShare 2000 user conference. The latest Quantex server appliances are powered by Novell’s Internet Caching System (NICS) technology and boast accelerated performance, effortless implementation and the smallest casing available today.

With the rapid growth and evolution of the Internet, companies are looking for an easy-to-deploy solution to remedy Web server delays and Web site slowdowns. Quantex WebXL appliances are engineered for these specific functions and can be plugged into any environment and managed remotely through a simple browser-based interface. The complete installation of the appliance has been demonstrated in less than 10 minutes.

"Companies are facing new challenges around Web access and performance due to the growth of the Internet," said Patrick Harr, director of product management at Novell. "Together, Novell and Quantex are delivering Net services to simplify and accelerate Web performance for companies of all sizes and platforms."

Because many administrators face space constraints, the latest Quantex caching products are housed in the smallest casing possible. They feature a petite 1U form factor (1U= 1.75 inches) which is half the size of a normal box and a critical feature for administrators worried about diminishing real estate. All Quantex WebXL appliances are also rack mountable, fully scalable and can be implemented within any existing platform.

"Quantex acknowledges that existing hardware has failed to answer the critical needs of companies conducting business on the Internet," said Qian Liu, Quantex marketing manager. "We’ve pinpointed the problems and have developed a simplified solution with our new WebXL line. Our second-generation appliances speed the delivery of Internet content and reduce bandwidth consumption by 50 percent, making Web-enabled businesses more competitive."

Quantex WebXL appliances speed Web performance by storing recurrent Web pages locally, allowing a user’s request to be satisfied at the local server instead of traveling over the Internet. The offload of server traffic equals more bandwidth and less money spent on e-commerce, Internet and Intranet needs. To avoid , the appliances are programmed to periodically refresh Web content and are also designed to integrate features like content filtering and clustering.

To meet the needs of the low, medium and high-end markets, Quantex is introducing three new models of Web-caching appliances: WebXL 2100, WebXL 3100 and WebXL 4100. Pricing for the new WebXL appliances has been structured to comply with budgets of all sizes, with the WebXL 2100 starting at under $5000. The new generation of products will begin shipping in May 2000.

All levels of the new Web-caching appliances are configurable for transparent, forward or reverse proxy modes. The entire product line is also capable of caching HTTP, FTP and Gopher traffic, including .exe. and Java applets. Other key attributes of the WebXL line appliances include: Filtering/URL blocking by hostname, IP or filtering service; accommodate 100,000 persistent connections per second; browser-based management interface using Netscape Navigator v.4.07 or greater; support Novell Load Balancing and Failover Clustering technology and Level 4 switches for fail-over and scalability.

Quantex is a leading global direct manufacturer of business desktops, workstations, servers, Web caching appliances, notebooks and home PCs in the direct channel. Quantex has received repeated industry acclaim and dozens of awards for customer satisfaction and technical excellence. Setting the standard for quality and value, Quantex is also recognized for consistently being among the first to bring new technologies to market. ISO 9002 certified manufacturing facilities provide further proof of the Quantex commitment to the highest levels of quality and reliability.

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