Firetide Announces HotPort High Performance Mesh Networks in Culver City, St. Augustine's College, and the State Fair of Texas; Beta Customers Laud Performance, Scalability, and Ease of Use for Wireless Video, Wi-Fi, and LAN Networks.

LOS GATOS, Calif., March 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Firetide, Inc., a leader in wireless mesh networking, today announced three Beta customers for their new HotPort(TM) high performance mesh network. Culver City California is installing Wi-Fi and video surveillance in city offices, St. Augustine's College in Raleigh North Carolina is extending their LAN network between buildings, and the State Fair of Texas is creating an outdoor video surveillance network.

The Culver City business district already had an outdoor Firetide mesh network, installed by system integrator Wireless Hotspot, providing free Wi-Fi access to the Internet for downtown visitors. In this second phase deployment, a wireless mesh extends across several city buildings including administrative offices and City Council chambers. "We're implementing Wi-Fi access and video broadcasting on the same network," said Carlos Vega, IT Manager for Culver City. "City workers will now have Wi-Fi access throughout their buildings and residents can view city council meetings. The best part is that we have one infrastructure providing a variety of services and security levels and it was all set up in less than one day."

At Saint Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, a Firetide HotPort mesh will connect several campus buildings, replacing expensive T1 connections. "The college needed a cost-effective way to extend LANs across the campus," explained Bruce Buxton, Director of Sales for ABEO Corporation, who is installing the network. "A HotPort mesh network can provide much higher performance than T1 lines and eliminates expensive monthly connection charges."

An outdoor video surveillance network will be deployed at the State Fair of Texas, a 277-acre entertainment and recreation complex owned by the City of Dallas. "The city wants the fairgrounds to be a safe place for families and visitors," said Mark Cromwell of AgileMesh, Inc. who will deploy the video network. "We will place Firetide's HotPort 3203 outdoor mesh nodes with our video nodes, software, and video cameras around the property allowing their security force to monitor and record activity from a central location. No digging, trenching, or disruption to the environment is required."

HotPort networks are ideal for environments such as hotels, airports, convention centers, municipalities, warehouses, and other campus environments where structured wiring such as Ethernet or fiber cabling is too difficult or costly to install.

HotPort High Performance Mesh Network

The HotPort mesh network is a high performance wireless mesh backbone that supports multiple, simultaneous applications and services, including those that require extra capacity and fast throughput. It is designed especially for high-bandwidth/low latency applications such as video surveillance networks, voice over IP services, and metro-scale Wi-Fi HotZones. The self-configuring, self-healing mesh network scales quickly and easily, resulting in a powerful and reliable wireless network.

The HotPort system includes both indoor and outdoor mesh nodes, HotView(TM) mesh management software, and advanced networking features including VLAN capability, traffic prioritization, network gateway interconnects, and remote management.

HotPort high performance mesh networks will be generally available on March 31, 2005. Firetide products are sold through channel partners including distributors, value added resellers (VARs), and systems integrators. For more information about HotPort products, please visit http://www.firetide.com/.

About Firetide, Inc.

Firetide is a privately held wireless mesh technology company that develops networking equipment to deploy high performance, scalable wireless mesh networks quickly, easily and affordably. Firetide's Instant Networking solution is ideal for building backbone infrastructure for Wi-Fi networks, video surveillance, and temporary networks in a variety of environments, such as Internet access HotZones, airports, hotels, campus environments or other locations where wiring is too difficult or expensive to install. Investors include Menlo Ventures, HMS Ventures, Hawaiian Electric Industries, and Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners. For more information, visit the company's website at http://www.firetide.com/.

NOTE: Firetide(TM), HotPort(TM) and Instant Mesh Networks(TM) are trademarks of Firetide, Inc.

CONTACT: Barbara Cardillo of Firetide, Inc., +1-408-348-4020, or bcardillo@firetide.com; or Danielle Siemon of Edelman, +1-650-429-2739, or danielle.siemon@edelman.com, for Firetide

Web site: http://www.firetide.com/