New products from Nortel Networks offer enterprises improved performance, reliability; High-performance platforms scale to meet needs of small, medium businesses.

M2 PRESSWIRE-10 February 2003-NORTEL NETWORKS: New products from Nortel Networks offer enterprises improved performance, reliability; High-performance platforms scale to meet needs of small, medium businesses(C)1994-2003 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:02102003

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Nortel Networks* [NYSE/TSX: NT] announced new products in its enterprise application networking portfolio designed to help small- and medium-sized companies realize improved performance, reliability, security, scalability and efficiency in their communications networks.

Scaleable to meet unique customer requirements, these new products - the Nortel Networks Passport* 1600 series and Nortel Networks BayStack* 380-24F switch - provide the same resiliency and performance as other members of their product families. Passport 1600 and BayStack 380-24F bring high-bandwidth processing functions to small- and medium-sized enterprises, positioning them to provide high-demand, real-time business applications to employees, partners and customers. Providing the performance of larger platforms in a small form factor ensures that critical applications can be served with fidelity, and eliminates many of the roadblocks faced by smaller companies whose applications suffer due to network latency, jitter and packet loss.

"UBC has been upgrading the network connectivity to many of the buildings on the Point Grey campus over the past several months, with about 100 buildings being outfitted for gigabit Ethernet and, in some cases, multiple gigabit Ethernet connections to a single complex," said Marilyn Hay, manager, network engineering for IT services, University of British Columbia. "We have been working with Nortel Networks to supply a switch to aggregate these connections into the network core, and they have done so with BayStack 380-24F."

"This switch delivers the high port density we require at a very low price point per port, while also meeting the flexibility requirements of our diverse environment," Hay said. "All in all, Nortel Networks has delivered an excellent product for our networking needs."

"The introduction of these platforms demonstrates our commitment to serving the entire spectrum of enterprise customers," said Atul Bhatnagar, vice president and general manager, Ethernet Switching, Nortel Networks. "Drawing on our philosophy of helping customers achieve the greatest possible return on investment with the lowest cost of ownership, the ease of management, deployment and operation of BayStack 380-24F and the Passport 1600 portfolio bring the benefits of advanced technology with low total cost of ownership to small- and medium-sized businesses." For enterprises that require the intelligent routing functionality of Passport 8600 but not the port density, Nortel Networks Passport 1600 family provides Layer 3 aggregation and wiring closet connectivity. These platforms leverage proven Passport 8600 technology, and reliability features like multi-layer redundancy for sub-second failover and redundant components.