Nortel Networks announces two additions to its OPTera Metro Portfolio

Jan. 28, 2002

January 28, 2002--Nortel Networks today announced technology innovations for its Optical Metro portfolio designed to speed Optical Ethernet deployments worldwide and to reduce operating costs up to 60 percent, claim company representatives.

Nortel Networks today announced technology innovations for its Optical Metro portfolio designed to speed Optical Ethernet deployments worldwide and to reduce operating costs up to 60 percent, claim company representatives.

The new products and software enhancements will enable carriers to deploy and manage new revenue-generating metro services like Voice-over-IP (VoIP), virtual private networks (VPNs), storage networking, and streaming media on a wide scale across all types of Ethernet networks.

As part of its strategy to encourage wide-scale deployment of metro Ethernet services, Nortel has added two new products to its OPTera portfolio, the OPTera Metro 1200 Ethernet Service Module (ESM) and the OPTera Metro 8000 Services Switch.

The OPTera Metro 1200 ESM, a new class of Optical Ethernet edge device, is designed specifically to allow service providers to provision Ethernet services to multiple enterprises while enabling end-to-end quality of service (QoS) guarantees. OPTera Metro 1200 ESM, available in March 2002, is designed to provide provisioning up to 10 times faster than previously available, as well as to reduce support requirements by reducing complexity, says Nortel.

The OPTera Metro 8000 Services Switch will serve as an entry point into the service providers' core metro networks. OPTera Metro 8000, available in second quarter 2002, will feature standards-based Layer 2 MPLS software that will provide all the inherent benefits of MPLS, claims the company, and will enable carriers to cost-effectively scale metro Ethernet networks to tens of thousands of enterprise customers per city.

"Gigabit Ethernet is a key element of our data strategy," said Tom Hope, chief technology officer, Bell Canada. "With over 450 large business customers in Canada using several thousand Ethernet circuits, we can attest first-hand to the fundamental benefits of Ethernet technologies--more bandwidth, less complexity, and better acceptance in the market. We are encouraged by Nortel Networks continued commitment to evolve the Optical Ethernet portfolio, and look forward to maximizing the full potential that these enhancements have to offer."

For more information, about Nortel Networks (Ottawa, Canada) visit the company's Web site at www.nortelnetworks.com.