Nortel Networks introduces new BayStack Ethernet switch family for enterprises

Nortel Networks recently introduced two new products in the BayStack family of Ethernet Layer 2 switches. The BayStack 470-48T Switch and BayStack 380-24T Gigabit Switch are designed to provide high-density connectivity to enterprise customers, enabling network resources to be provisioned across the enterprise via a highly available, scalable solution that minimises capital and operational expenses, while offering quality of service (QoS) feature-rich functionality.

"The introduction of these new products demonstrates our sustained investment in innovation to set the pace for best-value building blocks for emerging secure communications infrastructures," said Tony Wilson, enterprise director, Nortel Networks SA. "The new BayStack Ethernet switches provide superior data throughput, high availability and iron-clad resiliency, while providing one of the lowest total costs of ownership for this functionality."

The new BayStack products are targeted at companies planning to refresh their campus networks or create new ones. With its optimum customer value in price per port, BayStack enables enterprises, branch offices and small to medium-size businesses to maximise their data infrastructure, while providing mature, customer-proven quality of service for organizations with high bandwidth requirements and the need to prioritise mission-critical traffic.

"The new products complement the existing BayStack range to give the IT manager more flexibility when expanding networks. It also doubles the numbers of points that can be provided in a wiring closet," says Anton van Bers, Product Manager for Nortel Networks at Comztek.

BayStack 470-48T 10/100 is a high-value approach for high-density desktop connectivity enterprises seeking a stackable Layer 2 Fast Ethernet solution. Up to eight, 48-port units can be stacked, providing an aggregate 384 ports and up to 16Gb uplink ports, among the highest throughput capacity in the industry. Quality of service features, enabled with addition of BayStack Business Policy Switch, allow network administrators to create policies for data networks that carry multi-purpose traffic, and to give priority to certain users or applications as well as time-sensitive packets, critical for applications such as voice over IP (Internet Protocol) and video.

BayStack 470 is a highly available, fail-safe solution designed to provide continuous uptime for mission critical applications. Distributed and split multi-link trunking features eliminate single points of network failure. Centralized management enables an entire stack to be managed as a single entity.

It is designed to provide high-density connectivity to enterprise customers, enabling network resources to be provisioned across the enterprise via a highly available, scalable solution that minimises capital and operational expenses, while offering QoS feature-rich functionality.

BayStack 470-48T 10/100 Switch is a Layer-2 Gigabit switch with 24 10/100/1000 auto-sensing copper ports including 4 SFP (Small Form Factor) GBIC ports. It provides high-density Gigabit connectivity to desktop power users for high-speed applications such as graphics, multimedia and CAD/CAM.

The BayStack 380 Switch is also an ideal solution for aggregating network traffic from the wiring closet. For customers requiring extremely high data throughput to the desktop, BayStack 380 enables high-speed applications such as video teleconferencing, telemedicine, streaming media, computer-aided design and manufacturing and remote training.

BayStack 380-24T 10/100/1000 provides high-density gigabit network connectivity to the desktop as well as data center aggregation. With up to 24Gb ports per switch, it offers among the highest port density and best value of any gigabit switch in the industry. High-speed multi-link trunks provide up to eight gigabits-per-second throughput connections to servers and other switches.

BayStack 380 is extremely resilient, with load balancing and automatic fail-over features like multi-link trunking. Its Layer 2 functionality and extremely high bandwidth provide significantly lower cost of ownership, and make configuration easier and more secure than comparable Layer 3 routing solutions.

These newest products in the BayStack family deliver superior price per port economics, enabling enterprises and their branch offices, as well as small and medium size businesses, to lower total cost of ownership while meeting today`s high bandwidth requirements