Nortel unveils Layer 2 switches

Nortel recently announced a couple of stand-alone Layer 2 Ethernet switches for small and midsized businesses.

The BayStack 325 switches each have 24 ports of 10/100M bit/sec copper-based Ethernet in one rack-unit. The BayStack 325-24T Switch has just those ports, while the 325-24G Switch adds two 10/100/1000Base-T ports for server connections or uplinks to a backbone.

While the switches operate at Layer 2, they do have features such as support for IEEE 802.1x, SSHv2, Multi-Link Trunking, 802.1Q virtual LANs and 802.1p prioritization. Up to 32 port-based virtual LANs can be set up on each switch, and up to four prioritization queues can be established on the switch.

They have a 16G bit/sec switch fabric and ASICs to provide frame forwarding and filtering across all ports at wire speed – up to 6.6 million packets per second with no packet loss.

The BayStack switches use “BoSS,” which stands for BayStack operating system Switching Software. The software is updated for free for the lifetime of the switches, Nortel says.

With Multi-Link Trunking, the BayStack 325 switches can group links into a trunk – up to six trunks per switch and four ports per trunk.

The switches also have Web-based management – so, summary, configuration, fault, statistics, application, administration, and support pages are available via a Web browser.