Nortel extends Ethernet line

Nortel last week extended its Ethernet-over-fiber product line with two offerings the company claims will cost up to 50% less to deploy than other technologies.

The two new products, available in the first quarter of 2004, are the Metro Ethernet Services Unit 1800 and Metro Ethernet Services Module 8668 for Nortel’s Passport 8600 routing switch. The products enable service providers to construct ring-based, switched Ethernet networks with 50 msec resiliency for aggregating traffic, Nortel says.

The 8668 specifically supports stacked virtual LANs, Nortel says, enabling service providers to transport multiple VLANs over a single circuit while keeping the traffic of several customers separate.

The 1800 and 8668 allow service providers to lower service deployment costs by 35% to 50% over frame relay or ATM, Nortel says, citing internal research.

Nortel said it will also enhance its OPTera Metro 1000 series of customer premises-based Ethernet Service Modules to support ring-based topologies, as well as features like per-class-of-service rate enforcement, automatic node discovery, and dynamic service provisioning. These enhancements will also be available in the first quarter of 2004, Nortel says.