SANTA CLARA, CA -- Nortel Networks (NYSE:NT) (TSE:NT.) today announced new products designed to minimize enterprise capital and operational expenses by providing high-density network connectivity and enabling more effective resource provisioning. The new products include: Nortel Networks BayStack 470-48T 10/100 Switch with quality of service (QoS) functionality; BayStack 380-24T 10/100/1000 Switch with Gigabit connectivity to the desktop; and three gigabit uplink modules for Nortel Networks Business Policy Switch. "The introduction of these new products demonstrates not only our commitment to our enterprise customers, but also our sustained investment in innovation to set the pace for best-value building blocks for emerging secure communications infrastructures," said Oscar Rodriguez, president, Intelligent Internet, Nortel Networks. "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." "We have found the new BayStack Ethernet switches fully capable of meeting our stringent network requirements," said Dan Haumann, director, network services for Home Depot, which has evaluated BayStack 470 in beta trials. "Not only are they scalable to grow with our increasing business operations, but they've also proven to be our most valuable network investment in terms of operation, maintenance, training and other lifecycle costs," Haumann said. "The quality of service capabilities have enabled us to bypass expensive Layer 3 routing equipment, while providing superior traffic management capabilities. This enables us to focus on our core business and not suffer distractions due to network issues." 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 maximize their data infrastructure, while providing mature, customer-proven quality of service for organizations with high bandwidth requirements and the need to prioritize mission-critical traffic. "Hospitals need all their available space to meet patient care needs, so getting more ports with a smaller footprint is absolutely critical," said Bruce Meyer, senior network engineer for ProMedica Health System, a current BayStack 450 and Business Policy Switch user with plans to evaluate BayStack 470 in the near future. Meyer credits the redundant BayStack architecture -- featuring multi-link trunking for quick alternate routing in the event of failures -- for providing the high level of availability necessary in a hospital environment. "Having the quality of service features available ensures our critical traffic reaches its destination, which is extremely important in the field of healthcare," Meyer said. 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 16 gigabit 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. BayStack 380-24T 10/100/1000 provides high-density gigabit network connectivity to the desktop as well as data center aggregation. With up to 24 gigabit 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. 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 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. Also being introduced are three new gigabit uplink modules for Business Policy Switch. Each offers a variety of uplink capabilities, and brings high-throughput quality of service capabilities to customers with an installed base of BayStack 450s and Business Policy Switch 2000s. These new switches support a suite of security features, including BaySecure authentication, Distributed Access List, Radius remote access authentication and password protection. They also support protocols that provide user authentication, data encryption and secure configuration and monitoring. A future software release will support Extensible Authentication Protocol over Local Area Network (EAPoL). For more information visit www.nortelnetworks.com.