Anilrgowda

Paris, December 18, 2006 - Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced the availability of the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9800, the newest member of Alcatel-Lucent’s award-winning family of 10-Gigabit Ethernet core switches that offer high-performance, high security, and enterprise-class availability at affordable prices. This chassis features twice the capacity of the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9700. Also available are a new high-density 10-Gigabit Ethernet module and a new power-over-Ethernet (PoE) Gigabit Ethernet module.
The Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9000 family is ideal for enterprise network administrators who require switches in their network core and aggregation layer to support large amounts of user data being consolidated for 10 Gigabit connections. Similar to the other OmniSwitch 9000 models, the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9800 delivers wire-rate processing for IPv6/IPv4 and supports multicast applications, allowing businesses to benefit from these future trends at their own pace and at no extra cost.
The Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9000s can also be used at the edge to support converged applications and deliver industry leading quality of service (QoS) for multi-media applications, voice-over-IP (VoIP), video collaboration and database applications. OmniSwitch 9000 switches anticipate and address future requirements at the network’s edge with up to 384 ports of PoE-enabled 10/100/1000 Ethernet to the desktop.
The OmniSwitch 9000s are part of Alcatel-Lucent’s end-to-end enterprise switch family that includes stackable and modular edge switches, which use the Alcatel-Lucent Operating System (AOS) and Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniVista Network Management System for simplified manageability, high availability, advanced security and quality of service (QoS) features, at a reduced total cost of ownership.
“The Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9800 is ideal for use in the network core, however its strong security and power-over-Ethernet ports also make it ideal for use at the edge where support of voice, video and data convergence is critical,” said Eric Penisson, for Alcatel-Lucent’s network infrastructure activities. “The OmniSwitch 9800 is a versatile platform that will keep pace with growing enterprise performance and end-user needs while setting new performance standards for network uptime, security and services.”
“Enterprise network managers have been looking for switches that have a higher switching capacity to improve their network’s performance and are upgrading wiring closets as well,” said Steven J. Schuchart Jr., Senior Analyst for Enterprise Networks at Current Analysis. “Alcatel-Lucent has addressed those needs with the OmniSwitch 9000s. These products hit the sweet spot in this market by offering 10 Gigabit speeds with wire-speed power-over-Ethernet options at a very competitive price.”
The Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 9800 features a completely redundant configuration starting at USD 37,495.