Nortel Participates in Largest Ever Public Carrier Ethernet Interoperability Test

Demonstration of PLSB Interoperability at Carrier Ethernet World Congress, Berlin

BERLIN – Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT ] will join over 27 leading international vendors to stage the world’s largest and most advanced live, public Carrier Ethernet multi-vendor interoperability showcase at Carrier Ethernet World Congress ** in Berlin on September 22.

Carrier Ethernet technologies enable service providers to confidently use Ethernet to deliver high-bandwidth services such as IPTV, mobile video and business services. The live Berlin event comprises a network of more than 100 devices and provides proof-of-concept for network operators planning or considering migrating and utilizing next-generation Carrier Ethernet services.

“Service providers and enterprises are hugely interested in Carrier Ethernet for business, residential triple play and mobile backhaul and are looking for cost and service differentiation from a range of different technologies and vendor implementations,” said Peter Newcombe president, Carrier Networks, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Nortel. “This interoperability event showcases a range of different technologies in an architecture that resembles an actual service provider’s network.”

Nortel’s innovative Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) solution and Nortel’s implementation of the emerging standard Provider Backbone Bridge – Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE) is deployed in one of the three metropolitan networks used in the showcase. Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB), recently standardized as IEEE 802.1ah, delivers massive service scalability to traditional Ethernet. The introduction of PBB-TE, being standardized as IEEE 802.1Qay, adds Ethernet tunnels enabling providers to offer service level agreements similar to those of SONET/SDH networks.

The event also includes the first public interoperability test of Nortel’s next-generation of Ethernet Forwarding – Provider Link State Bridging (PLSB) which provides a scalable, carrier grade complement to PBT for E-LAN (multipoint-to-multipoint) and E-TREE (point-to-multipoint) services.

Vendors participating in the public Carrier Ethernet multi-vendor showcase include Nortel Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem members InfoVista, Ixia, Nortel, RAD Data Communications and Spirent Communications.

Also at this year’s Carrier Ethernet World Congress, Nortel speakers will deliver the following key sessions:

* Making the case for an approach to Carrier Ethernet based on Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB)
* Looking Forward to Future Ethernet Technologies, Systems and Services

For more details on Nortel’s participation in Carrier Ethernet World Congress, Berlin 22-26 September visit the events page on the Nortel website .

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today’s barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com . For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news .

About EANTC

The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) offers vendor-neutral consultancy and test facilities for network equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprise customers. Primary business areas include interoperability, conformance, and performance testing for Carrier Ethernet, IP/MPLS, and Triple Play technologies and applications. For more information contact Carsten Rossenhoevel, Managing Director, at +49.30.3180595-0 or via e-mail at cross@eantc.com . http://www.eantc.com

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