No one builds ATM services for a wide area network better than Northern Telecom. Its Nortel Passport (formerly the Passport 160) did amazing work in our multiservice ATM switch lab test, and optimized traffic beyond our expectations.

Built on top of a solid switching fabric, Passport supports the widest range of software options and physical interfaces of any wide area ATM multiservice switch. It cost-effectively transports voice, video and a long list of data types across an ATM WAN backbone. Features like these help make Northern Telecom a Well-Connected Award winner this year.

While Passport's price can be considered fairly steep, it can quickly pay back in bandwidth and equipment savings. Since we last reviewed Passport, Northern Telecom expanded the product line with the three-slot model 6420. It's built on the same 1.2-Gbps nonblocking fabric as the 6480 and the five-slot 6440, effectively lowering the cost of entry of the Passport family. Northern Telecom also introduced the 4400 series of multiservice access devices targeted at basic access to the ATM cloud.

All in the Software Software is what makes the 6400 series excel. Northern Telecom's traffic management features in Passport include multiple priority levels, dynamic bandwidth allocation, Switched Virtual Circuits for both frame relay and ATM, as well as per-virtual circuit queuing. LAN traffic may be either routed or bridged over a Passport network. The Magellan NMS provides detailed views from a GUI that is so complete that operators will never have to learn cryptic commands.

In addition to the usual voice traffic management techniques like compression, silence suppression and activity detection, Northern Telecom offers its proprietary Voice Networking option. This service actually moves PBX intelligence into the network itself, allowing calls to be routed directly between nodes in the network. This can reduce the need for tandem PBX configurations.

A Contender Garnering an honorable mention in our Well-Connected Awards this year, General DataComm takes a different approach with its APEX line of multiservice switches. Though considerably less expensive than Northern Telecom's Passport, APEX offers a smooth migration path from a simple access concentrator (the MAC1) to its high-end, NEBS (Networking Equipment Building Standards)-compliant, carrier-class switches, all without throwing away cards and software. GDC also places great focus on standards-compliant implementations. As GDC upgrades its management software and follows ATM Forum standards, it will continue to be a tough contender in the ATM-based WAN arena.

Nortel Passport, starts at $16,500,
Northern Telecom,
(800) 466-7835, (972) 684-1000.
www.nortel.com