CALABASAS, Calif., Oct. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alcatel (NYSE: ALA; Paris: CGEP.PA) today announced the Alcatel OmniSwitch 9600 as its latest addition to the award winning OmniSwitch 9000 family of full-featured, high-performance, 10-Gigabit Ethernet switches. The new switch provides a low- cost entry point chassis that uses existing OS9000 modules, delivering future- proof solutions with advanced security and QoS (quality of service) features for use in small enterprise cores, in the aggregation layer, and also in wiring closets due to its compact form factor and flexible power-over-Ethernet support.

An ideal solution for the campus environment, the Alcatel OmniSwitch 9600 provides sophisticated support for future applications including video-over-IP and Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop. The Alcatel OmniSwitch 9600 platform delivers wire-rate processing for IPv4/IPv6 unicast and multicast applications making it the standard for next generation campus architectures.

The OmniSwitch 9600 is a part of Alcatel's end-to-end enterprise switch family that includes stackable and modular edge switches that use the Alcatel Operating System (AOS) for security, simplified manageability, high availability, and reduced total cost of ownership. Security features of the OmniSwitch 9000 family include network access control via Alcatel Access Guardian, and malicious attack containment provided by the Alcatel OmniVista 2770 Quarantine Manager.

The OmniSwitch 9600 features the same network management capabilities as its sister product, the Alcatel OmniSwitch 9700, which was recently named as Network Computing's Editor's Choice for its superb manageability and ease of use. Per the industry recognized evaluation, "This switch best supports the SNMP standard and was the only participant to supply a web interface from which we could perform many tasks normally accomplished on a CLI."

"By putting the features and capabilities of our OmniSwitch 9000 switches into a smaller chassis, more customers can afford a network core that supports the convergence of voice, video and data and other applications," said Tom Burns, senior vice president and general manager of Alcatel's enterprise network infrastructure activities. "The OmniSwitch 9600 is a future-proof solution that provides the small enterprise the best performance-to-price LAN switch available today and allows businesses to inexpensively expand to a larger core with reusable cards when needed."

The Alcatel OmniSwitch 9600 model is currently available as a five-slot chassis supporting one chassis management module (CMM) and four network interface (NI) modules. It offers a wide range of GigE and 10GigE interfaces providing the industry's most flexible combination of Ethernet interfaces for use in a wiring closet. The OmniSwitch 9600 will also offer power-over- Ethernet later this year to support IP telephones, WLAN access points and video devices. VoIP and video performance is enhanced through use of policy- based QoS using OmniVista NMS PolicyView.

About Alcatel

Alcatel provides communications solutions to telecommunication carriers, Internet service providers and enterprises for delivery of voice, data and video applications to their customers or employees. Alcatel brings its leading position in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services, to help its partners and customers build a user-centric broadband world. With sales of EURO 13.1 billion and 58,000 employees in 2005, Alcatel operates in more than 130 countries. For more information, visit Alcatel on the Internet: http://www.alcatel.com/

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