N+I: No Technology Slowdown Here

Solution providers attending NetWorld Interop here this week will find that technology development is continuing at a rapid pace despite the sluggish economy.

Vendors exhibiting at the show plan to unveil developments in traditional networking gear, as well as advances in wireless LAN, IP telephony, network management, security and storage technologies.

Avaya's 10 GbE blade extends the performance of the vendor's P580 and P882 MultiService switch platforms.

Avaya and Cisco Systems plan to demo 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology for their high-end switch lines. Avaya's 10 GbE blade extends the performance of the vendor's P580 and P882 MultiService switch platforms, while Cisco's 10 GbE modules extend the performance of its Catalyst 6500 series switch.

The 10 GbE technology extends Ethernet from the LAN to the metropolitan area network, said Graham Celine, vice president of solutions management at Avaya, Basking Ridge, N.J.

Intel said it plans to launch some of the first 802.11a high-speed wireless LAN products. Current WLAN equipment, based on the IEEE 802.11b standard, operates in the 2.4GHz band at 11 Mbps. New WLAN gear, based on the 802.11a standard, will operate in the 5GHz band at speeds of up to 54 Mbps.

Cisco plans to show Unity 3.0, its first unified messaging solution with enterprise scalability, said Kevin Chestnut, director of Cisco's enterprise communications software business unit. Based on Microsoft's Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000, Unity allows employees to access voice mail,

e-mail and faxes from one inbox. Unity 3.0 scales up to 100,000 users vs. just 2,500 to 5,000 users on previous versions, Chestnut said.

For its part, Avaya is slated to launch an SMB version of its IP telephony solution. Avaya IP Office, optimized for 100 users, is an all-in-one solution that incorporates data networking, WAN connection and IP telephony in one box, Celine said.

Novell plans to roll out NetWare 6 and Novell Small Business Suite 6, as well as an extension of its PartnerNet channel program for solution providers targeting the SMB space, said Starla Cox, Novell's director of North American channel marketing. Novell also aims to increase marketing to SMB solution providers and to SMBs, Cox said.

Also, F5 Networks, Seattle, is expected to launch Big-IP 5000, an IP application switch that manages traffic for Web services and applications. The device features integrated Secure Socket Layer processing, 24 Fast Ethernet and 4 Gigabit Ethernet switch ports, and dual Intel Pentium III 1GHz processors.

Atlanta-based Stonesoft is set to unveil a new version of its StoneBeat FullCluster high-availability load-balancing software for third-party software firewalls.

On the security front, PGP Security, a division of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Network Associates, plans to introduce a suite of products with centralized management capabilities to secure desktops. PGP Corporate Desktop 7.5 includes firewall and intrusion-detection components, e-mail encryption and VPN.

The suite is integrated with the ePolicy Orchestrator management tool from McAfee, another Network Associates unit. The tool allows an administrator to manage McAfee antivirus and PGP desktop security from the same console, said Mark McArdle, vice president of development at PGP. The suite is scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter.

Also, Okena, Waltham, Mass., is slated to launch an enhanced version of its StormWatch intrusion-prevention software.

In storage, Maxtor is boosting the capacity and performance of its NAS subsystems as part of a move to enter the enterprise market, said Steve Wilkins, the company's director of product marketing.

Maxtor's latest MaxAttach File Server, due to make its debut at N I, scales to 5.7 Tbytes of raw capacity that can be configured for RAID 0, 1 or 5. It is powered by dual 866MHz Intel Pentium III processors with 1 Gbyte of ECC SDRAM.

MARCIA SAVAGE, JOSEPH F. KOVAR & JENNIFER HAGENDORF FOLLETT contributed to this story.