Big News, Small Crowds As N+I Wraps Up

The weeklong event ended Thursday, and as attendees waited up to one hour for taxis from the Las Vegas Convention Center to the airport and their respective hotels, they praised the content but generally were critical of the number of vendors that actually showed up.

"I remember the days when [N&#043I] spanned two halls and it would take you two days just to see all the sights," said Patrick Kiernan, director of marketing planning and strategy service assurance at Spirent Communications, Rockville, Md.

Despite its underwhelming size, the conference had its usual share of product news. Network security vendors seemed to make the loudest noise: Fortinet, Sunnyvale, Calif., unveiled its FortiGuard Web content filtering system, while Internet Security Systems, Atlanta, launched a managed security services offering.

Visionael, Palo Alto, Calif., got in on the action, too, showing off new vulnerability verification features of its Enterprise Security Protector (ESP) product. John Haley, vice president of marketing, said that with ESP's new functionality, the company now features a platform that scans, discovers, reports, verifies, tickets, remediates and validates security at the LAN level.

Even end-point security companies seemed to draw notice. SecureWave, Herndon, Va., pitched its Sanctuary intrusion prevention product, which scans any executable code, compares it to an updateable list of permitted content and disallows access to anything that fails to comply with preset security policies.

"Security is becoming a critical part of network management," said Bernie Mikula, director of sales at Woburn, Mass.-based Go2 Communications, a reseller that was at the show to determine which security channel programs he wanted to join. "We want to make sure we align with the right players."

Security, however, was not the only networking niche to receive attention at this year's show--routing and switching vendors created significant buzz, too.

Perhaps most notably for resellers, access router vendor Quick Eagle Networks rolled out updates to its North American channel program. According to Alan Rice, senior vice president of sales and marketing at the Sunnyvale, Calif., company, the updates add special pricing opportunities to help partners close competitive sales and gives all members of its partner program the option to source products directly from the vendor.

"On a deal-by-deal basis, we can give an extra 8 [or] 10 points," he said. "Whatever we need to do to win the deal."

Elsewhere in the networking world, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Extreme Networks announced that it signed on Catalyst Telecom as a distributor of its networking products in a move aimed at bolstering its partnership with Avaya. Catalyst Telecom, which already distributes Avaya's IP communications products, has added Extreme's lineup of switches and management software to its converged communications portfolio.

Routing vendor 3Com also took the wraps off a new line of stackable Gigabit Ethernet switches and a new wireless access point. The SuperStack 3 Switch 3870, a stackable layer 2 gigabit-to-the-desktop switch family, opens up new opportunities for 3Com's solution providers to target higher-end customers and larger sites, said Douglas Hyde, product marketing manager at 3Com, Marlborough, Mass.

The new product line comes in 24-port and 48-port versions, including four "dual personality" ports that can operate as either 10/100/1000 copper ports or as small form-factor pluggable (SFP) based fiber ports. In addition, the switches include 10-Gigabit ready expansion slots for uplinks to the network core to help future-proof customers' investments, Hyde said.

"Gigabit is an opportunity to provide more value into the network; it's a longer-term solution for the channel, and 'stackability' is something the channel has been looking for," he said.

3Com also introduced at the conference its Wireless LAN Access Point 7250 based on an 802.11g radio. The new product includes advanced security and management features aimed at enterprise customers.

In other wireless announcements, Belkin introduced a new High-Speed Mode Wireless 802.11g Router, as well as a new line of SMB Gigabit Switches, offered in 5-, 8-, 16-, and 24-port versions. The Compton, Calif.-based vendor expected to begin shipping the new router by June 30 at a price of $99.99, while the switches were made available immediately for prices ranging $99.99 to $799.99.

Nortel Networks and Polycom also made a big splash. The companies announced that they will team to promote to enterprises an SIP-based, rich videoconferencing solution for next-generation IP broadband networks. The solution will enable Polycom systems to take advantage of Nortel multimedia features such as voice call processing, forward, transfer, hold, presence and instant messaging.

JENNIFER HAGENDORF FOLLETT, MARIE LINGBLOM AND DAN NEEL CONTRIBUTED TO THIS STORY.