BOSTON - Building on its leadership position in solutions for the Local Internet, Nortel Networks* [NYSE/TSE: NT] announced the availability of Open IP Environment 2.1, the latest version of its full-featured, platform-independent Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure applications suite.

Open IP Environment software Internet-enables personal and network devices ranging from personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other computing and information appliances to set-top boxes and carrier-grade digital switching systems. A modular platform, Open IP Environment allows developers to select only the software required for particular applications, including Quality of Service (QoS), management, security, routing, authentication, encapsulation, tunneling, policy management, network management and accounting.

With version 2.1, Open IP Environment is first to market with Explicit Congestion Notification, a new feature that detects network congestion at layer three (IP) and throttles back data flow to deliver higher performance networking.

"ECN is a useful next step in improving the congestion management framework for the Internet," said K. K. Ramakrishnan, founder and vice president of business development, TeraOptic Networks and a leading ECN proponent. "Acting in conjunction with the Active Queue Management techniques currently being deployed in the Internet, ECN will improve the performance of the overall Internet as well as networked applications."

"Nortel Networks Open IP platform is the first commercial implementation that incorporates ECN, and we believe this is a significant step towards more widespread deployment of ECN," said Sally Floyd, senior scientist at ICSI.

Open IP Environment 2.1 enables shorter product development time and lower development costs, speeding time-to-market and providing OEMs, system integrators and developers greater opportunities for competitive advantage.

The new version builds on previously released Open IP Environment 2.0 by introducing more than 30 new modules, including networking protocols for OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), IP v4 to RIP (Routing Information Protocol), IS-IS (Intermediate System to Intermediate System), IPX (Internetwork Packet Exchange) and BGP-4 (Border Gateway Protocol). It also supports application programming interfaces (APIs) which link to underlying operating systems and processors, as well as value added infrastructure specific applications such as differentiated services QoS, MPLS, COPS, Multicast Routing Table Manager, VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol), and NAT/PAT (Network Address Translation/Port Address Translation).

"The high-performance Internet requires a network architecture that eliminates today's proprietary constraints and high ownership costs," said Kalai Kalaichelvan, general manager, Open IP Environment, Nortel Networks. "Next generation IP networks will demand high-performance interoperability to handle traffic volume thousands of times greater than today's networks. Open IP Environment 2.1 provides the platform-independent scalability required to address this need."

Nortel Networks is a global Internet and communications leader with capabilities spanning Optical, Wireless, Local Internet and eBusiness. The Company had 1999 U.S. GAAP revenues of US$21.3 billion and serves carrier, service provider and enterprise customers globally. Today, Nortel Networks is creating a high-performance Internet that is more reliable and faster than ever before. It is redefining the economics and quality of networking and the Internet, promising a new era of collaboration, communications and commerce. Visit us at www.nortelnetworks.com.

*Nortel Networks, the Nortel Networks logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.