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Nortel Networks' Alteon Web Switches Receive OPSEC Certification for Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 High Availability with Load Balancing

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – December 18, 2000 - Nortel Networks [NYST/TSE: NT] today announced that it has received OPSEC (Open Platform for Security) certification from Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. [Nasdaq: CHKP), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, for its Alteon Web switches to be used with Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 for high availability with load balancing.

OPSEC certification involved rigorous testing of Alteon stackable Web switch product lines – the Alteon ACEdirector and Alteon 180 series with Check Point's VPN-1/FireWall-1 to ensure seamless interoperability and integration. By using Alteon stackable Web switches with Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 products, customers can deploy proven solutions to build mission critical networks for secure eBusiness.

Load balancing virtual private networks (VPN) gateways presents a number of challenges as specific addressing information within each packet is encrypted. Additionally, VPN traffic is typically transmitted in an encrypted form, making it difficult to track individual sessions. With the newest version of the Alteon Web OS 8.3 (see related release), customers can now overcome these challenges increasing the availability and efficiency of their VPN traffic.

"Security, performance and availability are key customer requirements for an eBusiness Internet infrastructure," said Asheem Chandna, vice president of business development and product management for Check Point Software Technologies. "The combination of VPN-1/FireWall-1 and Nortel Networks' Alteon's Web switches provide customers with a best-of-breed solution that meets these requirements and supports transparent VPN-1 fail-over with no loss of connectivity for active sessions."

"We view the new level of OPSEC certification as another important step in a long-running, successful Check Point relationship," said Selina Lo, VP of Marketing for Nortel Networks Content Networking Business. "The new VPN load balancing with fail over capability enables us to create the best solution – combining the fastest high-performance Web switches with the Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 products to create a massively-scalable, secure infrastructure to meet the business needs of our customers."

The thorough and extensive test regimen required for OPSEC certification demonstrated and proved that Alteon Web switches add value, scalability, and reliability to Check Point's VPN-1/FireWall-1 solutions under the extreme circumstances. Alteon Web switches proved their ability to load balance while providing fail over for VPN connections for the Check Point VPN-1/FireWall-1 gateways thereby ensuring high-performance and resilience for customers and their users.

Alteon Web switches provide the industry's highest-performing Layer 4 through Layer 7 content-aware switching. Purpose-built Alteon WebIC network processing ASICs distributed across each port enable sophisticated traffic control functions that monitor each Web session and direct traffic by reading high-layer packet information such as the transmission control protocol (TCP) port numbers, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and HTTP cookies and headers. This allows a single Alteon Web switch to concurrently support multiple services such as firewall, Web server and now VPN load balancing as well as bandwidth management and global server load balancing.

About Check Point's OPSEC

OPSEC (Open Platform for Security) is the industry's leading open, multi-vendor security framework. With over 270 partners, OPSEC guarantees customers the broadest choice of best-of-breed integrated applications and deployment platforms that support Check Point's Secure Virtual Network Architecture. Products that carry the OPSEC Certified seal have been tested to guarantee integration and interoperability. For complete OPSEC Alliance program information including partner and product listings, the freely available OPSEC SDK (software development kit) and evaluation versions of OPSEC Certified products, visit http://www.opsec.com.

About Nortel Networks

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, the Globemark and Alteon are trademarks of Nortel Networks.

 

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