Abstract

Tolly Group Report #202142 (August 2002) validates multivendor interoperability for Nortel’s Passport 8600 routing switch and BayStack 470-48T edge switch across key Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions. Tests confirmed:

• Layer 2 success—auto-negotiation, IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation, 802.1p/Q VLAN tagging, and single-link Gigabit-Ethernet uplinks all worked with every third-party device.

• Layer 3 protocol exchange—Passport 8600 dynamically shared routing tables for RIP v1/v2, OSPF, BGP-4, and IPX RIP with every peer that supported each protocol; it also interoperated in VRRP hot-standby tests and in multicast distribution using DVMRP and PIM-SM.

• Optional capabilities—Passport 8600 forwarded 9,000-byte jumbo frames with zero loss and formed interoperable 10 GbE LAN-PHY links with all four vendors that supported them.

Third-party vendors verified

The twelve switches came from eight suppliers: Alcatel, Allied Telesyn, Avaya, Cisco, Dell, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, and NEC America.

These results demonstrate that Passport 8600 and BayStack 470-48T integrate smoothly into heterogeneous networks, preserving VLANs, link aggregation, routing, redundancy, multicast, jumbo-frame, and 10 GbE functions without interoperability gaps.