Nortel has conducted several product performance reports, as well as commissioned a number of reports below from the Tolly Group. The Tolly Group is the IT industry's leader of providing third-party validation, for independent, authoritative, unbiased evaluation of our products and solutions. We believe these reports and test summaries will help you in designing or upgrading your network for future by ensuring that the infrastructure delivers high performance, resiliency, QoS and availability required for the convergence of voice, video and data.

May 2008
Tolly Group test summary: Nortel's converged data solution supporting Microsoft Office Communications server 2007
Evaluation of resilient Routing Switches for real-time multimedia traffic on Nortel Converged Data Solution supporting Microsoft Office Communications server 2007.
Download the report (PDF)


August 2007
Ethernet Routing Switch 2500 and 4500 demonstrate full interoperability with Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches
The affordable and versatile Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 2500 and 4500 Series interoperated fully with Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches during tests of various multi-link, Layer 2 and Layer 3 features.

July 2007
Tolly Group Test Summary: Ethernet Routing Switch 4500 Series Performance & Reliability
In this Tolly Group report, the Ethernet Routing Switch 4500 achieved zero-loss throughput, with low latency and jitter, along with delivering stack resiliency.

May 2007
Newly introduced Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 2500 and 4500 exhibit always-on resiliency in a converged environment
An evaluation of Ethernet Routing Switches 2500, 4500 and 8600 in a converged network environment running SMLT demonstrates superior resiliency, quality of enterprise-class voice, video and data traffic handling.

The Tolly Test Summary: Ethernet Routing Switch 2500 Performance Report
In this Tolly Group report, the Nortel ERS 2500 Series demonstrated a higher switching capacity than competitors tested with a lower cost-per-Gigabit throughput. The ERS 2526T offered the lowest cost among 24-port switches … 23% less than the ProCurve Switch 2626 and five times less than the Cisco Catalyst 2960.

Accelerating Web-Based Applications with the Nortel Application Accelerator (603 KB, PDF)
Independent test report of the Nortel Application Accelerator. Engineers measured the performance of Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft IIS, and Microsoft Outlook Web Access. Tests confirmed that NAA reduced download times by 5-30x and reduced bandwidth needs by up to 99%.

April 2007
Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 4500 Series showcases 320 Gbps stack-bandwidth performance (417 KB, PDF)
In April 2007, Nortel conducted tests to evaluate the switching performance of the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 4500 portfolio, and this document outlines the results of those tests.

Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 2500 Series demonstrates superior performance (300 KB, PDF)
In January 2007, Nortel conducted a series of tests to evaluate the switching performance of its Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 2500 portfolio.This document provides test highlights and results.

February 2007
The Tolly Group Report: Nortel Ethernet Routing Switches 5500, 1600, 8300, 8600
The Tolly Group proves Nortel’s Split Multi-Link Trunking running over Switch Cluster cores of ERS 5500, 1600, 8300 and 8600 provides uninterrupted Microsoft LCS and Nortel MCS voice and video even during link and switch failures. 100% call setup and completion with "toll-quality" voice was achieved in this disaster recovery scenario.
Download the report (PDF)

Tolly Group Test Summary: Application Switch load balancing with Nortel MCS 5100 and Microsoft LCS while evaluating Security
This report shows that Nortel's Application Switch load balancing solution delivers uninterrupted service to Nortel's MCS 5100 and Microsoft's LCS servers for uninterrupted service. The Nortel Application Switches also successfully detected and blocked Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) security attacks.
Download the report (PDF)

January 2007
Tolly Group Test Summary: Application Switch Load Balancing on Microsoft LCS
The most recent Tolly Group Test Summary Application Switch Load Balancing on Microsoft LCS shows how the Nortel Application Switch load balancing solution, can load balance the Microsoft LCS servers for faster response, increased reliability, and to maintain user sessions seamlessly in the event of an outage to other LCS servers in the network.
Download the report (PDF)

October 2006
Tolly Report: Nortel Secure Router Interoperability with Cisco 2821 ISR
This Tolly Group report validates Nortel's seamless interoperability with Cisco across a range of routing, WAN and link protocols, as well as advanced features such as VPN and IP Multicasting.
Download the Report (PDF)

Nortel Secure Routers 1004 and 3120 deliver impressive VoIP throughput results (287 KB, PDF)
In October 2006, Nortel put its Secure Routers 1004 and 3120 to the test to prove that these offerings deliver superior performance and VoIP quality of service, regardless of the level of traffic on the network or the IP services enabled.

September 2006
The Tolly Group Report: Nortel Converged Network Infrastructure
This third-party independent report from The Tolly Group proves that Nortel’s Converged Data Network provides auto-recovery of link, switch and site failure while achieving toll-quality voice and 100% call completion.
Download the report (PDF)

January 2006
Tolly Group Competitive Test Summary for Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 Series
This third party Tolly Group report validates and highlights the superior performance and lower cost of ownership of 5000 Series switches versus Cisco Catalyst 3750G and HP ProCurve 3400cl switches.
Download the report (PDF)

December 2005
Tolly Report: Nortel Secure Router 1002 and 1004 Competitive Performance Evaluation Versus Cisco 1841, 2811 and 2821 Integrated Services Routers
This report summarizes the Tolly Group evaluation of the Nortel Secure Routers 1002 & 1004 vs Cisco 1841, 2811 & 2821 ISR.
Download the Report (PDF)

November 2005
Tolly Report: Nortel Secure Router 3120, 1004 and 1002 Competitive Performance Evaluation Versus ADTRAN NetVanta 4305, 3305, and 3200
This report summarizes the Tolly Group evaluation of the Nortel Secure Routers 3120, 1004 & 1002 vs ADTRAN NetVanta 4305, 3305, & 3200.
Download the Report (PDF)

November 2005
The Tolly Group Test Summary -- Ethernet Routing Switch 5510, 5520 and 5530
This report validates and highlights the 640 Gbps stack performance, 160 Gbps switching capacity and wire-speed performance of 5500 Switches.
Download the report (PDF)

October 2005
Tolly Report: Nortel Secure Router 3120 Competitive Performance Evaluation Versus Cisco Systems 2821 and 3825 Integrated Services Routers
This report summarizes the Tolly Group evaluation of the Nortel Secure Router 3120 vs Cisco 2821 & 3825 ISR.
Download the Report (PDF)

August 2005
Ethernet Routing Switch 5520 now has Tolly Verified Certification
The Tolly Group has awarded 15 'Tolly Verified' Certifications to Ethernet Routing Switch 5520 including Power over Ethernet, QoS - Eight Traffic Queues, and Redundant Power Supply.
Download the report (PDF)

June 2005
Tolly Group Test Summary: VPN Gateway 3070
This Tolly Group report provides an SSL VPN Throughput, Scalability and Voice Quality Benchmark Evaluation of the Nortel VPN Gateway 3070 .
Download the Report (PDF)

June 2005
The Tolly Group - Performance Evaluation of Nortel Resilient Terabit Cluster Solution
Nortel commissioned the Tolly Group to evaluate a combination of resilient hardware and software in the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switches 8600, 5530, and 5520.
Download the report (PDF)