Bay to resell ATM

Battle lines are being drawn in the market for end-to-end networking as Bay Networks seeks an ATM partner to fill a critical hole in its offerings to carriers.

Bay plans to announce next week that it will resell a third-party vendor's ATM switch for enterprise backbones, according to sources. But this deal will leave open the company's need for a carrier-class core switch.

Sources said Bay has been in discussions with WAN equipment vendors to resell carrier-class ATM switches. Sources had indicated that Bay would turn to Fore Systems, but Bay officials denied the company had agreed to resell a Fore switch.

Such a reseller agreement would allow Bay to compete against competitors that are now supplying core switches for carrier and large ISP networks, including Cisco Systems, Ascend Communications, and Newbridge Networks.