Adtran and Alcatel-Lucent this week separately rolled out switches aimed at small and midsize businesses.

As my colleague Tim Greene wrote, Alcatel-Lucent brought out a new family of stackable, Layer 2+ Gigabit Ethernet switches in the OmniSwitch line.

The company is aiming the new OmniSwitch 6400 series switches at small and medium-sized enterprises and service providers, touting the devices' low cost, which Tim reports ranges from $2,000 to $5,200. There are six models in the family, each with either 24 or 48 copper-based ports of 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet, plus two ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet for stacking and up to four combo (copper or fiber) ports of Gigabit Ethernet. As many as eight of the switches can be stacked, for a total of 384 ports per stack.

The switches are available with power over Ethernet, aimed especially at those businesses using them to support VoIP handsets. In fact, the company is positioning the 6400 as the data networking piece of its larger Office Communication Solutions, which include other components for supporting voice/data networks for SMBs.

Meanwhile, Jim Duffy reported that Adtran also introduced six switches, four NetVanta 1230 switches and two 1530 switches.

The NetVanta 1534 is a managed, 26-port Layer 2 Gigabit Ethernet switch and also comes in a Power over Ethernet (PoE) model.

The NetVanta 1238 is a 48-port Layer 2 Fast Ethernet switch that also comes in a PoE model. The NetVanta 1234 is a 24-port version, and a PoE version is available for that, too. Four Gigabit uplink ports are also available.

Check out the stories for more details at the links above. (Compare Access Switch products)

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.