Northern Telecom Magellan‑Passport
[Vin196]
The Northern Telecom Magellan‑Passport NTEP39 isn’t a “computer” in the home‑PC sense but rather an early high‑performance telecommunications multiservice switch developed by Canadian telecom giant Northern Telecom (later Nortel). It was part of the Magellan Passport family, a line of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)‑based network switches designed in the early 1990s to converge voice, data, and multimedia traffic on a single backbone, notable for its cell‑ and frame‑based switching architecture, redundant multiprocessor design, and high throughput for the era (~1.6 Gbps in early models), making it an important artifact of the transition from legacy circuit networks toward integrated packet‑based networks in enterprise and carrier environments.
- Manufacturer: Northern Telecom Ltd. later known as Nortel Networks
- Model: NTEP39
- Type: Telecommunications ATM
- Release Date: 1994
- Cost at release: ~$20,000 (adjusted for inflation)
- MIPS: N/A