As part of its initiative to improve education and address skills shortages in Lebanon, 3Com has provided vital networking equipment to the Ministry of Education’s new headquarters in Beirut.

To help revitalize the technology infrastructure of Lebanon, 3Com is participating in projects to improve education and computer access to the internet for its citizens, providing critically needed resources to bring long-term economic growth and stability to the country.

3Com® switches will manage and control a secure, converged network to enable seamless communications in the new headquarters building of the Lebanese Ministry of Education. At the core, a modular 3Com Switch 7758 chassis with two 3Com Switch 7750 96Gb switch fabric, 4 advanced 20-port gigabit SFP modules, an advanced 20-port copper Gb Ethernet module and 128Gb fibre connections provides intelligent, multilayer switching and routing for end-to-end network connectivity with advanced traffic management. The 3Com Switch 7700 family of high performance, high availability switches provide unprecedented management control and visibility, prioritizing traffic and managing bandwidth to ensure the most efficient use of the network. These modular switches are based on open standards, so they are flexible and highly scalable to accommodate future needs.

At the edge, 54 managed 10/100 Ethernet Switch 4500s provide secure, dependable LAN connectivity with feature-rich Layer 2 switching and dynamic Layer 3 routing, as well as robust security, QoS, and management features. Up to eight switches can be stacked via built-in Gigabit Ethernet ports, allowing single-IP management for a stack of up to 384 ports. Industry-standard Power over Ethernet allows the Switch 4500 to provide both data connectivity and electrical power to PoE-capable devices.

’3Com has a lot to offer Lebanon in terms of networking equipment, and more in investment into the workforce and training,’ says 3Com CEO Edgar Masri. ’Government is playing a big role in growth and development in the region, and 3Com can do a lot to add to this rapid development.’

’In the education sector here, 3Com can provide equipment, internships and interfaces. We are pretty much the first networking company to have most of our operations in Asia, and we can bring tremendous advantages from that location and offer the Middle East engineering knowledge and skills to put in place measures to address the fastest growing economies in the world. 3Com will also involve itself in training more people in this region. Increased demand in networking is creating a huge shortage of skills in the region and growth is outpacing the supply of talent, and we hope 3Com can play a huge role in correcting this anomaly.’

’We believe that working with major government groups and specific universities is the way to ensure that 3Com can help further in the region and take part in its growth,’ says Hamed Diab, 3Com Regional Sales Director, Middle East.
3Com’s donation to the Ministry of Education in Lebanon is part of the Partnership for Lebanon collaborative effort designed to help the people of Lebanon build a better future. Launched in September 2006, the Partnership is led by five US companies: Cisco, GHAFARI Inc., Intel Corporation, Microsoft, and Occidental Petroleum Corporation. Working through public/private partnerships and with the Lebanese people, the Partnership is focused on expanding the reach of education and workforce training and education, creating jobs, building up the country’s technology infrastructure, and connecting communities and government.