From the 'how to turn billions into millions' files:

In the year 2000, Nortel Networks acquired Alteon for $7.8 billion. Today, Nortel - in bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US - completed its sell off of Alteon to networking vendor Radware for (get this) $18 million.

The Radware deal was first announced in February and includes application delivery networking gear including Nortel's Virtual Services Switch (VSS) 5000. The VSS 5000 is a Linux-based virtualization optimized networking switch for which Nortel had high hopes when it was first released.

The Alteon product line sell-off is the first divestiture of assets since Nortel declared bankruptcy at the beginning of this year. Though Nortel has sold off the Alteon products, when I spoke with Nortel and Radware last month they explained that Nortel would continue to be involved in the products through an OEM relationship. It basically means that existing customers won't be left out in the cold and that the product lines will remain supported in the near term.

"The addition of the Nortel [Alteon] business to Radware's product portfolio was a strategic decision to enhance our offering and enable us to leverage the mutual strengths of both Radware and Alteon technologies, providing our customers with the next generation of more reliable, high-performance and feature-rich solutions," affirmed Roy Zisapel, CEO Radware in a statement.

It will be interesting to see what Nortel sells off next -- or if the company as a whole is entirely broken up.