From the 'I did not know that' files:

LAS VEGAS. I met up with Nortel Networks enterprise business chief John McHugh at Interop to talk about their big new routing platform the VSP9000. It's a platform capable of up to 27 terabits per second (Tbps) of switching capacity and McHugh told me it represents a $250 million investment in research and development from Nortel -- and its powered by Linux.

"We believe Linux is the right OS for the entire architecture," McHugh said

Now, I don't know all the specifics of Nortel's involvement in core kernel contributions and precisely how they source the elements of their Linux. I asked McHugh and he indicated that it was a partnership. In any event, it's an interesting platform and McHugh has some interesting and encouraging things to say about Linux in the last bit of the video I shot on site that you can view below.