BANGALORE: Networking product and service major, 3Com is considering a research and development center outside US. India and China seem to be strong contenders to house the R&D center of the Massachusetts based company. History labels India as the destination of R&D centers as some of the big names such as Cisco, Nortel, Lucent among others have a significant presence in the networking space.

Refusing to divulge information on location and investment plans, Vijay Yadav Country Manager-India & SAARC, 3Com commented, "We are considering a R&D center outside the US, but that’s all that I can divulge right now."

Besides this, the company is foraying into router market with its WAN router solutions from its enterprise communications portfolio to address enterprise customers' issues of high price, complexity of implementation and support.

During the past two decades, 3Com's team of inventors and engineers has earned more than 917 U.S. patents, with over 873 additional applications pending. According to the information the 3Com site, in 2001 the company was ranked 76th in total U.S. patents secured, well ahead of major networking competitors. Based on this intellectual property portfolio, 3Com has created generations of products that are consistent market share leaders.

As part of an aggressive, open standards-based approach to meet the client needs for end -end infrastructure, 3Com is broadening its high performance infrastructure solution with the introduction of the 3Com router 5000 family that supports enterprise voice and data applications. The 3Com Router 5009 is priced at $1,395 and Router 5231 is priced at $2,495 and the other series range from $4000 to $6500.

It also plans to launch 3Com Network Administrator, which includes a router manager application and the capability for enterprises to perform bulk administration efficiently. It is expected to be shipped by November and priced at $4,995.

" 3Com offers a new choice of the most competitive, state-of -the-art router solutions to enable CIOs and network managers to enhance business network functionality, increase efficiency and help improve a company's bottom line," he said.

According to him,"3Com is starting to change expectation for router solutions-particularly, reducing the complexity of ordering by bundling maximum memory and software to improve customer satisfaction while offering outstanding price/performance of new WAN products."

"For enterprise customers, 3Com is delivering on its commitment to enterprise communication solutions with advanced functionality at a lower TCO cost that gets the attention of CIOs," he said.