Foundry Networks RX-4, RX-32, RX-8, RX-76 User Manual

BBIGIGIIRONRON RX-4, RX-8, RX-16, RX-32RX-4, RX-8, RX-16, RX-32

Overview

The role of data networks in our daily lives continues to expand and
grow. Emerging needs such as application convergence, non-stop
operation, scalability and IPv6-readiness place new demands on the
network. Modern network solutions must be assessed across a wider
set of attributes than earlier generation equipment. In particular,
the network must be evaluated on merits that include performance,
reliability, scalability, quality of service, security and total cost of
ownership (TCO).

The BigIron RX Series of Layer 2/3 Ethernet switches excels in
all of these areas, enabling network designers to deploy an Ethernet
infrastructure that addresses today’s requirements with a scalable
architecture designed to support network growth and evolution.
BigIron RX Series incorporates the latest advances in switch
architecture, system resilience, quality of service and switch security
in a family of modular chassis setting leading industry benchmarks
for price-performance, scalability and TCO.

Available in four chassis models, the BigIron RX Series allows
network designers to standardize on a single product family for
aggregation and backbone switching. In addition to its enterprise
role, the BigIron RX Series, with its high-density and compact
design, is an ideal IP solution for high-performance computing

Las Vegas 2005

Las Vegas 2005

MODULAR LAYER 2/3 ETHERNET

SWITCH FAMILY

environments and Internet Exchanges and Internet Service
Providers (IXPs and ISPs) where non-blocking, high-density
Ethernet switches are needed.

All four BigIron RX systems are designed for non-stop operation,
supporting 1:1 management module redundancy, N+1 switch
module redundancy, M+N power module redundancy and N+1
fan redundancy. Additionally, BigIron RX Series supports hitless
Layer 2 software upgrades and graceful restart routing for fast
convergence in the event of a management module failure.

At the heart of the BigIron RX architecture is an adaptive self­routing Clos switch fabric with a virtual output queue (VOQ)
design. This non-blocking architecture is optimized for maximum
throughput and low latency for all size packets. Scalable to over
two billion packets per second, the BigIron RX Series is the most
powerful Ethernet switch family in the industry. This advanced
and scalable design ensures the reliable deliver of all IP-based voice,
video and data applications.

The BigIron RX switches ship with field-proven IronWare
networking software and IronShield security, embedded sFlow
per port, advanced Ethernet switching, IPv4/IPv6 routing and
multilayer security services. BigIron RX Series enables a user to
deploy a reliable, secure and scalable networking solution today that
is ready to accommodate tomorrow’s applications and technologies.

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Product Highlights

t System redundancy (switch, management and power) across

all BigIron RX chassis—BigIron RX-4, BigIron RX-8,
BigIron RX-16 and BigIron RX-32

t Interchangeable half-height line modules reduce sparing costs

and provide cost-effective modular growth (i.e., invest as needed)

t Compact chassis design supports very high-density single rack

configurations—up to 192 wire-speed 10-Gigabit Ethernet and
2,304 wire-speed Gigabit Ethernet in standard 7-foot Telco rack

t Scalable hardware-based IP routing to 512,000 IPv4 routes per

line module

t Powerful suite of unicast and multicast IPv4 and IPv6

protocol support

t Robust and scalable protocols for fast service restoration in

the event of equipment failure or topology change

t Advanced virtual output queue (VoQ) design eliminates head

of line blocking and provides scalable quality of service

t Flexible traffic policies supported with single rate and dual-rate

traffic policing with three color marking

t End to End QoS supported with hardware based honoring and

marking and congestion management

t Network Security ensured with line rate filtering, QoS

protections and traffic monitoring

t High-capacity 80 Gbps cross-module link aggregation supports

high-bandwidth inter-switch trunking

t High-availability design features redundant and hot-pluggable

hardware, hitless Layer 2 software upgrades and graceful BGP
and OSPF restart

t Advanced non-blocking Clos fabric features adaptive self-routing

with graceful system degradation in the event of two or more
module failures

t Embedded sFlow per port supports scalable hardware-based

traffic monitoring across all switch ports without impacting
performance

System Summary

FEATURE BIGIRON RX-4 BIGIRON RX-8 BIGIRON RX-16 BIGIRON RX-32

I/O Module Slots 4 8 16 32

Switching capacity per system

Available data capacity 400 Gbps 800 Gbps 1.60 Tbps 3.2 Tbps

Total switch capacity 960 Gbps 1.92 Tbps 3.84 Tbps 5.12 Tbps

Packet forwarding capacity 286 Mpps 571 Mpps 1,142 Mpps 2.284 Mpps

per system

Max 10-GbE ports per system 16 32 64 128

Max 1-GbE ports per system 192 384 768 1,536

Height (inches/rack units) 7"/4RU 12.25"/7RU 24.5"/14RU 57.75"/33RU

Airflow Side-to-Side Side-to-Side Front-to-Back Front-to-Back

Power supply redundancy M+N M+N M+N M+N

(M = Number of supplies needed for fully loaded system and N = 1 to M supply redundancy)

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Purpose-built Feature Set for Demanding Networks

INDUSTRY LEADING PERFORMANCE AND
SCALABILITY

The BigIron RX Series is the industry’s most powerful switch
family, delivering up to 3.2 terabits per second data throughput
per system.

HIGH-AVAILABILITY DESIGN

Redundant and resilient design ensures high availability operation
for demanding environments.

t Redundant, hot-swappable components provide non-stop

service delivery

– Management module: Systems configured with dual
management modules with sub-second detection and fail-over

– Switch Fabric Element Redundancy: Systems configured
with a redundant switch fabric module support millisecond
fail-over performance

– Hitless Management Failover (HMF): Stateful failover
ensures that the forwarding engines on the line modules are
not impacted by a management failover. This capability enables
non-stop packet forwarding in the event of a management
module failover.

– Redundant Power Supplies: All three chassis support M+N
power module redundancy for AC and DC power configurations.

t Distributed Forwarding Architecture—Advanced network

processors, high-performance CPU and high-speed memory
on each interface module provide for a scalable high-performance
architecture

t IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation up to eight links—Scalable,

cross-module trunking provides for resilient high-capacity
connections between switches.

t Resilient Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols provide fast service

restoration in event of link or equipment failures

– Metro Ring Protocol optimized for ring topologies,
IEEE 802.1s and 802.1w for general Layer 2 topologies,
VSRP for redundant switch configurations and VRRP/
VRRP-E for redundant router configurations, ECMP
for routed backbones

ROBUST LAYER 3 FEATURE SET

Foundry’s IronWare software suite includes scalable EGP and
IGP routing protocols.

t BGPv4—Scalable to 4 million routes, 500 peers and 14,000

attributes with MR2 management module

t OSPF—Scalable to over 400,000 routes

t Foundry Direct Routing (FDR)—The forwarding information

base (FIB) is downloaded to the hardware-based forwarding engine
on each line module. This memory can be pre-populated with
as many as 512,000 IPv4 and 64,000 IPv6 routes for wire-speed
routing performance.

t Policy-based Routing (PBR)—Support customizable routing

policies using access control lists (ACLs). This feature can be
used to balance network usage by controlling the network paths
for different traffic flows.

t Comprehensive multicast feature set—Provides hardware-

based support for a number of multicast protocols including
MSDP, PIM-SM (Sparse Mode) and PIM-DM (Dense Mode),
allowing network managers to efficiently deploy next-generation
multicast applications

t VRRP and VRRPE (Enhanced VRRP)—Enables the BigIron

RX to operate as a backup router to other network routers. In
the event of a router failure, the BigIron RX will automatically
and seamlessly perform the tasks of the failed router.

INDUSTRY LEADING LAYER 2 FEATURES

To provide self-healing topologies in Layer 2 configurations,
the BigIron RX supports industry standard Ethernet protocols
including Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), Rapid Spanning Tree
(RSTP), per VLAN STP (PVST) and per VLAN group STP
(PVGST). The BigIron RX also supports Foundry’s Metro
Ring Protocol (MRP) for sub-second service restoration in ring
topologies. Additionally, the BigIron RX supports multi-instance
spanning tree, VLAN topology grouping and VLAN tunneling
for advanced Layer 2 service configurations.

t Metro Ring Protocol (MRP)—An alternative to Spanning

Tree Protocol, MRP provides sub-second fault detection and
fail-over for Ethernet ring topologies. MRP works in conjunction
with VSRP and 802.3ad based link aggregation to provide
bandwidth scalability and SONET-like resilience.

t Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP)—Supports

sub-second fault detection and fail-over for mesh topologies
in which redundant switches provide back-up operation for
one another

t Single-instance STP—Provides a single instance of STP to run

on all port-based VLANs within a single device, interoperable
with others that are 802.1d compliant

t Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol based on IEEE 802.1w—

Dramatically improves the spanning tree convergence time to
sub-second by automatically renegotiating port roles in case of a
link failure without relying on timers

t IS-IS—Support for Level 1 and Level 2, includes 25,000 routes

and 512 adjacencies

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