Nortel BayStack 325-24G, BayStack 325-24T Specifications

S

mall and medium businesses (SMBs) are faced with different challenges to larger
enterprises. When it comes to networking equipment, you are looking for:

•Minimal time for set-up

•Plug-and-play capability

•Opportunities to improve employee productivity

•Potential for gaining competitive advantage

•Ability to save money

Nortel Networks BayStack* 325 Switches are designed to address the needs of small and
medium customers. The switches help save money by allowing devices to be connected at
either 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps without needing newer switches to accommodate different
speeds. In addition, the switches provide small and medium businesses with the comfort of
knowing that their investment is protected with free new feature upgrades for the life of the
switches. Easy Web-based management features will save customers significant time in
setting up the switches. Also, the switches’ ease of use features require minimal technical
expertise to configure them.

BayStack 325 Switches are standalone 10/100 Mbps Layer 2 Ethernet switches featuring
easy configuration, high-speed uplinks, and Web-based management from your Web
browser. The BayStack 325 Switches have been architected to be Layer 3 and DiffServ
capable via a software upgrade in the future.

Product Brief

Nortel Networks
BayStack 325 Switches

• Cost-effective desktop switching
for small and medium enterprises
and branch offices

• Easy to use

• Uplink connectivity for server or
backbone connections

•Easy Web-based management

• 1U high compact design with low
power consumption

switching

cost-effective

Combining small rack space with low per-port pricing for a cost-effective switching solu­tion, the BayStack 325 Switches are designed for the requirements of small to medium­sized businesses and branch offices that consider price to be a predominant decision factor
when acquiring networking functionality such as:

•Desktop switching

• Ease of management

• Easy set-up

The BayStack 325 Switches are available in two standalone, compact 1 rack-unit (1U) size
models—the BayStack 325-24T Switch (Figure 1) and the BayStack 325-24G Switch
(Figure 2).

The BayStack 325-24T Switch has 24 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX auto-sensing ports. The
BayStack 325-24G Switch has 24 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX auto-sensing ports plus 2
10/100/1000BASE-T ports for uplink connectivity to servers or backbone switches.
Advanced features such as Multi-Link Trunking (MLT), IGMP Snooping, VLAN Trunking,
and flexible management tools help you to efficiently manage your network traffic (Figure 3).

Features and benefits

Full auto-sensing on every port

Every UTP port on the BayStack 325 Switches is equipped with auto-sensing technology to
automatically detect and support the speed and mode of a connected device. The ports deter­mine whether a connected device is operating at 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps, and automatically
adjust to the optimal speed. Each of the switched ports can also automatically detect and
support full-duplex connections to servers, power-user end stations or other switches, as
well as half-duplex connections to legacy network interface cards (NICs) or hubs.

High-speed uplink ports

The BayStack 325-24G Switch provides
two 10/100/1000BASE-T ports in the
front of the unit that provides high-speed
connections to backbone switches or servers.

Wire-speed throughput

A 16-Gigabit per second (Gbps) switching
fabric and ASICS support full 802.1d­compliant MAC Layer frame forwarding
and filtering across all ports at wire-speed
performance. The BayStack 325-24T Switch
has a peak forwarding rate of 3.6 million
packets per second and the BayStack 325­24G Switch has a peak forwarding rate of

6.6 million packets per second.

BoSS (BayStack operating system
Switching Software)

BoSS for BayStack 325 Switches is a single
software image that is used for both BayStack
325 Switch models. The software image
provides new features and will be available
for free for the lifetime of the switches. Only
a single image needs to be downloaded

Figure 1. BayStack 325-24T Switch

Figure 2. BayStack 325-24G Switch

Figure 3. Small/medium business solution

2

BayStack 425 Switches

BayStack 325-24G Switch

Distributed

Multi-Link

Trunking

Passport 1612G Switch

Multi-Link

Trunking

Servers

10/100 Mbps

connections

Network center

Floor 3

Floor 2

3

from the Nortel Networks Web site for
either the BayStack 325-24T Switch or
BayStack 325-24G Switch. This saves
network administrators time in downloading
images if both models of BayStack 325
Switches are present in the network.

Other BayStack switches support a differ­ent version of BoSS.

BoSS version 3.0 is currently shipping with
the BayStack 325 Switches. In the future, a
single image will be available that can be used
for BayStack 325, 425, and 420 Switches.

Multi-Link Trunking

Multi-Link Trunking (MLT) enables grouping of links between a BayStack 325 Switch and
another switch or a server to provide greater bandwidth with active redundant links (Figure 4).
The BayStack 325 Switches support up to six MLTs per switch with up to four ports per MLT.

VLAN support

Up to 32 port-based VLANs can be established on a BayStack 325 Switch, to extend the
broadcast domain and segment network traffic for higher network efficiency. IEEE 802.1Q
VLAN Trunking is supported on every port of the switch, allowing efficient means of trans­porting broadcast domains. VLANs reduce administration costs by simplifying network moves,
adds, and changes. BayStack 325 Switches have been architected to support 255 VLANs in
the future.

Enterprise-sized MAC address table

BayStack 325 Switches support up to 8,000 MAC addresses, providing ample scalability for
growing networks wishing to connect many devices and workgroups to each switch.

IGMP snooping

BayStack 325 Switches feature IP Multicast support by examining (‘snooping’) all Internet Group
Multicast Protocol (IGMP) traffic in hardware at line rate, and filtering out multicast streams
not of interest to particular end-stations, thereby enabling peak computer performance.

Nortel Networks Command Line Interface (NNCLI)

The NNCLI is used to automate general management and configuration of BayStack 325
Switches. The NNCLI is used through a Telnet session or through the serial port on the console.

ASCII configuration file

BayStack 325 Switches can download a user-editable ASCII configuration file from a TFTP
(Trivial File Transfer Protocol) server. The ASCII configuration file can be loaded automati­cally at boot time or on-demand using the management systems (console menus or CLI).
Once downloaded, the configuration file automatically configures the switch according to
the NNCLI commands in the file. This feature allows the flexibility of creating command
configuration files that can be used on the switches with minor modifications.

ASCII configuration file generator

This feature works by reading the current configuration on the switch and generating the
appropriate NNCLI commands to recreate that configuration. Basically, it provides the
ability to view and store the switch configuration in a text, editable format. The generated
file can be stored on an external server and also used to restore the switch configuration.

MLT with load-balancing and fail­over protection for uninterrupted
access to servers or the network
center

Server

Passport 1612G Switch

BayStack 325-24G Switch

Figure 4. Multi-Link Trunking (MLT)