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Product Brief
Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 Series
Resilient, high-performance premium switching for the Edge, Aggregation or small Core
The Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch
5000 Series is a set of high-performance
Stackable LAN Switches providing the
resiliency, security and convergence
readiness required for today’s high-end
Wiring Closets, high-capacity Data
Centers and smaller Core environments.
Nortel’s industry-leading resilient
Stacking technology provides high-availability for delay-sensitive and businesscritical data and voice applications. Up
to eight Ethernet Routing Switch 5000
units can form a resilient Stacked solution, manageable as a single entity, of up
to 400 ports, with maximized uptime
even if an individual Switch within the
Stack should fail.
Table 1. Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 Series
Model Link and uplink ports
ERS 5510-24T 24 x 1000BASE-T, including 2 x Combo 1000BASE-T/1000BASE-SFP
ERS 5510-48T 48 x 1000BASE-T, including 2 x Combo 1000BASE-T/1000BASE-SFP
ERS 5520-24T-PWR 24 x 1000BASE-T with Power-over-Ethernet, including 4 x Combo
1000BASE-T/1000BASE-SFP
ERS 5520-48T-PWR 48 x 1000BASE-T with Power-over-Ethernet, including 4 x Combo
1000BASE-T/1000BASE-SFP
ERS 5530-24TFD 24 x 1000BASE-T, including 12 x Combo 1000BASE-T/1000BASE-SFP,
plus 2 x 10GBASE-XFP
ERS 5632FD 24 x 100/1000BASE-SFP plus 8 x 10GBASE-XFP
ERS 5650TD 48 x 1000BASE-T plus 2 x 10GBASE-XFP
ERS 5650TD-PWR 48 x 1000BASE-T with Power-over-Ethernet plus 2 x 10GBASE-XFP
ERS 5698-TFD 96 x 1000BASE-T, including 6 x Combo 1000BASE-T or
100/1000BASE-SFP, plus 2 x 10GBASE-XFP
ERS 5698TFD-PWR 96 x 1000BASE-T with Power-over-Ethernet, including 6 x Combo
1000BASE-T or 100/1000BASE-SFP, plus 2 x 10GBASE-XFP
Scalable, resilient and
exible Ethernet Switching
Recognizing that networking requirements vary from business to business —
with differing needs at the Edge, Core
and Distribution Layer, Nortel offers
the highly flexible Ethernet Routing
Switch 5000 Series (ERS 5000); encompassing the original 5500 models and
the new 5600 models, combining to
offer a versatile portfolio of ten models.
This provides Enterprises the ability
to choose the model that best fits their
networking requirements (see Table 1
for details).
The ERS 5000 Series features 100%
cross-portfolio Stacking compatibility.
The original ERS 5500 models feature a
Stacking capacity of 80Gbps per Switch
and up to 640Gbps for a full Stack of
eight Switches, and the new ERS 5600
models introduce an enhanced Stacking
capacity of 144Gbps per Switch and
1.152Tbps for a full Stack. This is
unprecedented in the Industry and
ensures optimal performance for delaysensitive application traffic traversing
the Stack.
Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 Series
Ethernet Routing Switch 5600 Series
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Nortel’s innovative,
DMLT to Core/Distribution
DMLT to Core/Distribution
IST
resilient Stackable
architecture
Nortel has continued to evolve and
perfect its Enterprise Stackable portfolio
into a truly resilient, high-performance
Stacking solution. Nortel’s Ethernet
Routing Switch 2500, 4500, and 5500
and 5600 product lines all incorporate
key capabilities designed to deliver a
‘Stackable Chassis’ solution, including:
• Ease of growth/management:
Extending capacity is easy; simply cable
a new unit into the Stack, and the Stack
conguration is automatically updated.
The Stack acts as a single entity that
can be managed via a single IP Address.
• Scalable performance: The highperformance design of Nortel’s
Stackable Switches along with their
high-speed Stack connections (up to
144Gbps per Switch/1.152Tbps per
Stack) ensure that the Stack scales
proportionally as each new unit is
added.
• Optimal path forwarding: A bidirectional, multi-path forwarding
algorithm between Switches ensures
that the shortest, most optimal path
is chosen for each ow of trafc. This
design offers a clear performance
advantage over the basic logical Ring
or Token approaches used by other
vendors.
• No single point of failure: Stack
operation is unaffected by the failure
of any unit in the Stack. Each unit’s
independent Switch Fabric along with
distributed, redundant power ensures
continuous operation of the Stack.
Individual Stack units can easily be
replaced
capability
operations (a feature known as ‘AutoUnit Replacement’).
—
i.e., a ‘virtual hot-swap’
—
without impacting Stack
ERS 5600 Switches can be Stacked
with one another or with any Ethernet
Routing Switch 5500 unit, and when
connected to an adjacent ERS 5500, the
ERS 5600 automatically adjusts to the
ERS 5500’s Stack bandwidth of 80Gbps.
This enhanced flexibility provides the
opportunity to mix and match port
configurations based on operations needs,
while preserving any existing ERS 5500
investments.
ERS 5000 models come with two
in-built auto-sensing Stacking connections — implementing sophisticated
Queuing — for simple, cost-effective
and efficient Stacking. This design frees
uplink ports for dedicated connectivity
to the backbone. The ERS 5000’s highperformance architecture guarantees
optimized throughput across Ports,
Uplinks and Stacking connectors.
Ethernet Routing Switch
5000 deployment scenarios
Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 is a flexible solution that can be deployed in a
variety of Enterprise environments. These
include:
High-density Wiring Closet
With its non-blocking design, highdensity GbE and integrated 10GbE port
options, the Ethernet Routing Switch
5000 Series is perfectly suited as a Wiring
Closet solution for high-availability LAN
edge User connectivity. Up to eight ERS
5000 Switches can be combined into a
single Stack with each ERS 5600 unit
providing two 10GbE XFP ports for
high-capacity uplinks to the Core or
aggregation layers of the network. ERS
5698 models provide even greater cost,
space and energy efficiency with their
ultra-dense Gigabit-to-the-Desktop
capacity and the added flexibility of up
to 6 SFP ports per Switch for long-reach
fiber optic connections. With the ability
to support Power-over-Ethernet across
all its ports, the ERS 5000 Series is an
effective and flexible Wiring Closet/
Edge solution in support of Desktop and
powered devices.
High-performance Data Center edge
The high-performance, low-latency and
high-availability requirements of the
modern Data Center make the ERS
5000 Series a perfect solution for Server
access and consolidation. By utilizing
the ERS 5000’s innovative ‘Horizontal
Stacking’ capability — a Switch at the
top of each Server rack, Stacked ‘horizontally’ — the ERS 5000 Series can
support cost-effective, high-density
Server connections. Up to 400 Gigabit
ports and multiple 10GbE uplinks per
Stack can be deployed in this manner
(see Figure 1).
• Switch Clustering: Switch Clustering
(based on Nortel’s SMLT technology)
can be enabled on the ERS 5000 Series
to enhance overall resiliency of the
Stack solution, providing load-balancing
and sub-second failover.
2
Figure 1. Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 in Horizontal
Stacking/Data Center application