Foundry Networks

Foundry Networks BigIron RX, MG8, 4000, 8000, and 15000

Enterprise-class BigIron Layer 2/Layer 3 Switches

Foundry Network Products

Layer 3 Backbone Switches	Routers
SecureIron Products	Layer 4-7 Switches
Wireless	Network Management
Layer 2/3 Enterprise Core/Edge and Service Provider Edge Switches

Foundry Networks BigIron Range

The BigIron product family now includes the powerful Terathon™ ASIC-based architecture, to deliver a new level of high-performance, distributed switching and routing for enterprise and service provider networks. The newest family member, BigIron RX-Series redefines terabit-capacity
for routing and switching in the Enterprise and Service Provider environments. Flexibility, resiliency, security and performance are hallmarks of the design of the BigIron RX-Series family of 10 GbE routers.

The BigIron MG8, offers high density 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch for performance oriented Enterprise. All BigIron switches are purpose-built for bandwidth intensive enterprise networks to support business and research applications including high bandwidth campus backbone, data center aggregation, cluster and grid computing, converged (voice, video, image and data) communications, storage networking, financial transactions as well as government, healthcare and university super-computing research projects. BigIron's non-blocking architecture enables network managers to build scalable and highly available network designs. BigIron is the only chassis that has been 10-Gigabit ready since the day it started shipping in 1998.

"Enterprises and research institutions need both evolutionary as well as revolutionary migration paths to high-performance Ethernet networks," said Mike Warren, a computational astrophysicist and architect of the Space Simulator Beowulf cluster at Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Performance-oriented organizations will benefit from having a next-generation 10-Gigabit networking infrastructure which is highly scalable and resilient, with high Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet density. Foundry's BigIron MG8 will be one of the revolutionary products in this category which offers the performance required to support high-bandwidth networks such as our Beowulf clusters."

• Full system redundancy (switch,management and power) across all three BigIron RX chassis—BigIron RX-4, BigIron RX-8 and BigIron RX-16
• Interchangeable half-height line modules reduce sparing costs and provide cost-effective modular growth (i.e.,invest as needed)
• 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
• Industry’s first switch to ship ready to support 100-Gigabit Ethernet
• Scalable hardware-based IP routing to 512,000 IP routes per line module
• Powerful suite of unicast and multicast IPv4 and IPv6 protocol support
• Robust and scalable protocols for fast service restoration in the event of equipment failure or topology change
• Advanced virtual output queue (VoQ) design eliminates head of line blocking and provides scalable quality of service for over 250,000 traffic flows
• Flexible traffic policies supported with single rate and dual-rate traffic policing with three color marking for over 250,000 traffic flows
• End to End QoS supported with hardware based honoring and marking and congestion management
• Network Security ensured with line rate filtering,QoS protections and traffic monitoring
• High-capacity 80 Gbps cross-module link aggregation supports high-bandwidth inter-switch trunking
• High-availability design features redundant and hot-pluggable hardware, hitless software upgrades and graceful BPG and OSPF restart
• Advanced non-blocking Clos fabric features adaptive self-routing with graceful system degradation in the event of two or more module failures
• Embedded sFlow per port supports scalable hardware-based traffic monitoring across all switch ports without impacting performance

Applications

Foundry Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions

Today’s Enterprise network is critical to the ongoing operations of the rganization. Network Administrators are concerned about zero downtime on the network, securing the network from DoS attacks, cyber-spying, and malicious users, and maintaining data integrity and confidentiality, without adding excessive cost or impacting performance. All this in a structure that allows for graceful growth as the Enterprise grows.

The BigIron RX Series incorporates exceptional resiliency, security and scalability in an architecture designed to scale from the edge to the core to minimize TCO. The resilient design includes redundant management modules, switch fabrics, fans and power supplies. This hardware resiliency is enhanced with software resiliency including hitless system failover, graceful restart, MRP, VSRP, and VRRP for Layer 2 and Layer 3 resiliency. High priority voice and data traffic fly through the chassis utilizing the high performance hardware-based QoS features of the RX Series.Wirespeed security is maintained by locking out unauthorized users with port security, by filtering DoS and unauthorized traffic with ACLs, and by monitoring traffic flows with sFlow. The BigIron RX Series allows you to grow from just 24 ports of 10/100/1000 at the edge up to 768 ports of 10/100/1000 or 64 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet in the core. BigIron RX Series provides one common
architecture that meets the demands of today’s, and tomorrows Enterprise network needs with high performance, resiliency, security and scalability with low TCO.

BigIron RX-4, RX-8 & RX-16 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 and future-ready architecture that will support network growth and evolution for years to come. 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 three 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 environments and Internet Exchanges and Internet Service Providers (IXPs and ISPs) where non-blocking, high density Ethernet switches are needed.

All three 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 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 one 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.

Key Features and Benefits:

• Full system redundancy (switch,management and power) across all three BigIron RX chassis—BigIron RX-4, BigIron RX-8 and BigIron RX-16
• Interchangeable half-height line modules reduce sparing costs and provide cost-effective modular growth (i.e.,invest as needed)
• 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
• Industry’s first switch to ship ready to support 100-Gigabit Ethernet
• Scalable hardware-based IP routing to 512,000 IP routes per line module
• Powerful suite of unicast and multicast IPv4 and IPv6 protocol support
• Robust and scalable protocols for fast service restoration in the event of equipment failure or topology change
• Advanced virtual output queue (VoQ) design eliminates head of line blocking and provides scalable quality of service for over 250,000 traffic flows
• Flexible traffic policies supported with single rate and dual-rate traffic policing with three color marking for over 250,000 traffic flows
• End to End QoS supported with hardware based honoring and marking and congestion management
• Network Security ensured with line rate filtering,QoS protections and traffic monitoring
• High-capacity 80 Gbps cross-module link aggregation supports high-bandwidth inter-switch trunking
• High-availability design features redundant and hot-pluggable hardware, hitless software upgrades and graceful BPG and OSPF restart
• Advanced non-blocking Clos fabric features adaptive self-routing with graceful system degradation in the event of two or more module failures
• Embedded sFlow per port supports scalable hardware-based traffic monitoring across all switch ports without impacting performance

Applications

Foundry Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions

Today’s Enterprise network is critical to the ongoing operations of the rganization. Network Administrators are concerned about zero downtime on the network, securing the network from DoS attacks, cyber-spying, and malicious users, and maintaining data integrity and confidentiality, without adding excessive cost or impacting performance. All this in a structure that allows for graceful growth as the Enterprise grows.

The BigIron RX Series incorporates exceptional resiliency, security and scalability in an architecture designed to scale from the edge to the core to minimize TCO. The resilient design includes redundant management modules, switch fabrics, fans and power supplies. This hardware resiliency is enhanced with software resiliency including hitless system failover, graceful restart, MRP, VSRP, and VRRP for Layer 2 and Layer 3 resiliency. High priority voice and data traffic fly through the chassis utilizing the high performance hardware-based QoS features of the RX Series.Wirespeed security is maintained by locking out unauthorized users with port security, by filtering DoS and unauthorized traffic with ACLs, and by monitoring traffic flows with sFlow. The BigIron RX Series allows you to grow from just 24 ports of 10/100/1000 at the edge up to 768 ports of 10/100/1000 or 64 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet in the core. BigIron RX Series provides one common
architecture that meets the demands of today’s, and tomorrows Enterprise network needs with high performance, resiliency, security and scalability with low TCO.

Foundry for Enterprise and Application Hosting Solutions

Data centers are the core of business operations requiring high density, high performance, high security and low latency switching to ensure connectivity to mission critical applications. The increasing value of the data center to business operations necessitates that data and network integrity, confidentiality and security must be maintained without impacting performance.

The BigIron RX Series addresses these needs by acting as the gateway and switch fabric of the data center.The density of the RX Series allows for growth from the smallest to the largest data center. Port aggregation allows for high performance interconnects up to 80 Gbps increasing the availability of the server farm. Foundry’s hardware based IronShield™ security features protect the server farm against Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and provide security for maintaining network integrity. The sFlow functionality supplies the network access information required to track who has accessed which server on the network as a means to provide network usage audit trails. Utilizing Foundry’s wire-speed switching and filtering to screen and direct traffic to the appropriate server and block undesired traffic with minimal latency ensure the optimal operation,security and integrity of the network and data center.

Foundry for Internet Exchange Solutions

Internet Exchanges (IX) demand high-performance Layer 2 topologies with high density gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports. These cross-roads of the Internet connect highperformance routers from many Service Providers in peering relationships without requiring a full mesh of router ports.

The BigIron RX Series excels in this environment. Offering high density 1-Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet together with the resiliency features of the chassis make the BigIron RX Series an extremely cost effective and robust solution.

Foundry for High-Performance Computing Solutions

High-performance computing has entered the mainstream marketplace with Ethernet switching as the technology of choice. Ultra-low latency and high-density Ethernet switching are required for successful deployment.

The BigIron RX Series chassis are ideal for this environment. They offer low latency through the switch with unparalleled densities of 10/100/1000 Ethernet, fiber Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet in compact size chassis—up to 768 ports of Gigabit Ethernet or 64 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet in a single 14 rack unit high chassis. The high-performance architecture offers up to 1.54 Tbps of data switching capacity to meet the needs of the most demanding HPC environment. The combination of performance, density and reliability makes the BigIron RX Series an excellent choice for Enterprise HPC environments.