Foundry FastIron Super X

Foundry Networks FastIron Super X Switch

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 FastIron Range

Foundry Network’s FastIron family of Enterprise and Service Provider products includes the FastIron 4802, the FastIron Edge Switch, the FastIron Edge Switch POE, the FastIron Workgroup X Series, the FastIron Edge X Series, the FastIron SuperX and the FI 400, 800, 1500.

Foundry Network’s FastIron family is purpose-built to deliver high density 10/100 with Power Over Ethernet, 10/100/1000 with Power Over Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and 10-Gigabit Ethernet for high performance networking solutions with advanced security features. Foundry’s FastIron family is built with high-performance ASICs and Foundry’s IronWare™ that includes advanced Layer 2 features such as Foundry’s award winning Metro Ring Protocol (MRP), and full Layer 3 features such as Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4). Foundry’s FastIron family ensures increase in return on investment (ROI) and a much lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for both Enterprises and Service Providers.

FastIron 4802	FastIron Edge Switch
FastIron Edge Switch POE	FastIron Workgroup X Series
FastIron Edge X Series	FastIron SuperX
Fast Iron FI 400, 800, 1500.

Foundry FastIron Super X Switch Specifications

Foundry’s FastIron SuperX Layer 2/3 modular switch is purposebuilt to deliver high performance Gigabit Ethernet, 10-Gigabit Ethernet, and advanced networking solutions for tomorrow’s mission critical and today’s increasing security needs. Foundry’s FastIron SuperX is built with high-performance ASICs to deliver high-density Gigabit Ethernet that can include Power over Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet. Foundry’s SuperX comes with IronWare™ which comes with advanced Layer 2 features such as Foundry’s award winning Metro Ring Protocol (MRP), and full Layer 3 features such as Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4). Foundry’s SuperX series delivers a new level of flexibility, greater reliability, advanced end-user and networking security, extensive redundancy, and a new level of high performance. The FastIron SuperX delivers an increased return on investment (ROI) and a much lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for both Enterprises and Service Providers.

The FastIron SuperX product can be ordered using the following management modules:

• FastIron SuperX with Management 1 module—The FastIron SuperX Management-1 (M-1) module comes with 12 combo copper/fiber Gigabit Ethernet ports (10/100/1000 Mbps (RJ45) or Gigabit Ethernet Fiber (SFP) connectivity per port,a 400MHz processor,a 256MB SDRAM,and a full Layer 3 software upgrade enables support for up to 256,000 BGP routes. Small to medium Enterprise customers can use the FastIron SuperX with the M-1 management module as an Enterprise backbone router.
• FastIron SuperX with Management 2 module—The FastIron SuperX Management-2 (M-2) module comes with 12 combo copper/fiber Gigabit Ethernet ports (10/100/1000 Mbps (RJ45) or Gigabit Ethernet Fiber (SFP) connectivity per port,a 466MHz processor,a 512MB SDRAM,and a full Layer 3 software upgrade enables support for up to 1,000,000 BGP routes. Large Enterprise can employ the FastIron SuperX with an M-2 management module as an Enterprise backbone router. Service Provider and Content Provider can use the FastIron SuperX with an M-2 to aggregate many customers and provide each customer the full Internet route.

Foundry’s FastIron SuperX software feature set can be controlled using the industry-standard Command Line Interface (CLI), SNMP, and Web interface. Foundry’s FastIron SuperX is intelligently designed to have separate, load-sharing, hotswappable, and redundant power supplies for system and PoE, ensuring zero network downtime against any unplanned power outages.Foundry’s FastIron SuperX includes sFlow,described in RFC 3176, to deliver hardware-based and real-time network monitoring, traffic accounting on all ports from Layer 2 up to Layer 7, inline intrusion detection and prevention, and fault and performance management in every port.

FastIron SuperX System Summary

Key Features and Benefits

Superior High-Availability

• Redundant, hot-swappable load-sharing power supplies— Increase system reliability and circuit redundancy
• Separate System and PoE power supplies—Add Power- Over-Ethernet when needed without impacting the system
• Superior Layer 1 Resiliency—Includes Ethernet section and link and path failure analysis. Link Fault Signaling and Remote Fault Notification instantly alerts connected devices of physical failures. Unidirectional Link Detection detects link layer failures between Foundry switches and detects cable faults.
• Superior Layer 2 Redundancy—Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP), Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) based on IEEE 802.1w and link aggregation based on IEEE 802.3ad for rapid convergence, minimal network downtime and minimal packet loss
• Layer 3 Redundancy—VRRP and VRRP-E (Enhanced) for router redundancy
• Hot Swappable I/O modules—Add new ports or migrate to new media types without affecting other ports in the system

Advanced Layer 2 Features

• Extensive Spanning Tree Protocol Features
  • Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol based on IEEE 802.1w: Sub-second convergence using a pre-calculated failover link.
  • Fast Uplink Span: Four-second convergence on uplink ports on wiring closet switches.
  • Single-instance STP: Support for third-party devices that run a single STP instance
  • Per VLAN Spanning Tree (PVST): Multiple spanning tree instances within a single system for VLAN load-sharing and increased network reliability
  • Topology Groups: Goes beyond PVGST to scale all supported Layer 2 control protocols including STP, RSTP, MRP and VSRP while providing the ability to isolate the provider from any subscriber-influenced changes
• Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP)—Offers an alternative to spanning tree-based designs and provides sub-second fault detection and fail-over protocol for mesh topologies. VSRP works in conjunction with MRP to provide SONET-like resiliency required for critical Data Center and Metro Ethernet networks and protects against link or switch failures
• Link Aggregation based on IEEE 802.3ad—Logical links Containing up to four 100 Mbps, Gigabit Ethernet or 10-GbE Links to scale bandwidth and protect against link, port or interface module failure
• Metro Ring Protocol (MRP)—Provides sub-second fault detection and fail-over specifically for Metro Ethernet ring topologies as an alternative to spanning tree-based designs. MRP works in conjunction with VSRP and 802.3ad based link aggregation to provide bandwidth scalability and SONET-like resiliency in Metro Ethernet networks.
• Super Aggregated VLANs (SAV)—Allows service providers to decouple the provider VLAN domains from customer VLAN domains. SAV allows the provider to tunnel and preserve the s subscriber VLANs by stacking VLAN tags (Q-in-Q). SAV is also known as Carrier VLAN.
• Mirror/Monitor Port—Aids fault isolation with monitoring and troubleshooting of single or multiple switch ports without disruption to existing traffic flows.

Complete Layer 3 Functionality

• Industry Standard Routing Protocol
  • Scalability: FastIron SuperX M-1 supports up to 256,000 BGP routes, while the M2 supports up to 1,000,000 BGP routes and 20 BGP peers
  • RIP: Simple routing solution for small to medium size network infrastructures,enabling network managers to deploy routing and simple route summarization
  • OSPF: Flexible route propagation and route summarization for medium to large Enterprise networks, allowing network managers to control large IP routes. Includes Equal Cost Multi Path (ECMP) for increased bandwidth utilization and redundancy.
  • BGP4: Inter-Autonomous system communication controls for both internal and external (e.g., the Internet) can be easily enabled, giving network managers a single system to easily redistribute IP routes to many domains.
  • VRRP and VRRPE (Enhanced VRRP): Router failure redundancy, giving data center servers immediate recovery from any router failure. VRRPE extends VRRP by giving network managers traditional IP troubleshooting tools

VoIP/Convergence—Advanced QoS and Bandwidth Management

• Latency and Jitter—Wire-speed performance and a port-to-port latency as low as 5.5 microseconds. Each port contains eight hardware queues which can be programmed with Weighted Round Robin (WRR), Strict Priority (SP), or a combination of WRR and SP for queueing mechanism.
• Voice VLANs—Assigning VoIP phones to a dedicated Voice VLAN to segregate the traffic ensuring VoIP calls always get through utilizing Foundry’s advanced QoS features. Includes support for dynamic VLAN assignment for Cisco IP phones and Polycom phones.
• Advanced QoS—Enforcing traffic priority based on port, VLAN, source MAC, ACL, 802.1p, Type of Service (ToS) or DiffServ settings to prioritize business-critical flows.
• Multiple Queuing Methods—Utilizing Strict Priority (SP) or Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) provides flexibility for network administrators in enforcing traffic prioritization.
• Wire-speed, Fine-grain Bandwidth Management—Fine tune and control bandwidth consumption by using rate limiting together with the multiple queuing techniques for end-to-end QoS regulation of traffic flows across the entire network.
• Interoperability with Major IP Phones—Wide support for well-known IP phone manufacturers such as Polycom, Siemens, Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, and Nortel. Further enhance to automatically configure VLANs for Cisco’s and Polycom’s IP phones.

Scalable Multicast Implementation

• Comprehensive Multicast Feature Set—Using hardware-based multicast features allow network managers to efficiently deploy streaming media applications for improved employee collaboration and productivity.
• Diverse Multicast Protocol Support—Selecting from IGMP, DVMRP, PIM-SM (Sparse Mode), and PIM-DM (Dense Mode) gives administrators the flexibility of supporting a variety of applications with complete interoperability to existing applications.
• Superior Multicast Scalability and Performance—Up to 8,000 Layer 2 Multicast groups with sub-second join and leave latency for industry-leading multicast performance and scalability.

Cohesive, Unified and Easy-To-Use Network Management

• Centralized Network Management—Reduce operational expenses with Foundry’s IronView Network Manager, graphical interface tool that empowers network operators to seamlessly control software and configuration updates for any Foundry product from a central station—dramatically simplifying network provisioning, diagnostics and resolution.
• SNMP—Secured SNMP management with RFC 2570 through 2575.
• Command Line Interface (CLI)—An industry-standard configuration interface, consistent and common throughout Foundry’s entire product portfolio.
• Web Interface—Provides easy to use Graphical User Interface (GUI) for system configuration from standard Web browsers.
• sFLow (RFC 3176)—Receive scalable, wire-speed network monitoring and accounting information without impacting network performance. This allows network operators to gather a variety of sophisticated network statistics and information for capacity planning and real-time network monitoring purposes.
• Virtual Cable Tester Technology—Integrated cable fault diagnostic that is simple and easy to use. Enables rapid and seamless determination of any cable fault.

IronShield™ Security

• Wire-speed Extended Access Control Lists (ACL)—Control packet forwarding and restrict access to the system management interface, while providing wire-speed switching and routing:
  • Feature-Rich ACL Implementation: Identify traffic based on source or destination IP address, IP protocol type,TCP or UDP port, IP precedence or TOS values
  • ACL Scalability: Support up to 1,024 ACLs per port¹
  • Ease of Administration: Identify an ACL by name or number, or add a comment line for ease of administration
  • ACL Syntax Compatibility: Uniform ACL syntax across all Foundry products provides compatibility with syntax of other major vendors
• Secure Shell and Secure Copy—Provide secure access to the administration and management interface over the network
• Protection Against Denial Of Service (DoS) Attacks— Prevents or minimizes network downtime and protects against malicious users by limiting TCP SYN and ICMP traffic and protects against broadcast storms by limiting broadcast traffic
• User Authentication—Authentication with AAA, 802.1x, RADIUS, TACACS, and TACACS+ to prevent unauthorized network access
• Wire-speed Rate Limiting—Enforce bandwidth policies to prevent unauthorized and excessive network usage
• SFlow (RFC 3176)—Provides cost-effective, scalable, wire-speed network monitoring to detect unusual network activity
• SNMPv3—Provides User-Based Security model (RFC 2574) for authentication and privacy services

1 Port limit applies to a region, which applies to a group of 12 contiguous ports.

Product Deployment Applications

End-to-End Enterprise Solution

The FastIron SuperX provides Enterprise customers with a complete end-to-end LAN solution, ranging from the edge to the wiring closet to the LAN backbone, based on a single platform. The FISX simplifies network operations, administration, and sparing requirements, leading to dramatic savings in TCO.

The FastIron SuperX includes advanced Layer 2/3 feature sets that deliver industry-leading scalability and performance, with embedded support for IP, IPX, AppleTalk protocol-based switching. Integrated fine-grain bandwidth provisioning, sFlow™ (RFC 3176), rich QoS, complete multicast, and jumbo frames, provide a foundation for VoIP and next-generation streaming media applications.

Complemented by the FWSX424 and FWSX448 workgroup switches and the FESX424 and FESX448 edge switches, the FastIron SuperX empowers Enterprise customers to harness network performance into a competitive business advantage and improve productivity by exploiting the efficiencies of intranet, Internet and extranet applications.

A FastIron SuperX, configured with 16 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet, enables cost-effective deployment of 10-Gigabit Ethernet throughout the network. The SuperX architecture offers wire speed filtering and routing of traffic, even at 10- Gigabit Ethernet rates. The FastIron SuperX is deployable into any area of the network given its level of performance. Whether aggregating 10-Gigabit uplinks from edge switches or as part of a full mesh high-performance Layer 2 switching environment, the FastIron SuperX is the optimal choice.

The FastIron SuperX, when configured with the M-2 management module, fits well in a high-performance backbone routing with up to one million BGP routes in hardware and robust routing protocols, including OSPF and BGP4 as well as multicast routing with IGMP, DVMRP, PIM-SM, and PIM-DM. The inclusion of rules-based ACLs, which are prepopulated onto the I/O modules, allows for wire-speed, secure routing.

Business Enterprise Solution

The FastIron SuperX provides an ideal choice for Enterprise wiring closets. The product offers superior port density, serviceability, security and advanced Layer 2/3 features sets. IEEE 802.1W or Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) and ultra-low latency delivers the performance required for mission-critical applications including VoIP.

The FastIron SuperX modular system with M-1 management module ships with full Layer 2 and base Layer 3 capabilities and can be upgraded to a full Layer 3 feature set.The easy upgrade path provides Enterprise customers with a “future-proof ” technology while enabling interoperability with existing infrastructures.

The FastIron SuperX with M-2 management module ships with full Layer 3 capabilities,making it the best choice for SMB backbone switching and routing. The robust software set includes rich features such as OSPF and RIP routing protocols, IGMP and IGMP snooping, DVMRP and PIM Sparse mode for a complete unicast and multicast solution. Pre-populating the hardware with rule-based ACLs and routing forwarding tables allows for secure, wire-speed routing including ECMP in hardware.

The breadth of edge, aggregation, and backbone switches for SMB networks allows for common hardware architecture throughout the network with a common interface for configuring the devices. This lowers the total cost of ownership for ongoing operation of the network.

Service Provider and Content Provider Solution

As shown in the diagram below, the FastIron SuperX provides Service Providers and Content Providers a compact, modular, wire speed aggregation router. Using a Layer 3 software upgrade with the FastIron SuperX Management-2 module, Service Providers and Content Providers can employ routing protocols such as OSPF and RIP routing protocols, DVMRP and PIM Sparse/Dense mode for a complete unicast and multicast solution. The addition of a robust support for BGP4 that can support one million BGP4 routes in hardware enables efficient and precise route distribution to their customers.

The FastIron SuperX uses Foundry’s Direct Routing Technology to store computed and dynamically learned IP routes. Pre-populating the IP routes in hardware enables secure, wire-speed routing required by all Service Providers and Content Providers. Foundry’s Direct Routing Technology also supports pre-programming of any network policies (e.g., access control lists, priority, et al) to deliver advance traffic prioritization of services such as VoIP, Video, and data. These features give Service providers and Content Providers the ability to offer varying types of service offerings from best effort up to highly prioritized service offering.

The FastIron SuperX supports sFlow, giving Service Providers and Content Providers a complete and accurate view of their network traffic. This information can now be used to forecast newer services, meter and bill for content usage, analyze traffic patterns to easily predict the ever changing business climate, and perform strategic forecast of resource requirements.

Large Enterprise LAN Backbone

The FastIron SuperX features industry-leading Gigabit and 10- Gigabit port density including fiber and copper Gigabit and modular XFP 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces; a critical requirement in the LAN backbone.

Continuing Foundry’s technology leadership, the new FastIron SuperX family offers wire-speed, non-blocking Layer 2 and 3 switching, delivering the industry’s highest switching capacity of up to 510 Gbps; providing superior performance and scalability in the LAN backbone and data center in a 6 RU size chassis.

The FastIron SuperX, with 10/100/1000 802.3af PoE modules, allows for high-density in a compact form factor for aggregation of VoIP phones with PCs behind them.The SuperX family allows for dynamically identifying VoIP phones and segregating them into Voice VLANs, thus tagging their traffic with a high priority level. This ensures that the voice traffic receives the highest QoS classification through the network. The call service is further enhanced by the ultra-low latency levels through the switch that minimize jitter in VoIP calls.

The full Layer 3 upgrade offers advanced multicast capabilities, wire-speed Access Control Lists, and complete integrated OSPF routing capabilities that provide robust routing and filtering. Meanwhile 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and IEEE 802.3ad based trunk groups enable Enterprise customers to immediately scale inter-switch connections in the LAN backbone to meet increasing bandwidth requirements.

Internet Exchanges

Internet Exchanges (IX) demand high-performance Layer 2 topologies with a high density of Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports. These cross-roads of the internet connect highperformance routers in peering relationships without requiring a full mesh of router ports. The FastIron SuperX excels at the IX edge, aggregating Service Providers with Gigabit or 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports into a Layer 2 Core of BigIron MG8 switches. The high port-density and compact size of the FastIron SuperX makes for a compelling, cost effective solution. The robust Layer 2 feature set with resiliency and scalability allows Internet Exchange providers to confidently deploy the SuperX into their networks.

High-Performance Computing Deployments

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 FastIron SuperX chassis is ideal for this environment. The SuperX offers sub 10- microsecond latencies through the switch with unparalleled 10/100/1000, 1-Gigabit Ethernet fiber, and 10-Gigabit Ethernet in a compact 6 rack unit chassis. The combination of performance, density and reliability makes the FastIron SuperX an excellent choice for small to mid-size Enterprise HPC environments.

FastIron SuperX Voice over IP Solutions

Today’s networks are providing services thought impossible just a few years ago. Internet, e-mail, voice and video conferencing are just a few of the business applications that are placing higher demands upon the network infrastructure. The standards and demands for the network infrastructure have never been higher. Delivering voice solutions requires more than just connectivity. Issues such as call quality, reliability, availability, security and manageability are paramount in the complete voice solution. Most important, the solutions should be able to deliver answers to these issues while at the same time saving scarce budget dollars and enabling new business possibilities.

Foundry Networks believes that the customer should be able to choose the tools that are right for their business and strives to build solutions that will enable any telephony vendor’s solution to interoperate with Foundry’s superior network infrastructure equipment. Network managers do not want any complexity surrounding the delivery of power in the network, and to that end Foundry has engineered specific features into the FastIron SuperX family that reduces the complexity of powering remote equipment.

• Full IEEE 802.3af compliant powered ports
• Power support for legacy non-802.3af compliant devices
• Configurable power on a per-port basis
• “Smart” ports that delivers the proper wattage, even if manually misconfigured
• Intelligent power management features
• Dual power supply for redundant configurations
• Separate PoE power supplies simplify addition of PoE into a chassis
• PoE daughter card for field upgrades of the 24-port 10/100/1000 I/O modules