34
Figure 43
IRF fabric in ring topology
You can provide the following IRF physical connections between switches:
•
10-GE IRF physical connection by connecting 1/10-GE Ethernet ports or SFP+ ports.
•
40-GE IRF physical connection by connecting QSFP+ ports.
•
IRF physical connection by using a 40G QSFP+ to 4 x 10G SFP+ DAC cable to connect a QSFP+
port and four SFP+ ports.
You can bind several ports to an IRF port for increased bandwidth and availability.
Identifying physical IRF ports on the member switches
Identify the 1/10-GE Ethernet ports, SFP+ ports, and QSFP+ ports to be used for IRF connections on the
member switches according to your topology and connection scheme.
All the 1/10-GE Ethernet ports, SFP+ ports, and QSFP+ ports on the switch can be used for IRF
connections.
Planning the cabling scheme
You can use twisted pair cables, SFP+/QSFP+ DAC cables, or SFP+/QSFP+ transceiver modules and
optical fibers to connect the switches for IRF connections. If the IRF member switches are far away from
one another, choose the SFP+/QSFP+ transceiver modules and optical fibers. If the IRF member switches
are all in one equipment room, choose twisted pair cables or SFP+/QSFP+ DAC cables. For more
information about available transceiver modules and cables, see "
."
The following subsections describe several H3C recommended IRF connection schemes, and all these
schemes use a ring topology.
Connecting the IRF member switches in one rack
shows an example for connecting four IRF member switches in a rack by using QSFP+ DAC
cables and QSFP+ transceiver modules and optical fibers. The switches in the ring topology (see
) are in the same order as connected in the rack.