December 2008
© 2008 Foundry Networks, Inc.
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Chapter 2
Product Overview
The NetIron MLX Series router provides high-performance routing for service providers, metro topologies, and
Internet Exchange Points. This chapter provides an overview of Foundry’s NetIron MLX Series routers. It provides
the following information:
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Overview of the benefits the NetIron MLX Series router offers
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Network topologies in which a NetIron MLX Series router will be commonly deployed
•
The NetIron MLX Series router hardware and how each major hardware component functions
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Software features that the NetIron MLX Series router supports
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The NetIron MLX Series router’s architecture, how it differs from other Layer 3 router architectures, and how
you will benefit from the differences
Product Overview
The NetIron MLX Series router provides the following benefits:
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The ability of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports to process both inbound and outbound user packets at a full
10Gbps, thereby delivering true wire-speed performance
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IPv4 routing with very large hardware-based forwarding table and powerful hardware-based ACL and rate
limiting functions
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IPv6 routing with a rich feature set including hardware-based forwarding, and dual-stack support
•
High availability (redundancy) of the following NetIron MLX Series router critical components:
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Management modules
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Fans
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Power supplies
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Switch fabric module
Each of these components, along with the interface modules, is hot swappable, which means you can remove
and replace them while the NetIron MLX Series chassis is powered on and running.
•
Completely separate data and control planes, which results in uncompromised switching performance,
increased reliability of both planes, and increased security of the control plane in the event of a Denial of
Service attack (DoS) on the data plane
•
Distributed data and control planes, which results in uncompromised wire-speed performance for the data
plane and faster and more efficient performance of management functions for the control plane
