To create smarter services, companies need smarter systems capable of harnessing the potiential of the world's devices, assets, and networks. It starts with a dynamic infrastructure that increases operational efficiency, unifies business and IT assets, helps consolidate network resources through virtualization, provides an integrated security strategy, and reduces energy consumption.
Network planners today must expand and extend the range of services offered further into the edge of the network. This requires extending the intelligence and high-touch processing capabilities to the network edge. Further, there's a need to flexibly define and easily manage customer services in an intuitive manner. The expanding role of the converged network makes quality of service (QoS), resiliency and security crucial to the success of many rollouts.
Whether deployed from a central or remote location, availability of space often determines the feasibility of deploying new equipment and services within any environment. To meet these challenges, IBM® c-series Ethernet switches are purpose-built to offer flexible, resilient, secure and advanced services in a compact form factor.
IBM c-series Ethernet switches are compact 1 RU, multi-service edge/aggregation switches with a powerful set of capabilities that combine performance with rich functionality at the network edge. These switches offer network planners a broad set of high-performance IPv4 Full Layer 2 and Base Layer 3 functionalities with flexible software upgrade options in the same device, and come in four models:
In a converged network, these switches help optimize traffic flows with advanced Quality of Service including port and ACL based traffic policies, Strict Priority (SP), Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ), and mixed SP and WFQ scheduling, and Layer 2 multicast IGMP v1/v2/v3 and PIM-SM snooping support. In addition, Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP), IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation (LACP), and Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VRRP/VRRP-E) capabilities makes these switches ideally suited for building a tolerant and resilient network infrastructure.
An optional Metro Edge software upgrade gives users the flexibility to include support for Provider Bridges (IEEE 802.1ad), Provider Backbone Bridges (IEEE 802.1ah) functionalities in the same device. Also included is support for Ethernet Service Instance (ESI) framework for managing customer instances, and Connectivity Fault Management (IEEE 802.1ag) for rapid troubleshooting of Carrier Ethernet services. These capabilities address a diverse set of applications in metro edge networks, ISP networks, mobile backhaul networks, data centers, large enterprises, government networks, and education and research.
Data center networks and edge/aggregation routing within ISP networks often require a compact Layer 3 switch with sufficient scalability in IPv4 routes. Advanced hardware-based routing technology ensures secure and robust wire-speed routing performance. An optional Full Layer 3 software upgrade expands the capabilities of the switch to include RIPv1/v2, OSPFv2, IS-IS, and BGP-4 with Graceful Restart helper mode for both OSPF and BGP. With the high growth of video, multicast has become a means to optimize content delivery to wider audiences. To meet these needs, these switches can also support IPv4 multicast routing protocols including IGMP v1/v2v3, PIM-DM, PIM-SM, PIM-SSM, and MSDP.
IBM c-series Ethernet switches contain a broad range of proven security capabilities, including support for both inbound and outbound ACLs, ACL logging, advanced Layer 2 control such as BPDU guard/root guard, limits for broadcast/unknown unicast/multicast and more. Receive ACLs assist in placing controls on unwanted traffic targeted toward the control plane. Additionally, using tools such as ACL-based traffic policers, ACL-based sFlow®, and ACL-based mirroring, malicious traffic can be easily identified and preventive measures taken in the network.