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 have to ensure that the chosen solution provides the right mix of functionality and high performance while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition, a solid, future-proof network design needs to cope with the rapid pace of technology change. The increasing role of the converged network makes high availability and Quality of Service (QoS) crucial to the success of many of today's rollouts. When selecting equipment, planners also need to have peace of mind that added features can be enabled without the need to purchase additional hardware or software.
The IBM m-series Ethernet routers are designed to meet all these requirements and more by offering network planners a rich set of of high-performance IPv4, IPv6, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and multi-virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) capabilities as well as advanced Layer 2 switching to address the diverse needs of environments ranging from large enterprises, data centers, government networks, education and research networks, high performance computing and metro networks to ISPs.
IBM® m-series Ethernet routers provide high port density with up to 64 10 GbE, 320 1 GbE or 128 OC-12/48 ports in a single system with either 4-, 8- or 16-slot configurations.
Designed to enable reliable converged infrastructures and support mission-critical applications, the m-series features an advanced N+1 redundant switch fabric architecture designed for very high availability, even in the case of a switch fabric card failure. The redundant fabric architecture is complemented by comprehensive hardware redundancy for the management modules, power supplies and cooling system.
Virtual routing via Multi-VRF allows enterprises to create multiple security zones and simplified VPNs for the different applications and business units, while streamlining overall network management. Additionally, the routers' intrinsic wire-speed sFlow capability provides scalable network-wide monitoring of flows for enhancing security via malicious traffic detection and intrusion detection, as well as for proactive management of network bandwidth through traffic trend analysis and capacity upgrade planning.
Each IBM m-series Ethernet router has the lowest power consumption and heat dissipation among routers in its class. The leading density of each router in this series and its small form factor yields significant real estate savings for network operators. These unique aspects of the series yield significant savings on power, cooling, and rack space costs, thereby reducing the overall operating expenditures (OpEx).