Installation Guide

6 Introduction
Figure 3. ECN Expansion Slots
The expansion slots allow you to customize the functionality provided by the ECN
to suit your application’s needs. Typically, an expansion card provides additional
communications interfaces for the ECN, but it can also provide additional
software applications to complement the COS system software.
Main Board
The ECN main board includes the power supply back end, USB hubs with power
control, and high bandwidth interconnects for the system cards and expansion
cards. There are six expansion slots available on the backplane, each allocated
with its own backplane communications interface. See the Edge Control Node
7000 Series Expansion Card Developer’s Guide for more information about the
expansion cards. You can access all expansion by removing the enclosure front
cover and the inner card cage.
The ECN system processor has four high bandwidth interfaces available for use
by external peripherals: two USB hosts and two SPI ports for Ethernet
connectivity. The SPI interfaces are only used for direct connectivity to Ethernet
devices, but the USB interfaces are available on the backplane for the expansion
slots. These system resources are optimized for high performance
communications between devices with higher bandwidth requirements, such as
EV-DO modems and Wi-Fi™ devices.