Ethernet Switching Reference Guide

Customer Profile
Enterprises:
• Medium to large campus networks
- Layer 3 core
- Layer 2/3 distribution
- Layer 2/3 Edge
• Large enterprise metro networks
- Metropolitan inter-campus connectivity
• Real-time and streaming application
infrastructure
• IP Multicasting infrastructure
• Internet Telephony infrastructure
• Legacy 3Com, Cabletron and Lucent customers
• Enterprise wiring closets requiring high-density
edge switching capacity
Vertical Markets:
• Finance
• Healthcare
• Manufacturing
• Education
Multi-Tenant Unit (MTU) and Multi-dwelling
units (MDU) property developers:
• Internet access service infrastructure
• Internet telephony service infrastructure
• Broadcast audio and video service infrastructure
• Video on demand service infrastructure
• Videoconferencing service infrastructure
Service Providers and Carriers:
• Metropolitan and regional Ethernet services
• Optical Ethernet service infrastructure
- Point of Presence
- Central Office
• Internet Data Centre
- L2 though L7
• Disaster Recovery Centre service infrastructure
• Transparent LAN service infrastructure
• Virtual Private Networking service infrastructure
• Managed service - customer premises equipment
• Internal service provider/carrier network
Passport 8600 Series Routing Switches
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Passport 8600 Series
Routing Switches
Overview
The Passport 8600 series Routing Switch modules deliver a powerful and highly reliable routing solution,
providing hardware-based Layer 2 through Layer 7 routing and traffic classification. These modules are
specifically designed to offer high redundancy, high-density and high-bandwidth connections, wire speed
performance and penalty-free QoS support to Enterprises, Service Providers and Carriers. Passport 8600 series
Routing Switch modules typically reside in the Enterprise or Service Provider/Carrier network core. Ethernet
connectivity options include 10/100 Mbps and 1Gbps copper, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps fiber, 10 Gbps fibre (future) and
OC-3/OC-12 ATM/PoS. Passport 8691 switch management modules provide redundancy, load sharing and
sub-second fail-over. Wire-speed Quality of Service for business-critical applications is achieved though packet
classification via DiffServ or IEEE 802.1p and queuing via eight hardware queues per port.
The Nortel Networks Passport 8600 series Routing Switch modules deliver a reliable, secure and intelligent
network routing solution. Hardware-based wire speed performance enables fast and efficient traffic
classification, policy enforcement and filtering, benefiting time-sensitive applications such as video and voice
and revenue-generating applications requiring Quality of Service such as Web transaction processing and
personalised content. The Passport 8600 series Routing Switch modules provide a robust, secure and
intelligent platform that delivers a true competitive edge through performance, intelligence and five
nines reliability.