DSS Networks is shipping its MetroSwitch Model 8261 12-port gigabit Ethernet backplane switch blade for embedded and real-time telecom or datacom applications. The switch is aimed at OEMs and systems integrators doing embedded broadband work, and is available now with an OEM Developers Kit… containing onboard firmware, Linux device drivers, library functions, configuration management interfaces, loopback tests, benchmark programs, statistics, and documentation.

DSS claims the device is compliant with PICMG 2.16 as well as standard CompactPCI, and says it is best suited for Internet voice, digital video, IP security, network monitoring, military applications, and test equipment.

The 8261 features 12 ports of 10/100/1000 Base T Gigabit Ethernet over copper with two 1000 base SX/LX fiber uplinks. All 12-ports may be routed to slots on the Compact PCI backplane or externally via rear I/O, claims DSS. A system management interface is also supported via the PICMG 2.9 IPMI interface. It optionally supports two 1000 base SX/LX gigabit fiber ports with standard SFF LC connectors via the front panel. It has an onboard RISC/DSP processor for local management and can be operated as a standalone or as a managed switch. LEDS are provided for each port showing link status, transmit and receive, and link quality. All LEDS are multifunction and can be used for additional functions including cable testing and energy detection. It is also PICMG 2.1 R2.0 hot-swap compliant providing support for the hardware connection layer.

The model 8261 uses the latest advanced high-performance, full-featured and highly integrated 12-port Broadcom BCM5690 multilayer switch and BCM5464SR quad-port transceivers and is fully 802.3 compliant, DSS claims. The company says it provides a fully non-blocking 24Gb/32 million frames per second aggregate switching fabric. The switching function supports an extended list of features including layer 3 switching, link aggregation, 802.1Q VLANs, 802.1D spanning tree and priority-based 802.1D/802.1p CoS/traffic class expediting, and dynamic multicast filtering.

The switch can be configured in a fully redundant, non-blocking network that prevents single points of failure from congesting network traffic. It provides advanced cell and packet based “head of line” blocking prevention techniques, has 1MB of onboard memory for packet buffering, and supports a 10-gig uplink interface. Extended ethernet frame sizes to 9KB are supported. Additional advanced features including rules-based layer 2-7 packet classification/filtering on 128 multiple data flows, port trunking, and port mirroring for advanced networking and flow techniques. Network management support includes fully configurable routing tables and RMON, SNMP, Ethernet and extended MIB(s).

A 32-bit, 66 MHZ PCI interface is also provided to support system management via the PCI bus, and the switch can additionally route packets to/from the PCI interface as a “virtual port” function. This would allow, for example, SNMP or other management packets to be routed to an external processing component in a distributed network management scheme.

Future options for the model 8261 will include 10-Gigabit fiber uplink and a gigahertz-speed network processor engine with gigabit interfaces for applications including wire-speed packet processing, filtering, monitoring, security and digital video transmission.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.