Skip to content

IXP Solutions

Foundry's solutions for the Internet Exchange market are unique because they are optimized along multiple dimensions. Foundry's offerings for the IXP market ensure industry-leading density with wire-speed performance at low latency for any packet size and at the same time consume low power and dissipating less heat than comparable solutions. Both the BigIron RX Series and the NetIron MLX Series are powerful solutions for IXPs, which explain why the largest Internet Exchanges around the world have chosen Foundry as their partner to keep up with their rapidly expanding business.

Overview

Accelerated growth of Internet traffic loads constantly places IXPs under heavy pressure. Being the traffic carrier that interconnects ISPs and subscribers, an IXP's port and bandwidth capacity is crucial for maintaining and growing their customer base. Foundry offers IXPs a range of products with a variety of interface offerings as well as scalable bandwidth. For IXP-ISP connectivity, 1-GbE and 10-GbE have proven to be cost efficient ideal connections that are in high demand by ISPs today.

The BigIron RX Series switches feature the industry's highest 10-GbE port density (128 10-GbE per system) with wire-speed performance, and are ideal solutions for connectivity to a large number of ISPs. For end subscriber connectivity, Foundry offers interface speeds ranging from 10/100 Ethernet to 1-GbE combined with a variety of optics offering up to 150 km reach for 1-GbE. The FastIron Super X switches, and BigIron RX-4/-8/-16/-32 switches are ideal candidates for this connectivity scenario.

Being layer 2 transport providers, IXPs gain significant benefits by deploying Foundry's advanced layer 2 solutions. Foundry's products feature a rich and mature set of high

end layer 2 features. This includes IEEE 802.1w, Metro Ring Protocol (MRP) for ring configurations, and Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP) for dual homed configurations. This new breed of rapid convergence protocols provide IXPs with sub-second convergence in case of a link or switch failure.

Using Foundry's unique layer 2 ACLs, IXPs can admit/filter traffic based on MAC address pattern matching and VLAN information to avoid leakage of undesirable packets into their networks in case of customer device misconfigurations. Examples of such undesirable traffic include certain vendor proprietary protocols or aggressive multicast-based protocols that are usually contractually banned from entering the IXP's network.

Back to top

Related Products

Product Description
FastIron SuperX Family Foundry Networks FastIron SuperX/SX family of PoE-ready Layer 2/Layer 3 switches are built to deliver a reliable and secure Ethernet and IP services infrastructure for a wide... Learn more
BigIron RX Series Switches The role of data networks in our daily lives continues to expand and grow. Emerging needs such as application convergence, non-stop operation, scalability and IPv6... Learn more
NetIron MLX Series Routers Network planners today have to ensure that the solution chosen provides the right mix of functionality and high performance while reducing the total cost of... Learn more

Back to top

Literature

Datasheets

Case Studies

Back to top

Back to top

Related Links

In The News