The Brocade NetIron XMR Series is designed from the ground up for high performance and scalability to address the needs of the most demanding ISP, Internet data center, inter-Metro connectivity, and multi-service operator applications. All routers in the series feature wire-speed, low latency, and low jitter routing for IPv4, IPv6, MPLS, and MPLS VPN services, and they support both edge (PE) and core (P) router deployments. For metropolitan area networks (MANs), the NetIron XMR routers support high- performance Layer 2 switching which allows for cost efficient and seamless integration with Layer 2 MANs or Layer 2 MAN access layers without compromising performance.
Designed for high-end routing applications, the Brocade NetIron XMR Series features Brocade Direct Routing (BDR) technology for full Forwarding Information Base (FIB) programming in hardware, together with hardware-based, wire-speed access control lists (ACLs) and policy-based routing (PBR) for robust, high performance IPv4, IPv6, and Layer 3 VPN routing. Complementary to FDR is a full suite of unicast and multicast routing protocols for both IPv4 and IPv6. Supported IPv4 protocols include RIP, OSPF, IS-IS, BGP4, PIM-DM, PIM-SM/SSM, IGMP, BGP-MP
for multicast, and MSDP. Supported IPv6 protocols include RIPng, OSPFv3, IS-IS, BGP- MP for IPv6 (BGP4+), PIM-SSM, and MLD. Building on this solid routing architecture, the NetIron XMR routers also provide dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 wire-speed routing to facilitate
a seamless migration to IPv6 without sacrificing performance.
A comprehensive set of path calculation and signaling capabilities using OSPF-TE, IS-IS-TE, RSVP-TE, CSPF, and LDP allows the creation of both traffic engineered and non-traffic engineered infrastructures. Within either infrastructure, the NetIron XMR Series supports IP over MPLS as well as MPLS VPN applications. The NetIron XMR Series supports all three popular MPLS VPN services, Virtual Leased Line (VLL), LDP- Based Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), and BGP/MPLS VPN, on all ports at wire-speed.
In addition, the Brocade NetIron XMR Series offers Multi-VRF Routing for environments where virtual routing is needed without the complexity of MPLS. Using Multi-VRF Routing, backbone operators can create multiple routing protocol instances that peer with each other in completely virtualized domains while sharing the same physical routers and links. The NetIron XMR Series is able to support overlapping IP address spaces through complete separation of the routing tables. Forwarding plane separation is supported through the use of standard 802.1Q VLAN tags.
The Brocade NetIron XMR Series is also designed for enabling the evolving multi- service and triple-play infrastructures. Built with an innovative view of Virtual Output Queuing (VOQ) architectures, packet buffering, and packet scheduling, the NetIron XMR routers offer non-blocking packet forwarding and large capabilities for handling severe congestion scenarios. Built on that superior foundation, the Brocade NetIron XMR routers deliver a comprehensive suite of QoS mechanisms to enable next-generation architectures. Using the Brocade NetIron XMR routers, operators can implement eight distinct traffic classes of prioritization with true performance guarantees. Operators can implement those performance guarantees by choosing from different packet scheduling schemes and tweaking the associated configurable parameters. Additionally, by relying on DSCP Drop Precedence, operators can take advantage of Weighted Random Early Discard (WRED) for differentiated packet dropping in case of congestion within a given traffic class.
High availability, crucial to converged networks, is ensured through a combination of highly resilient hardware and software design, and advanced failure detection and traffic protection/restoration schemes. The routers feature complete hardware redundancy combined with resilient software featuring hitless failover and hitless software upgrades with OSPF and BGP graceful restart for maximizing router uptime. The Multi- Service IronWare operating system, powering the NetIron XMR routers, offers advanced capabilities for rapid detection and bypass of link/node failures such as BFD, UDLD, MPLS FRR, and Hot Standby paths.