Cisco Systems 8600 Series manual General Description, Physical Description, BPX Switch Enclosure

C H A P T E R 2

General Description

This chapter contains an overall physical and functional description of the BPX switch. The physical description includes the BPX switch enclosure, power, and cooling subsystems. The functional description includes an overview of BPX switch operation.

This chapter contains the following:

Physical Description

Functional Description

BPX Switch Major Groups

Optional Peripherals

Physical Description

The BPX switch is supplied as a stand-alone assembly. It may be utilized as a stand-alone ATM switch, or it may be integrated at customer sites with one or more narrowband IPX switches, multi-band IGX switches, MGX 8220 shelves, and other access devices to provide network access to broadband backbone network links for narrowband traffic. Cisco and CPE service interface equipment can also be co-located with the BPX switch and connect to its ATM service interfaces.

BPX Switch Enclosure

The BPX switch enclosure is a self-contained chassis which may be rack mounted in any standard 19 inch rack or enclosure with adequate ventilation. It contains a single shelf which provides fifteen slots for vertically mounting the BPX switch cards front and rear. Refer to Figure 2-1which illustrate the front view of the BPX switch Shelf.

At the front of the enclosure (see Figure 2-1) are 15 slots for mounting the BPX switch front cards. Once inserted, the cards are locked in place by the air intake grille at the bottom of the enclosure. A mechanical latch on the air intake grille must be released by using a screwdriver and the grille must be tilted forward in order to remove or insert cards.

At the rear of the enclosure (illustrated in Figure 2-2) is another series of card slots for mounting the rear plug-in cards. These are held in place with two thumbscrews, top and bottom. A mid-plane, located between the two sets of plug-in cards, is used for interconnect and is visible only when the cards are removed.

To provide proper cooling, it is essential that blank faceplates be installed in all unused slots. Failure to do so will degrade node cooling and circuit card damage will result. The blank faceplates also provide RFI shielding.

General Description 2-1