Workgroup Products BayStack 410 & 450 Switches Overview Features and Benefits

Flexible High-Speed Uplink Options
100BASE-FX and 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX MDAs for the BayStack 410 and 450 Switches provide high-speed connections to the network center. Specifically for the BayStack 450 Switches, Gigabit Ethernet and future ATM uplinks provide greater speed connections to the backbone.

Full Autosensing on Every Port
Every UTP port on the BayStack 450-12T and 450-24T Switches are equipped with autosense technology to automatically detect and support the speed and mode of a connected device. As well as automatically determining whether a connected device is operating at 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps and automatically adjusting to the optimal speed, each switched port also automatically detects and supports full-duplex connections to servers, power-user endstations or other switches as well as half-duplex connections to legacy NICs or hubs. The BayStack 410-24T Switch is a cost-effective, stackable switch that supports 24 10BASE-T ports.

High-Density Fiber Ports
The BayStack 450-12F Switch has twelve 100BASE-FX mini MT-RJ ports, one MDA slot, and a cascade module slot. Up to eight BayStack 450-12F Switches can be stacked to achieve up to 128 100BASE-FX ports (with 4-port 100BASE-FX MDA on each switch). The BayStack 450-12F Switch can also be stacked with the BayStack 410-24T, 450-12T, and 450-24T Switches to accommodate flexible networks.

Redundant Cascade Stacking Architecture
Unlike other stacking switches, BayStack 410 and 450 Switches are designed with a fail-safe cascade stacking architecture (see Figure 1). Cascade cables connect up to 8 stacked switches into a self-healing configuration that protects the stack's connectivity by looping connection signals back at a point of failure. In the unlikely event of a switch failure, all other units in a stack remain operational without interruption.

Figure 1:          In the unlikely event of a switch failure, the stack integrity is maintained: cascade signals loop back at point of failure.

The redundant cascade stacking architecture is a safer, smarter alternative to current "matrix" stacking switches, which suffer from a single point of failure design flaw - should the base unit fail, all connectivity to all switches in the stack is lost.

Wire-speed Throughput 
2.5 Gigabit per second (Gbps) switching fabric and custom switching ASICs support full 802.1D-compliant MAC Layer frame forwarding and filtering across all ports at the peak rate of 3 million packets per second for the BayStack 450 Switches. The non-blocking architecture of the BayStack 410-24T Switch allows packets to be forwarded at 1 million packets per second.

802.1p Priority Queuing
Standards-based priority queuing enables prioritization of multimedia or latency-sensitive traffic, making possible integration of voice, video, and data within the same network.

• Redundant cascade stacking architecture.
  
  
• Each unit in the stack has a full copy of the stack configuration so in the unlikely event of any unit failure, operation of the stack continues without affecting application connectivity.

• Gigabit uplinks (for BayStack 450 Switches only) feature LinkSafe, which provides two different physical fiber connectors for each Gigabit uplink. Upon primary path failure, the traffic is diverted to the redundant path in microseconds, protecting critical Gigabit Ethernet connections to servers or the network center.
  
• MultiLink Trunking can be implemented across the stack, where connections between individual devices (for example, between a BayStack 450 Switch and an Accelar 1200 Routing Switch) can be aggregated for both higher bandwidth and redundancy. Should one port connection fail, other connections within the MultiLink Trunk assume the full traffic load seamlessly. MultiLink Trunking also allows servers and critical resources to be connected to different switches in the stack to achieve "Multi-Homing," whereby link redundancy is extended to include unit redundancy, resulting in highly available critical resources (see Figure 2).
  
  

Figure 2: High-density 10/100/1000 switching in the wiring closet, featuring fail-safe stackability and MultiLink Trunking for redundant connections to local servers and the network center.

• Each switch includes a Redundant Power Supply Unit connection. Should the switch's built-in power supply fail, the Nortel Networks RPSU (sold separately) will automatically supply power to the switch for uninterrupted operation.
  

MultiLink Trunking
Enables grouping of links between the switch and another switch or a server to provide higher bandwidth of up to 800 Mbps (when used with 10/100 ports or 100BASE-FX ports) or up to 8 Gigabits per second (when used with Gigabit uplink ports on BayStack 450 Switches) with active redundant links. Trunked ports can span multiple units of the stack for fail-safe connectivity to mission-critical servers and the network center.

IGMP Snooping
The BayStack 410 and 450 Switches feature a new level of efficient IP MultiCast support by examining ('snooping') all IGMP traffic in hardware at line rate, and pruning unwanted data streams from affecting network or endstation performance.

Enterprise-sized MAC Address Table
BayStack 410 and 450 Switches support more than 16,000 MAC addresses per switch for deployment of large-scale enterprise networks with many attached devices and workgroups connected to each switch. (In a full 802.1Q environment, 32,000 MAC addresses are supported.)

Supports Spanning Tree Protocol
BayStack 410 and 450 Switches include built-in support for Spanning Tree Protocol (IEEE 802.1D), which detects and eliminates logical loops in the network. When multiple paths exist, the switch will automatically place some ports on standby to form a network with the most efficient traffic pathways, avoiding the continual looping of frames.

Fully Integrated into Optivity Network Management Software¹
BayStack 410 and 450 Switches feature built-in support for Optivity network management software, enabling complete Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and RMON monitoring and control. Network administrators can manage their entire network, including all hubs, switches, and routers, from a single management station, dramatically reducing the network total cost of ownership.

Web-based Management¹
BayStack 410 and 450 Switches include built-in Web-based network management, so network administrators can easily monitor the status and access data about their network via the local corporate intranet, or from any World Wide Web-connected PC, anywhere in the world.

Flexible Management Choices
In addition to switch management via Optivity and any standard Web browser, an easy-to-use menu-driven interface can be accessed via console or Telnet for complete configuration and management of the BayStack 410 or 450 Switch.

Other Advanced Management Features

• Adjustable rate limits protect the LAN against broadcast or multicast storms that can severely limit performance.
  
  
• BootP and TFTP support allows centralized switch IP address assignment, software upgrades, and SNMP agent updates over the network.
  

BaySecure Secure LAN Access ¹
BaySecure* allows authentication of all access not only to the switches for management and configuration but access to the infrastructure through these switches. Integrated with DHCP and other IP services from Nortel Networks, this software feature limits access to the network to authorized and trusted users with full tracking of network connections.

Concurrent RMON on Every Port
This enables standards-based RMON managers and Optivity applications to manage the network, as well as the device, with four groups of RMON (Alarms, Events, History, and Statistics) on every port.

Recovery Configuration File Support
The configuration file feature allows for storing of switch or stack configuration parameters on a TFTP server. Configuration parameters can be retrieved automatically to configure a replacement switch or stack with the same configuration. For new installations or when a switch has failed, this feature saves time in reconfiguring another switch or stack.

RJ-45 Connectors Wired for MDI-X
All 10/100 autosense Ethernet port connectors are wired for MDI-X connections to other devices. Inexpensive straight-through unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cables can be used to provide switch connections to servers, desktops, and internetworking devices.