Brocade MLXe Series Hardware Installation Guide 1
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Product Overview
Brocade router overview
Brocade routers provide high-performance routing to service providers, distributed enterprises, and
research networks, offering the following benefits:
• Scalable multi-service IP/MPLS carrier Ethernet routers.
• 100 Gbps Ethernet, 10Gbps Ethernet and 1Gbps Ethernet wire speed ports in a single router.
• Wire-speed IPv4, IPv6, and MPLS forwarding performance.
• Comprehensive IPv4 and IPv6 routing support based on Brocade Multi-Service IronWare.
• High-availability design with redundant management modules, switch fabric modules, power
supplies and fans, supporting hitless failover, hitless software upgrades, and non-stop routing.
• Advanced, scalable Metro Ethernet Layer 2 services.
• Advanced Layer 2/Layer 3 VPN and multicast capabilities support residential triple-play and
business services.
• Comprehensive hardware-based security and policies.
• Advanced QoS for differentiated SLAs.
Router applications
Brocade routers are commonly deployed in the following situations:
• Layer 2 metro networks
• Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Layer 3 Virtual Private Network (VPN) service provider
networks supporting multi-VRFs and RFC 2547bis
• MPLS Layer 2 VPN service provider networks supporting both Virtual Private LAN Service
(VPLS) and Virtual Leased Line (VLL)
• MPLS backbone ‘P’ routers
• Data Centers
• Enterprise backbones
Hardware features
This section describes the major hardware components of Brocade routers. The figures in this
section show the router slots where you install modules and power supplies. For installation
instructions for these devices, refer to the appropriate installation chapter in this guide for your
model.
Brocade MLXe routers
Brocade MLXe routers are available in the following models: